Class Description
In this advanced class, we'll dive into the neglected, misunderstood, and underrated skill of revision. Just finished a piece 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 thing fall to pieces? This is the class for you.
In this course, writers will do iterative reflective writing exercises to get closer to the heart of their pieces. Each writer will submit pieces of up to 2500 words 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. After receiving feedback, writers will do a few guided revision exercises to determine a revision strategy that works best for them. The rest of our time will be dedicated to the discussion and analysis of the creative nonfiction craft elements, including structure, perspective and POV, and scene-writing vs. exposition; reading and discussing a wide range of creative nonfiction; and conversations about the publishing landscape for creative nonfiction. Readings will include work by writers like Noor Hindi, Jessica Kashiwabara, Sandra Cisneros, J.L. Bermudez, and Tammy Heejae Lee.
Writers will be expected to read and write outside of class. Writers of short-form creative nonfiction, including memoir, personal essay, travel writing, food writing, and experimental nonfiction, welcome!
Important dates: The application deadline for this class is Monday, May 26th, at 11:59PM (ET). Applications submitted after the deadline will not be reviewed and will not receive a response. The payment deadline for admitted students is Wednesday, June 4th.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
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.