Description
Ten Tuesdays, Mar 10-May 12, 5:45-7:45pm
Open to all
Limited to 12 participants
Online Workshop*
The personal essay sits at the crossroads of memory, imagination, and reflection. It is a form that invites vulnerability and experimentation, asking writers to turn the lens inward while reaching outward toward readers. This ten-week workshop explores the craft of creative nonfiction through readings, discussion, and guided writing exercises. Together, we’ll study a wide range of contemporary essayists and thinkers such as Sheila Heti, Alicia Elliott, Maggie Nelson, James Baldwin, Leslie Jamison, and Joan Didion, whose work challenges and expands our understanding of form, voice, structure, and truth-telling.
Each week, participants will write in response to prompts designed to help them develop their voice, experiment with structure, and explore the ethical and emotional complexities of writing about real lives (our own and others’). We will discuss fragments and braids, confession and restraint, intimacy and distance, always returning to the central question: how do we shape lived experience into compelling art?
By the end of the workshop, participants will have generated several essay fragments and drafts, gained tools for revision, and deepened their understanding of the essay as both a personal and public act. Writers will leave with at least one essay draft they can continue to refine beyond the course. No prior experience is required—just a willingness to read closely, write bravely, and share generously.
Week 1 — What Is a Personal Essay?
Theme: Truth, memory, and the boundaries of nonfiction.
Readings:
Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay (selections)
Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”
In-Class:
Introductions & course goals
Discuss “truth” vs. “fact” in essay
Prompt: Write a short scene from memory, then annotate where memory fails
Homework: Write a 600–800-word vignette about a formative memory.
Week 2 — Memory and Fragment
Theme: Shaping nonlinear memory.
Readings:
Sheila Heti, Motherhood (fragmented passages)
Maggie Nelson, Bluets (selections)
In-Class:
Discussion: how fragment builds resonance
Exercise: Write three fragmentary takes on the same memory
Homework: Develop a mosaic-style essay (1,000 words).
Week 3 — Intimacy and Confession
Theme: The essayist’s voice and vulnerability.
Readings:
Alicia Elliott, “A Mind Spread Out on the Ground” (title essay)
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (title essay excerpt)
In-Class:
Confessional vs. performative honesty
Prompt: Write a letter to someone you cannot send it to
Homework: Expand into a 1,200-word letter-essay.
Week 4 — Deepening Voice, Tone & Emotional Register
Theme: How voice, tone, and emotional distance shape the personal essay.
Readings:
Zadie Smith, “Fail Better”
Katherena Vermette, selected interviews on writing community, trauma, and point of view
In-Class:
Discuss tonal shifts: intimacy, distance, authority, hesitance
Exercise: Rewrite a paragraph in three distinct tonal registers (tender, analytical, ironic)
Homework: Revise your Week 3 letter-essay with purposeful tonal modulation.
Week 5 — Structure and Form
Theme: Chronology, braiding, and experimentation.
Readings:
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation (fragmented passages on structure)
Eula Biss, “Time and Distance Overcome”
In-Class:
Discuss braiding personal + cultural history
Exercise: Write a short braided passage (memory + outside text/reference)
Homework: Draft a braided essay (1,200–1,500 words).
Week 6 — The Self as Character
Theme: Distance between narrator and narrated self.
Readings:
Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be? (essayistic passages)
James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” (opening sections)
In-Class:
Compare Baldwin’s authority with Heti’s uncertainty
Prompt: Write a scene twice — once from the past self’s POV, once from the present self’s POV
Homework: Develop one version into a polished essay draft.
Week 7 — Risk, Ethics, and Responsibility
Theme: Writing what feels dangerous; truth vs. harm.
Readings:
Katherena Vermette, interview excerpts on writing community, family, trauma
Alexander Chee, “The Autobiography of My Novel”
In-Class:
Debate: what’s “too much” to share?
Workshop 2–3 student essays
Homework: Revise draft based on feedback.
Week 8 — Revision and Compression
Theme: Re-seeing, cutting, deepening.
Readings:
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation (compression and brevity passages)
Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”
In-Class:
Revision strategies (How to “write coldly”)
Prompt: Take a draft and cut it to 70% length without losing essence
Homework: Prepare a near-final essay draft (1,500–2,000 words).
Week 9 — Workshop Intensive & Thematic Excavation
Theme: Deep structural and thematic revision.
Readings:
None — focus on student manuscripts.
In-Class:
Half-class workshop
Identifying the essay’s “governing question”
Discuss strategies for expansion vs. contraction
Homework: Revise based on workshop + draft your artistic statement.
Week 10 — Final Workshop & Publication Paths
Theme: Reflection and sharing.
Readings:
None — focus on participant work.
In-Class:
Final peer workshop
Discuss venues for publishing personal essays (journals, anthologies, online mags)
Closing: Write a brief artistic statement on your personal essay practice
Homework: Submit final essay + artistic statement.
By the end, students will have:
- A good command of how to craft a compelling personal essay.
- Experience with both traditional and experimental essay forms.
- A stronger sense of their essayistic voice and relationship to truth.
*This workshop will take place online via Zoom. A Zoom link will be sent to all registered participants a week or so prior to the first session.
