Scott Repass

Scott Repass has been a bar owner, a bartender, an actor, a carpenter, and a barista.  He is an MFA candidate in fiction in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.  He has a Master of Liberal Studies degree from City University of New York and wrote his master’s thesis on body-switching movies.  His fiction has appeared in Houston and Nomadic Voices, The Heartland Review, Fort Necessity, and elsewhere. His film criticism has appeared in Film Quarterly and Literature/Film Quarterly. His novel, Last Call Lounge (written under the pen name Stuart Spears), was co-winner of the 2012 Houston Writers Guild Novel Contest. Scott currently lives in Houston, where he and his wife own Poison Girl, the best bar on the planet.
 
Author Website:
www.scottrepass.com

Recommend Books for Aspiring Writers:

• Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
  • This isn’t the greatest craft book ever written, and Snyder is wrong about some things (like the movie Memento). But his analysis of story and his “beat sheet” are great for learning about structure. (The original Save the Cat focuses mostly on screenplays – there is a version for novels, too.)
• The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
  • The Dog of the South is an amazing comedic novel with startlingly good dialogue.
• Luster by Raven Leilani
  • A remarkable example of how humor can make social criticism hit really, really hard.
• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
  • Highsmith makes you root for a guy that you should definitely not be rooting for. Twisted and dark in all the good ways.
• Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson
  • Anyone interested in writing short stories should read this story collection. Musical and dark and strange.

​​Teaching Philosophy:
The goal of workshop – for both the participants and the teacher – should be to help each of us on along the road to being a better writer. My personal goal is that students leave workshop with more tools to work with and more enthusiasm for reading, writing, and revising.