Class Description
Heartbreak, death, trauma, abuse, loss, messy relationships: these are tough subjects to write about well, but the effort often yields amazing results. How do you write about dark and deeply personal matters in a way that's not too sentimental, self-indulgent, insular, or raw? In this workshop, you'll study exemplary work by essayists in a variety of magazines and journals—from Salon and the New York Times to The Rumpus—to see how these authors do it. At least two essays by each student will be workshopped in class. In addition to the workshops and readings, there will be short, weekly (and required) at-home writing exercises, where you'll apply some key craft lessons about scenes, summary, structure, beginnings and endings, characterization, and time travel to your own work. We'll also discuss the issues of memory, psychic distance, tone, and voice, as well as challenges related to having real, living people, especially family and friends, as characters in your personal essays. We'll look at strategies for revision, and workshop one revised section of one essay. Finally, we'll look at where you might publish your essays once you've revised them. Note: This class is for daring writers.
Want to know more? Check out Ethan's interview with Cheryl Strayed on the GrubStreet blog.
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.