Professional and Lifelong Learning

Course description

This workshop is intended for serious writers of creative nonfiction who want to produce publishable work. In the first half of the course, we study work by major authors in this capacious genre, including Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, and Jo Ann Beard. In the course's second half, we use what we have learned—about scene, plot, character, and voice—to produce new work. Students may write short memoirs, personal or lyric essays, profiles, literary nonfiction, and more. Toward the end of the course, we focus on strategies for getting published, including how to identify likely publication venues and how to effectively pitch editors.