Class Description
You read the New York Time's Modern Love or Lives column religiously. Or you're a huge fan of The Best American Essays anthologies. Whatever form your obsession takes, you find yourself drawn to the personal essay and constantly wanting to know, How'd they do that? so that you can write your own essays. In this three-hour class, we'll start off by defining what a personal essay is (and is not!) and examine the qualities all strong personal essays share courtesy of Phillip Lopate's instructive anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay. We'll also discuss ways to approach writing our own personal essays, and do a few related writing exercises to get you thinking in the right direction. Come to class armed with your questions, curiosity and readiness to dive deep into the personal essay. And don't forget a notebook and pen!
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.