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A penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers

Upcoming Courses

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Generating the Personal Essay

Mondays: Jan 6 - Feb 10
6 - 8:30 p.m. EST

$530

The hardest part of writing, often enough, is just getting started. And for those of us who write creative nonfiction, the problem is usually a glut, rather than a lack, of ideas. We essayists can choose to write about exactly everything we’ve ever done, thought, imagined, feared, regretted doing, celebrated not doing, etc. These limitless choices can be paralyzing. And whenever we’re feeling paralyzed, one of the best remedies is to simply reduce our choices. Constrain them. Channel them.

Business of Freelancing

Friday, January 24
1 - 4 p.m. EST

$110

This course offers a transformative, holistic approach to the business side of freelancing, providing writers with the essential tools to manage finances, adapt to changing technologies, secure higher rates, develop steady income streams, and market themselves in what feels like an increasingly crowded space.

Writing People: The Art of Profile & Biography

Saturdays: Jan 25 - Feb 22
12 - 2 p.m. EST

$400

How do you frame a life? How do you condense copious research into a cogent narrative? How do you wrangle archival sources and harness the power of the interview?

Mastering profile writing and biography requires maintaining a reporter’s dogged tenacity, a willingness to go deep with sources, and enormous reserves of empathy. But the exercise, you’ll find, is also a rewarding one: Turning your narrative gaze outward, and writing about other people, might also teach you a great deal about yourself.

Writing Motherhood

Thursdays: Mar 6 - Apr 3
8 - 10 p.m. EST

$400

How does a writer broach the topic of motherhood—an experience as large as life itself, and as personal as the deepest flesh of our physical selves? How do we write toward the ineffability of maternal love, transformation, rage, sacrifice, and ecstasy? This Masters’ Series course aspires to give you the conversations, community, craft, and courage needed to approach your work about every aspect of motherhood—conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and caretaking.

Nonfiction Re-Vision Intensive

March 10 - 13
7 - 9 p.m. EST

$600

When we revise our work, we attempt to see two things at once: the original frame of what we were doing when we started, and a new vision, informed by the way we have changed through the process of making the work. This advanced intensive course is your chance to get a drafted piece revised for publication.

Writing Grief

Saturdays: Apr 5 - May 3
12 - 2 p.m. EST

$400

We’re writing in a time of collective grief. There’s an ongoing health crisis, a deeply divided political climate, an aching planet, and through it all, each of us is moving deeply personal mountains that no one else can see. How do we show up to the page when we don’t want to get out of bed? How do we find language for the loss, the fear, the sadness, the gutpunch, the thing we can’t put down?

Past Courses

 

2024

 

  • WRITING FOOD
    w    / Ali Francis & featuring Bettina Makalintal, Mayukh Sen, Jaya Saxena, & Alicia Kennedy

  • WRITING THE MODERN LOVE ESSAY
    w    / Lavinia Spalding & featuring Susan Yoon, Kevin Renn, Staceyann Chin, & Miya Lee

  • WRITING MOTHERHOOD
    w    / Rachel Yoder & featuring Angela Garbes, Louisa Hall, Sabrina Orah Mark, & Erika Morillo

  • WRITING TRAUMA
    w    / Margo Steines & featuring Stacey Ramsower, Athena Dixon, T Kira Māhealani Madden, & Lacy M. Johnson

 

2023

  • HYBRID MEMOIR
    w/ Lilly Dancyger & featuring Melissa Febos, Esmé Weijun Wang, Jeannie Vanasco, & Tyrese L. Colemen

  • WRITING THE BODY
    w/ Margo Steines & featuring Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Melissa Febos, Natalie Lima, & Leslie Jamison

2022