In addition to teaching, I always take classes at Grub each term to keep up with my own writing. So, when Grub offered online classes for the first time in the fall, I decided to take Grace Talusan's Art of the Personal Essay online class. I had taken an in-person class with her a couple years ago (which was fabulous), so I had high hopes for her online class. I was not disappointed

I once had a writing teacher who advised us to begin the first draft, not with writing, but sitting.  Specifically, we were to descend to the basement and sit cross-legged on the damp floor.  Preferably we would be wrapped in a sleeping bag.  The basement, as I understood it, because we were meant to draw on our deepest subconscious.  The sleeping bag, to protect our quivering writer egos.

Did you know agents might not read beyond your first line? As a hopeful novelist, clutching a newly-completed first draft and wondering where to start with revision, I was aware that the opening pages of a novel were important, but I didn’t realize how crucial first lines could be until I met Sorche Fairbank, agent and Grub Street instructor.

Notes from a Grub Street-inspired writing group

By Joanne Barker, Cloe Axelson, Pat McTiernan, Julia Rubin, Carol Steinberg, Judith Vick

We met in Michelle Seaton’s Six Weeks, Six Essays class and quickly got to know each other in a way that typically takes months or years. Perhaps rapid intimacy is a hallmark of creative nonfiction. The class ended and six of us decided to keep going.