Class Description
In this advanced class, we'll dive into the neglected, misunderstood, and 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 this course, 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 conversations about the publishing landscape for personal essays. Authors whose work we may look at include Samuel R. Delany, Maxine Hong Kingston, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kevin Killian, and Justin Torres. We will be reading some selections from Pathetic Literature, an anthology edited by Eileen Myles.
Important dates:
This application deadline has been extended to Monday, June 3rd by 11:59pm (EST).
The payment deadline for admitted students is Wednesday, June 12th.
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.