Class Description
This workshop is part of GrubStreet's Manuscript Month, a programming deep dive into the publishing journey. Learn more about Manuscript Month here!
In this four-week close reading group, we will read and discuss Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, a #1 New York Times Best Seller, a selection for Oprah’s Book Club, and the book that inspired the film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon. In this memoir, Strayed hikes over 1,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail alone in a journey of grief and self-discovery.
Through dissecting Wild from its structure down to its sentences, we’ll explore what makes this conventional memoir one of the defining books of its genre. Each week, we will analyze a small grouping of chapters. We’ll first examine the broader function of the chapters and their role in the narrative arc, then zoom in and discuss how they are crafted on the page. Topics will include: voice, pacing, symbolism, perspective, setting, flashbacks and other jumps in time, scene writing vs. exposition, and the ethics of writing memoir.
This group is designed for readers who want to read like writers, and for writers who want to surface craft lessons from the best-of-the-best. Participants should be prepared to engage in lively and curious discussion. Join us to immerse yourself in a book that contributed to the contemporary resurgence of “ordinary people” memoir in mainstream, nonliterary media!
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.