Class Description
In this class, we'll dive into the neglected, misunderstood, and criminally underrated skill of revision. Just finished a personal essay you're wildly proud of, but not sure you got the ending right? In love with your musings and own voice, but don't know, exactly, what your story is about? Terrified to cut a pretty sentence, or rearrange a scene, lest the whole essay fall to pieces? This is the class for you. In Advanced Revision Strategies: Personal Essay, each writer will submit to workshop at least twice. Your first submission will be a first draft--a beautiful, messy pile of uncut inspiration--and your second will be a revision of that essay, once you've gotten some feedback from the workshop and reflected on how you can improve it. There may be time to also workshop shorter essays, excerpts and exercises. The rest of our time will be dedicated to the discussion and analysis of the other craft elements; reading and discussing a wide range of personal essays; and in-class writing exercises. Authors whose work we may look at include Brian Doyle, Cheryl Strayed, John McPhee, Barry Lopez, Zadie Smith, Wendell Berry, Jacquira Diaz, Sandra Tsing Loh, David Foster Wallace and others. It is recommended that you have some workshop experience prior to applying for this course.
To apply, please click the red "SEE DIRECTIONS TO APPLY" button in the top right corner of this page. This application will ask you to detail your workshop experience. It will also ask you to upload a 5-10 page writing sample. Please make sure this writing sample is in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, and in 12-point font. For tracking purposes, your name should appear in the file name (e.g. Smith. Story Title.Submission). Decisions will be emailed to applicants approx. 1 week after the deadline. You can also track the status of your application in your Grubstreet profile. Please make sure your application is complete before you finally click "APPLY." If you have any technical difficulties filling out this application, please email [email protected]. You will receive a confirmation email once our system has received your submission.
Important dates:
The application deadline for this class is March 19th at 11:59pm. Applicants can expect to learn of decisions 1-2 weeks after the deadline.
Did you know that we have scholarships available for all GrubStreet classes? To apply, click the "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button in the top right corner of this page. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your scholarship application and await our Scholarship Committee's decision before registering for the class. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
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.