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A penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers

Upcoming Courses

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Writing Picture Books

Tuesdays: September 8 - 29
7 - 9:30 p.m. EST

$450

Spare yet expansive, intimate yet collaborative, picture books ask writers and illustrators to think with the ear, the eye, the hand, and the heart. This course will be a story laboratory where we’ll experiment with different ways of entering the world of story and explore alchemical interactions between words and images. Students will learn or deepen their grasp of techniques specific to picture books, such as the use of page turns, counterpoint, paratext, lettering and design; gain an understanding of the philosophy and practice of making books for children; and get a chance to pose nitty-gritty questions about the path to publishing.

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Writing Setting

Wednesdays: September 16 - October 7
7:30 - 10 p.m. EST

$420

“Setting” is a brief word that encompasses an entire world: geography, time, history, and culture. It’s the ground our stories stand on, affixing our works in some position in space, rather than releasing them into a vacuum. Through setting, we make our writing more specific and more alive; a story rooted in place gains natural, political, and emotional depth. So how do we best place our stories in a context that tethers, enriches, and expands them? How do we engage with the wider world in which our dramas take place, so that setting serves as a dynamic element of the story, as compelling to readers as character or plot?

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Writing Autofiction

Mondays: October 5 - 26
7 - 9:30 p.m. EST

$450

What is autofiction—this fictional form that isn’t autobiography, but carries the uncanny verisimilitude of lived experience? That portrays our own memories with realism, while still being called fiction? That’s where autofiction lives: In the murky, rich territory where remembrance blurs, and fiction steps in not to lie, but to reveal something even truer. How can setting, point-of-view, and character transform fact into something fuller? What does it mean to invent yourself as a character on the page? And how can writing about what could have happened reveal a deeper emotional truth than what actually did?

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Intro to the Magazine Essay

Tuesdays: October 27 - November 17
7:30 - 10 p.m. EST

$450 $400 (until August 26)

The personal essay is one of the most intimate and electric forms of writing we have—where craft meets vulnerability and truth meets structure. But turning a lived experience into something that moves readers (and grabs the attention of editors) takes strategy, clarity, and a deep understanding of what makes a personal experience worth sharing. This course will be a conversation about the intersection of art and industry, ideal for writers seeking the fundamentals of magazine writing. You’ll study a variety of personal essays that have landed in large outlets, analyze what makes them work, and apply those techniques to your own writing. Each week will offer space to refine your voice, deepen your understanding of craft, and strengthen the emotional and structural core of your essay-in-progress.

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Reimagining Cultural Criticism

Sundays: November 1 - 22
3 - 4:30 p.m. EST

$420

Cultural criticism is under threat from every direction: artificial intelligence, vertical video, celebrity publicists, newsroom budget cuts, university censorship. But these threats suggest that there’s still something vital and subversive about engaging with culture as a collective project rather than as corporate commodity or soothing stream of so-called content. In this course, we will emphasize approaches to cultural criticism that push against the boundaries of traditional genres (the review, the hot take, the profile) or bypass them altogether in favor of forms that respond more idiosyncratically to their subject matter. And even as we think critically about the current media landscape, we will learn how to persuade mainstream magazines to support and publish innovative work. 

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Past Courses

2026

 

  • FINDING YOUR BOOK with LUCY IVES

  • WRITING HYBRID MEMOIR with CARVELL WALLACE
    featuring Alexander Chee, Nina Renata Aron, Megan Stielstra, & Melissa Febos

  • WRITING HEARTBREAK with CHLOÉ CALDWELL
    featuring Hannah Pittard, Tommy Pico, Zaina Arafat, and Scaachi Koul

  • WRITING THE SHORT STORY with SANJENA SATHIAN
    featuring Maria Kuznetsova, Aimee Bender, Senaa Ahmad, & Tony Tulathimutte

  • WRITING THE BOOK PROPOSAL with Raksha Vasudevan
    featuring Irvin Weathersby Jr., Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Noelle Falcis Math, & Pilar Garcia-Brown

  • ETHICS OF MEMOIR with Raksha Vasudevan
    featuring Susan Orlean, Hanif Abdurraqib, Sarah Miller, and Jamie Hood

2025

 

  • WRITING THE BOOK PROPOSAL with RAKSHA VASUDEVAN
    featuring Elisa Gabbert, Lauren Markham, Noelle Falcis-Math, & Anni Liu

  • WRITING THE BODY with MARGO STEINES
    featuring Sarah Manguso, Krys Malcolm Belc, Porochista Khakpour, & Christina Cooke

  • RETHINKING TRAVEL WRITING with FAITH ADIELE
    featuring Carey Baraka, Bani Amor, Pier Nirandara, & Noo Saro-Wiwa

  • WRITING PICTURE BOOKS with KYO MACLEAR
    featuring Minh Lê, Matthew Burgess, X. Fang, & Jillian Tamaki

  • WRITING AUTOFICTION with AUBE REY LESCURE
    featuring Zinzi Clemmons, Laura van den Berg, Alexander Chee, & Andrew Sean Greer

  • WRITING DESIRE with STEVE ALMOND
    featuring Camille Dungy, Megha Majumdar, Sarah Manguso, & Anthony Doerr

  • THE PRACTICE OF IMAGINATION with RACHEL KHONG
    featuring Shruti Swamy, Ruben Reyes Jr., Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, & Hilary Leichter

2024

 

  • WRITING FOOD with ALI FRANCIS
    featuring Bettina Makalintal, Mayukh Sen, Jaya Saxena, & Alicia Kennedy

  • WRITING THE MODERN LOVE ESSAY with LAVINIA SPALDING
    featuring Susan Yoon, Kevin Renn, Staceyann Chin, & Miya Lee

  • WRITING MOTHERHOOD with RACHEL YODER
    featuring Angela Garbes, Louisa Hall, Sabrina Orah Mark, & Erika Morillo

  • WRITING TRAUMA with MARGO STEINES
    featuring Stacey Ramsower, Athena Dixon, T Kira Māhealani Madden, & Lacy M. Johnson

  • WRITING THIS WARMING WORLD with MEERA SUBRAMANIAN
    featuring Emily Raboteau, Helen Macdonald, Elizabeth Rush, & J. Drew Lanham

 

2023

  • HYBRID MEMOIR with LILLY DANCYGER
    featuring Melissa Febos, Esmé Weijun Wang, Jeannie Vanasco, & Tyrese L. Coleman

  • WRITING THE BODY with MARGO STEINES
    & featuring Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Melissa Febos, Natalie Lima, & Leslie Jamison

2022