Class Description
In this advanced course, experienced students working on narrative personal essays will receive support, guidance, and feedback. We'll discuss elements of craft at a high level; try new forms, techniques, voices, and structures; and develop strategies for revision. Prompts, exercises, readings by exemplary authors, and discussion will help you see your own narrative personal essays with fresh eyes. Authors covered may include Joan Didion, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, John Jeremiah Sullivan, David Foster Wallace, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie.
We’ll cover submitting your essays for publication and working with editors, and a professional writer or editor will visit the class to answer questions about the writing, submitting, and editorial process. By the end of the course, you’ll have submitted work to the class for critique four times (one piece should be a revision of a previously workshopped essay), and you’ll have fine-tuned at least one essay for submission to publications. Students will be given responsibility to help shape the class, decide what topics the workshop will focus on, and will at times be asked to make short presentations. Space is limited to 9 students to foster a closer and more rigorous learning experience. Only experienced essay writers who have taken previous narrative nonfiction workshops at GrubStreet or elsewhere should apply.
Please note: No class on July 4th.
Important dates:
The application deadline for this class is May 18th at 11:59pm. Applicants can expect to learn of decisions 1-2 weeks after the deadline via email. You can also track the status of your application in your Grubstreet profile. Please make sure your application is complete before clicking "Apply." If you have any technical difficulties filling out this application, please email [email protected]
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; copy your answer to question 1 from the application and paste it into this field. This page will also ask you to upload a writing sample. Your writing sample and application (from step 1) should all be contained in a single document. Use the "choose file" button to locate your combined application and writing sample. Once you have located and uploaded your combined application & writing sample, click the "Apply" button. You will receive a confirmation email once our system has received your submission.
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. For "Master" classes, please submit both the class application and the scholarship application before the deadline stated above.
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.