Nonfiction Writing Workshop

Catalog description

A workshop that will introduce students, through writing assignments, to the many varieties of creative nonfiction, including the personal essay, memoir, travel writing, the lyric essay, the portrait, and the political essay. We'll engage the eternal concerns and debates of nonfiction writing, including: what it means to tell the "truth", representing the "I" or first-person narrator as a character, telling other people's secrets, the (un)reliability of memory, etc. We'll learn how to use traditional fiction techniques (scene, character, setting, dialogue) in nonfiction, as well as practice techniques more typically seen in creative nonfiction, such as enacting on the page the writer's "story of thought." On occasion this writing workshop will be offered with a particular focus,such as writing about science, family, or sports. The focus will be announced in advance of registration.