Class Description
The Crónica has become the great genre of Latin American literary journalism by combining journalism, memoir, and essay into one maximalist nonfiction genre. Diverse, broadly free: it’s about the facts, but it is also about ideas and interpretation, and it uses the techniques of fiction. In English, this is more commonly known as narrative journalism, but the Crónica is something bigger: again, it’s about the facts, but it is also about the person who tells the story, like a memoir.
We will read from some of the best Crónicas (translated from Spanish): Rodolfo Walsh’s “Operation Massacre,” Martín Caparrós’ “Hunger,” Leila Guerriero’s “The Trace in the Bones,” Gabriela Wiener’s “Sexographies,” Óscar Martínez’s “The Hollywood Kid,” and we will analyze their narrative engineering.
This workshop is for anyone interested in nonfiction writing. Through workshops and exercises, this class will teach you how to identify a good story, perform research, and start planning a piece. We will discuss the point of view of the cronista, and how to build real scenes. Finally, we will learn why the Crónica can be emotional, resilient, empathic, and also political—and how we can write our very own Crónicas.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.