Coaching and editing available one-on-one, in groups, online with Tantra Bensko
Bring your Traditional and Innovative fiction
Also available: UCLA Extension Writing Experimental Fiction 10 week workshop
Writers.com Writing the Short Story 10 week workshop
Writers College Experimental Writing 6 week individual class
Do you prefer innovative literary fiction?
Very little is written about how to write experimental fiction compared to instructions for traditional literature. New literature that is taught and critically referenced is most often very innovative. Yet few classes are taught about experimental fiction in colleges, or online. Experimental Fiction is highly regarded in the literary world as the forefront of the avant-garde, history making, cutting edge, and simply some of the most entertaining, mentally stimulating, and emotionally satisfying literature out there.
Tantra Bensko teaches and edits all styles of fiction, including genre, mainstream, commercial, and literary, including innovative and extremely experimental.
"Details of the Recommendation: "After studying with many writing teachers who were locked in to the three-act structure, it was liberating to encounter Tantra and her Experimental Fiction class at UCLA Extension. I also studied with her online one-on-one. She shares an incredible amount of her expertise, encouragement and wise guidance. Thank you, Tantra, for showing me ways to fly out-of-the-box. I recommend Tantra to anyone whose stories refuse to be confined to commercial genres." Lynette Yetter
Tantra Bensko teaches and edits all styles of fiction, including genre, mainstream, commercial, and literary, including innovative and extremely experimental.
"Details of the Recommendation: "After studying with many writing teachers who were locked in to the three-act structure, it was liberating to encounter Tantra and her Experimental Fiction class at UCLA Extension. I also studied with her online one-on-one. She shares an incredible amount of her expertise, encouragement and wise guidance. Thank you, Tantra, for showing me ways to fly out-of-the-box. I recommend Tantra to anyone whose stories refuse to be confined to commercial genres." Lynette Yetter
Visit Tantra Bensko's Online Writing Academy
"This class is amazing. I never felt my writing ‘fit in’ until this class. I didn’t even know these genres existed! I am so pleased to have found a home! The instructor, Tantra Bensko, teaches from the heart. Not only is she a fantastic author in the realm of Lucid Fiction, but also is an artist. I admire her dedication to the craft and her productivity! Tantra, you are amazing! I CHERISH THE CLASS! I thank the gods for bringing it to me, and am planning on signing up for every other Tantra course available. I have been able to open up and write what I want without hindrance for the first time in this course, and successfully so. YAY! DISCLAIMER: You don’t have to be a Lucid Fiction writer to love this course. I think everyone should participate… Harry Potter lovers to Italio Calvino lovers will get something out of it." Lori at PunkPen
"I took a class with Tantra Bensko & it was fantastic!" Kathy Burkett
"I took a class with Tantra Bensko & it was fantastic!" Kathy Burkett
EMPOWER YOUR ECCENTRICITIES, TURN THEM INTO STRENGTHS
Why study?
"In this class, I want to achieve freedom. I feel locked in--locked in to this body, to my job, to my current circumstances, to illness--there are so many ways that I feel like I'm trapped & I'm wanting to stretch my poetry into something beyond boundaries--like a prose poem--like something where people say "And what exactly is that?" I want to let myself loose, because I feel pretty caged up at the moment."
"I find that the literature and film I have always been drawn to pushes into the experimental, playing with the conventions of their respective media in some manner. I have to do the same in my own writing or I lose interest; if my writing doesn't excite me, there's no hope. Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm not the biggest fan of straight forward, literary fiction. I like when there is something off in the characters or the world, something that intrigues me."
and, by A.S. Andrews (www.asandrews.com)
"The peacocks are driving me crazy. I think it’s peacocks anyway. Every night at sundown, I hear them screaming. At first I thought it was cats. Had to be cats, making that god-awful yowling racket, sounding like they were getting slaughtered out there. Except they should have been gone after a night of that, and the racket keeps coming back. All that noise, and I’ve only seen one cat round abouts. One! In the full light of day, and he didn’t make a peep.
Peacocks, someone told me, it’s the peacocks. But there aren’t supposed to be any peacocks left, not after they hunted them all down, and every time I go out walking, I can’t find a single one. Just that big empty cage up the hill. Of course, I never go out at sundown, not after what happened with Joe, and maybe that’s the problem . .
There’s a certain dream state I used to find as a child, and once I wrote a whole story that way, and it won a contest. I’ve been looking for that state ever since. Sometimes I find my way back, but it’s harder now.
I’m looking for those peacocks, and all I find is an empty cage, with a hole big enough to crawl in, but it closes in on you the deeper you go, and I get stuck with my head in, and my arms pinned down and my feet flapping out in the wind.
Sometimes I write from dreams, sometimes from an image I saw that struck me, or a sound or a song I heard that I can’t get out of my head. The most random things will grab me, and I start to obsess, and it’s over. Something demands to be written from it, and I swear that dream state knows what, but I can’t get back there. Take the peacocks, for example.
I want to find the peacocks in this class. They’re out there, staring at me with all those fanned out eyes, just beyond the hedges and the wild ivy vines.
I’m not one hundred percent sure what experimental writing is, or where I want to go with it. The course description was one of those things that caught my eye and resonated – every fiber of my rational mind told me I don’t have time for this, but I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop thinking about it until I finally enrolled. And the peacocks screamed again.
I want to play a bit, and see where it takes me. I’m tired of thinking in boxes, tired of the literary versus commercial labels, tired of trying to fit into a genre. Much of my writing tends to have an otherworld aspect to it – ghosts, magic, horror, aliens. As I write this, of course, I realize that the last two flash pieces I submitted have absolutely nothing otherworldly in them – one was a take on religion and the other on karma. I find myself drawn to questions of life and death, God and the lack of a God, what it means to be sane.
I’ve always felt like I should love Chaucer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, but, while I respect them, I don’t love them (shush, I didn’t really say that! the peacocks might hear . . . ). I love Alice in Wonderland (though I have yet to see the movie). I like adventure, quests, attempts to understand what is happening in the world, why we are the way we are, where we’ve been and where we are going. But I like things that feel accessible to me, right now, today.
I’m constantly trying to find my way, I think, and so my reading and writing is all over the board, an attempt to wrap my mind around the things that boggle it. Like those peacocks I’m hearing – what are they, where are they, are they even they? I don’t want to be labeled, I already bear too many labels, I want to make it all fit. Some days I like the commercial standards, and I’m working on a novel that’s fairly commercial. Others days I have no attention span, ping-ponged among my children, reading snips of flash here and there, trying to find that recipe for pineapple fried rice, and other days, I want to dream, to play, to experiment."
"I find that the literature and film I have always been drawn to pushes into the experimental, playing with the conventions of their respective media in some manner. I have to do the same in my own writing or I lose interest; if my writing doesn't excite me, there's no hope. Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm not the biggest fan of straight forward, literary fiction. I like when there is something off in the characters or the world, something that intrigues me."
and, by A.S. Andrews (www.asandrews.com)
"The peacocks are driving me crazy. I think it’s peacocks anyway. Every night at sundown, I hear them screaming. At first I thought it was cats. Had to be cats, making that god-awful yowling racket, sounding like they were getting slaughtered out there. Except they should have been gone after a night of that, and the racket keeps coming back. All that noise, and I’ve only seen one cat round abouts. One! In the full light of day, and he didn’t make a peep.
Peacocks, someone told me, it’s the peacocks. But there aren’t supposed to be any peacocks left, not after they hunted them all down, and every time I go out walking, I can’t find a single one. Just that big empty cage up the hill. Of course, I never go out at sundown, not after what happened with Joe, and maybe that’s the problem . .
There’s a certain dream state I used to find as a child, and once I wrote a whole story that way, and it won a contest. I’ve been looking for that state ever since. Sometimes I find my way back, but it’s harder now.
I’m looking for those peacocks, and all I find is an empty cage, with a hole big enough to crawl in, but it closes in on you the deeper you go, and I get stuck with my head in, and my arms pinned down and my feet flapping out in the wind.
Sometimes I write from dreams, sometimes from an image I saw that struck me, or a sound or a song I heard that I can’t get out of my head. The most random things will grab me, and I start to obsess, and it’s over. Something demands to be written from it, and I swear that dream state knows what, but I can’t get back there. Take the peacocks, for example.
I want to find the peacocks in this class. They’re out there, staring at me with all those fanned out eyes, just beyond the hedges and the wild ivy vines.
I’m not one hundred percent sure what experimental writing is, or where I want to go with it. The course description was one of those things that caught my eye and resonated – every fiber of my rational mind told me I don’t have time for this, but I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop thinking about it until I finally enrolled. And the peacocks screamed again.
I want to play a bit, and see where it takes me. I’m tired of thinking in boxes, tired of the literary versus commercial labels, tired of trying to fit into a genre. Much of my writing tends to have an otherworld aspect to it – ghosts, magic, horror, aliens. As I write this, of course, I realize that the last two flash pieces I submitted have absolutely nothing otherworldly in them – one was a take on religion and the other on karma. I find myself drawn to questions of life and death, God and the lack of a God, what it means to be sane.
I’ve always felt like I should love Chaucer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, but, while I respect them, I don’t love them (shush, I didn’t really say that! the peacocks might hear . . . ). I love Alice in Wonderland (though I have yet to see the movie). I like adventure, quests, attempts to understand what is happening in the world, why we are the way we are, where we’ve been and where we are going. But I like things that feel accessible to me, right now, today.
I’m constantly trying to find my way, I think, and so my reading and writing is all over the board, an attempt to wrap my mind around the things that boggle it. Like those peacocks I’m hearing – what are they, where are they, are they even they? I don’t want to be labeled, I already bear too many labels, I want to make it all fit. Some days I like the commercial standards, and I’m working on a novel that’s fairly commercial. Others days I have no attention span, ping-ponged among my children, reading snips of flash here and there, trying to find that recipe for pineapple fried rice, and other days, I want to dream, to play, to experiment."
A few Comments from classes
"Thank you, Tantra, for your wonderful class! Your material and encouragement got me to write something I wouldn't have attempted before. And it got picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I am totally blown away. Thank you for opening our minds and encouraging our talents to create new pathways."
"Hello Tantra,
This class means a lot to me, too. You are creating a magical place and have gathered us in. It is like alchemy how you welcome us and where we safe and understood -- free to explore beyond the previous limits of our creativity. I feel very fortunate to have encountered you and your class."
"Tantra may be the most organized instructor I had, one of the most creative with projects, and certainly encouraging and inspiring."
"Orchids are everywhere. Just like talent. We just need nurturing rain to flourish. This class is a fresh shower of creative nurturing rain, for me."
"Hello Tantra,
Yes, I am so looking forward to the next class with you, and I hope with everyone in our dynamic creative group right now.
You know, 25 years ago when I took a women's journal writing course in college, we were assigned to journal our dreams. As I did that, I found dream-state visions happening as I walked across campus. I was worried I would not be able to focus on my studies (and getting all the right forms turned into Financial Aid on time) if I was living in a dream state. So, I stopped journaling.
However, all these years later, I find myself comfortable with and embracing the dream state as it more and more "leaks" into daily life, because of opening the channels with the reading, thinking, writing and dialoging we are doing here in this class.
Thank you, Tantra. I look forward to our continued journeys."
"I think too often, writing classes (not this one, though!) get the student too bogged down in academic theories & definitions & forget to let them just fly & get creative. The ideas on this site help more conventional writers to start thinking in a different way, and they do it in a way that's fun, rather than dry & academic."
Sajith
"I find your writing very cinematic whether it be with human actors in this case, or animation with your Maya piece. You cause me to have very active visuals in my mind. I even at times have a hazing in and out like I would be drunk. So your words are creating a very imaginative space in my mind. I actually am not sure how you are doing it. Maybe it is the odd word patterning, or events?"
Apryl
"Philip,
"I have never seen this technique done before. I had to fight the urge to skip every other line and read one story at a time. The result of not skipping ended up thrusting me very much into the feeling of the interior life and the exterior life that happens simultaneously but can be so unrelated or even related but different. It also gave me the sense of never losing the person we were in the past and that prior self simultaneously existing in the current life and the impacts it can bring, or just the playing of its existence. I think this is a MARVELOUS exercise to give to writers or students to create another level of thinking.
I loved what your piece and technique did in thrusting me effectively into alternative realities. Very cool!
I was really caught by surprise at how much and on how many levels your piece impacted me and so effectively swooped me away.Good job!
I'm not kidding, I am really impressed what this did to my mind and at 10:00 pm!
And I think that if I had not forced myself to read the lines as you placed them, I'm not sure that I would have had such effective as an experience. Letting it flip back and forth and allowing my mind to be confused was definitely part of the mind alternating experience, almost like being drug induced.
And the thing that it also makes me realize is in an observational manner that I have never quite seen before- this is how I live my life. (Of course many people must too.) Your piece is the only thing that I have ever read that has matched my sense of dualistic life experiences! It really makes me get a grasp on how I have experienced life in an entirely comprehensive way which I have never known before.
I really thank you!!!
Apryl"
" Thanks, Tantra! I feel like I finally got out of the box with this one. It's made me want to do more "experimental" fiction, too. I just wasn't ready to abandon traditional structure completely with my first story, but with this one it seemed so effortless. It's almost like I had to be given permission--like I had to give myself permission."
"Well, okay, mostly I love getting critiques! It is so helpful to get other perspectives - after all, we all have different life, different experiences, different point of view....I've been asked to take what seemed like crap to me and was encouraged to push farther, reach deeper, consider this or that. I even like the comments that say things like "this doesn't make sense" or "I got lost here". Those are the most telling - they tell me I need to explain better, or rework it entirely, or start over.
Thank you all for your kind and insightful comments throughout. They have been so helpful. And thanks too for all the "atta girl" when I submitted and subsequently (now!) got accepted by Bewildering Stories.
I'm now so jazzed by everyone's wonderful comments, suggestions, and encouragement, that I plan on making at least four four-part stories, and I'm doing research to find an illustrator. After I do loads more research and loads more writing, I'm going to contact a consultant/friend I have in NY, send her all my stuff and ask her for suggestion for an agent."
"Hello Tantra,
This class means a lot to me, too. You are creating a magical place and have gathered us in. It is like alchemy how you welcome us and where we safe and understood -- free to explore beyond the previous limits of our creativity. I feel very fortunate to have encountered you and your class."
"Tantra may be the most organized instructor I had, one of the most creative with projects, and certainly encouraging and inspiring."
"Orchids are everywhere. Just like talent. We just need nurturing rain to flourish. This class is a fresh shower of creative nurturing rain, for me."
"Hello Tantra,
Yes, I am so looking forward to the next class with you, and I hope with everyone in our dynamic creative group right now.
You know, 25 years ago when I took a women's journal writing course in college, we were assigned to journal our dreams. As I did that, I found dream-state visions happening as I walked across campus. I was worried I would not be able to focus on my studies (and getting all the right forms turned into Financial Aid on time) if I was living in a dream state. So, I stopped journaling.
However, all these years later, I find myself comfortable with and embracing the dream state as it more and more "leaks" into daily life, because of opening the channels with the reading, thinking, writing and dialoging we are doing here in this class.
Thank you, Tantra. I look forward to our continued journeys."
"I think too often, writing classes (not this one, though!) get the student too bogged down in academic theories & definitions & forget to let them just fly & get creative. The ideas on this site help more conventional writers to start thinking in a different way, and they do it in a way that's fun, rather than dry & academic."
Sajith
"I find your writing very cinematic whether it be with human actors in this case, or animation with your Maya piece. You cause me to have very active visuals in my mind. I even at times have a hazing in and out like I would be drunk. So your words are creating a very imaginative space in my mind. I actually am not sure how you are doing it. Maybe it is the odd word patterning, or events?"
Apryl
"Philip,
"I have never seen this technique done before. I had to fight the urge to skip every other line and read one story at a time. The result of not skipping ended up thrusting me very much into the feeling of the interior life and the exterior life that happens simultaneously but can be so unrelated or even related but different. It also gave me the sense of never losing the person we were in the past and that prior self simultaneously existing in the current life and the impacts it can bring, or just the playing of its existence. I think this is a MARVELOUS exercise to give to writers or students to create another level of thinking.
I loved what your piece and technique did in thrusting me effectively into alternative realities. Very cool!
I was really caught by surprise at how much and on how many levels your piece impacted me and so effectively swooped me away.Good job!
I'm not kidding, I am really impressed what this did to my mind and at 10:00 pm!
And I think that if I had not forced myself to read the lines as you placed them, I'm not sure that I would have had such effective as an experience. Letting it flip back and forth and allowing my mind to be confused was definitely part of the mind alternating experience, almost like being drug induced.
And the thing that it also makes me realize is in an observational manner that I have never quite seen before- this is how I live my life. (Of course many people must too.) Your piece is the only thing that I have ever read that has matched my sense of dualistic life experiences! It really makes me get a grasp on how I have experienced life in an entirely comprehensive way which I have never known before.
I really thank you!!!
Apryl"
" Thanks, Tantra! I feel like I finally got out of the box with this one. It's made me want to do more "experimental" fiction, too. I just wasn't ready to abandon traditional structure completely with my first story, but with this one it seemed so effortless. It's almost like I had to be given permission--like I had to give myself permission."
"Well, okay, mostly I love getting critiques! It is so helpful to get other perspectives - after all, we all have different life, different experiences, different point of view....I've been asked to take what seemed like crap to me and was encouraged to push farther, reach deeper, consider this or that. I even like the comments that say things like "this doesn't make sense" or "I got lost here". Those are the most telling - they tell me I need to explain better, or rework it entirely, or start over.
Thank you all for your kind and insightful comments throughout. They have been so helpful. And thanks too for all the "atta girl" when I submitted and subsequently (now!) got accepted by Bewildering Stories.
I'm now so jazzed by everyone's wonderful comments, suggestions, and encouragement, that I plan on making at least four four-part stories, and I'm doing research to find an illustrator. After I do loads more research and loads more writing, I'm going to contact a consultant/friend I have in NY, send her all my stuff and ask her for suggestion for an agent."
"I give Tantra an A as a teacher."
"Tantra, I have taken about two dozen classes online (Gotham Writers Workshop and BerkleeMusic.com). You and 3 other teachers all get A-s and Gold Medals! The other 20 teachers are nice people and are masters of their topic, but, they don't give themselves heart and soul to their students, like you do. I sense that you deeply want us to develop as writers of Experimental Fiction. You nurture us with a passion of someone on a mission.
Together we will change the world.
Un abrazo,
Lynette Yetter"
"Tantra, I have taken about two dozen classes online (Gotham Writers Workshop and BerkleeMusic.com). You and 3 other teachers all get A-s and Gold Medals! The other 20 teachers are nice people and are masters of their topic, but, they don't give themselves heart and soul to their students, like you do. I sense that you deeply want us to develop as writers of Experimental Fiction. You nurture us with a passion of someone on a mission.
Together we will change the world.
Un abrazo,
Lynette Yetter"
About Your Instructor
I am the author of full length transmedia fiction collection Lucid Membrane by Night Publishing, and Collapsible Horizon. My Science Fiction novel, Unside: A Book of Closed Time-Like Curves is forthcoming from Driven Press. I also have have a 50 page short story chapbook, Watching the Windows Sleep, by Naissance Press which also published my tiny chapbook, Swinging on the Edge of Day. The Cabinet of What You Don't See was put out by ISMs Press, and the poetry chapbook Liminal, was published by Ten Pages Press. I have 200 short story, flash fiction, and novelette publications in journals and anthologies, with as many non-fiction, including literary criticism and theory, and around 85 poems. Several magazines have published my novellettes, and the novella Equinox Mirror was published as an e-book and in print by ELJ in December with illustrations.
My writing has won awards, such as from the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, Punk Pen, Medulla Review, Academy of American Poet's Award for a poem at Carolina Quarterly, Editors' Pick, and Journeys Awards from Cezanne's Carrot, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Rose and Thorn, Metazen (which also nominated for Best of the Net) Blue Five, and A-Minor Magazine, and been short listed for a prize from Glimmertrain. A few of the print publications include Fiction International, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Sein und Werden, Alchemy Review, Cosmopsis.
I publish LucidPlay little books and put out Exclusive Magazine as well as running this resource site. I guest edited Medulla Review's summer 2011 issue. I'm well published and displayed Internationally as an artist and was Art Director of Mad Hatters Review.
I obtained a BA and MA in English from FSU, and an MFA from the Writing Workshop at Iowa. I taught writing in three universities previously, and teach Experimental Fiction Writing through Writers College and UCLA Extension Writing Program online and my Academy. I also teach Writing the Short Story at Writers.com and have taught at other venues such as Lit Demons.
Ready to take the next step?