FWS:The Personal Essay

Catalog description

In The Personal Essay, our topics are autobiographical in their origins; we write from personal experience, to think about it and to articulate it, in a style useful in all modes of college-admission and college-work. Our writing practice is both creative and analytical. We discover how writers use drafting and revision as a process of thinking, and in weekly workshops we practice the kind of revision that can make us more independent as writers and more capable of giving helpful suggestions to friends who are also writers. The most important texts for the course are the essays of students enrolled in it; but we also read and discuss personal memoirs. This seminar offers students from diverse backgrounds a forum in which to move beyond accustomed boundaries, finding agency not only through use of the first-person voice but through increased confidence in their abilities as writers.