Finding Your Book
Mondays: June 1 - July 20
7 - 9:30 p.m. EST
Led by LUCY IVES
$780 $730 (until April 8)
Please register with the email to which you’d like to receive class correspondence and readings.
As writers we often hear about “finding your voice.” But what about finding something we don’t have to be or perform, something we can relate to and be in dialogue with, something that can transform us and grow along with us, something that feels like a home we can come back to again and again?
What would it take to bring your many ideas and aspects of practice into alignment with a single project?
That is what this course is all about—finding your book. This might be the book that only you can write, and it might be the book you’ve been wanting to write all your life. It might even be the book you never knew you wanted to write. One thing is for sure: Once you’ve found it, it will always be there for you, through drafts, revisions, and—if this happens to be your goal—publication.
This generative eight-week course, limited to 16 students, is all about examining our interests, intuitions, dreams, notebooks, drafts, research, and unfinished manuscripts to find the book (or books!) within each of us.
Through a mix of guided exercises, research assignments, at-home writing explorations, suggestions for revision, and frequent table reads of works-in-progress, we’ll generate new writing, as well as new approaches to past work. Come with a project you’ve always wanted to complete, a body of work-in-progress that mystifies you, or just an open mind. In all cases, we are sure to discover ways to take your practice to the next level and bring you closer to writing the book you most want to be writing—the one that’s yours.
In this course, students can expect to:
Reflect on their interests, personal histories, competencies, and past work to discover more about who they are as thinkers and writers
Learn tricks and techniques for productivity, revision, assessing works-in-progress, and conducting research that will set you apart from the crowd
Generate a plan for developing a piece of writing from idea to publication
Create new writing through prompted, in-class writing exercises and guided work to do on your own throughout the week
Join a community of writers deeply engaged in the writing process, along with its challenges and joys
About the Instructor
LUCY IVES is the author of Impossible Views of the World and Loudermilk: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World (both New York Times Book Review Editors' Choices), and Life Is Everywhere, a best book of 2022 with The New Yorker and The Seattle Times. Her short fiction is collected in Cosmogony, and she is the editor of The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader. Her book of essays, An Image of My Name Enters America, won the 2024 Vermont Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in Art in America, Artforum, The Baffler, The Believer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, frieze, Granta, Harper’s, Lapham's Quarterly, n+1, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Vogue, & others . New books are forthcoming in 2026.
Details
This course will take place on Zoom on Mondays, June 1 to July 20 from 7 to 9:30 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterward, available for two months after the end of the course.
After you take a course with Off Assignment, you’ll be invited into our private writing community for alumni on Slack. It includes channels for publication opportunities, reading recommendations, meet-ups, and more—not to mention literary companionship that outlasts the course itself.
There is a 10% cancellation fee if you cancel your enrollment more than 1 week before the start of the course. No refund will be given if cancelling within less than a week of the course start date (or after the course has begun).
Payment plans are available at checkout via ShopPay.
Please email courses@offassignment.com with any questions.