Creative nonfiction (CNF) is becoming increasingly popular in the UK with established magazines and journals publishing it alongside short fiction and journalism, and new outlets popping up all the time. But writing for a book-length project and writing a polished article or essay demand different skills.
You’ll take a guided tour of the various different essay structures, from CNF flash, through the personal essay to literary journalism. You’ll also see how many published personal essays tap into the zeitgeist or something newsworthy or topical. We will focus on how we make the personal universal, continually returning to how – to borrow a Leslie Jamison term – we can use our life as evidence.
The group will be kept small in order to create a safe supportive teaching environment; we will come together in topic-focused group discussion of set reading, and there will be an opportunity for recommended reading lists. We would hope you will have decided which part of your memoir you’d like to adapt in the first half of the course, ready to share a draft in the peer feedback that follows.
In the second half of the course, the reading group becomes a writing group. The aim is to share your work-in-progress and receive constructive feedback through group discussion.
Course structure
During weeks 1-5, you’ll receive a weekly hit of creative nonfiction, as well as a slice of critical insight on the different forms of CNF being published (see below for examples). We’ll also discuss some known examples of where writers have adapted a chapter of a memoir to published essay, and the kinds of decisions they have made. Each Wednesday evening, we’ll get together on Zoom to discuss. The aim of these first five weeks is for us to:
- Practice reading as writers (material will come with tips on what to look out for)
- Practice delivering thoughtful and constructive critique of creative nonfiction
- Discuss how to adapt an existing chapter and make it a standalone piece
- Get inspiration and insight for our own writing (optional writing prompts accompany each set of reading material)
- Get to know each other’s voices, interests and aversions when it comes to writing from personal experience
During weeks 6-10, you’ll share your own work-in-progress (two pieces per course member, up to 3,000 words each), and continue to meet weekly on Zoom to discuss and give feedback. The aim of these last five weeks is for us to:
- Receive feedback on drafts and work-in-progress to help us improve
- Learn from constructively critiquing the work of other writers
- Identify themes in your writing
- Learn how your thinking about your article will feedback into writing the memoir, and how this then feeds into future ideas of articles
- Make supportive connections that can endure after the course
Forms of short CNF for the reading weeks:
- Flash CNF
- The Personal Essay
- The Lyric Essay
- Literary Journalism
- The Braided Essay; Hybrid; Experimental
You are welcome to join this course whether you have experience of group workshopping or not – it is designed to help everyone learn this useful skill via critical reading and discussion of published work. But we do ask that you have either finished a memoir or autobiographical novel, or have one in progress. You will need to allow about 2 hours each week for course reading.
Learning online
Throughout the course, as well as the Zoom meetings, all members will have access to a closed group on the messaging platform Slack. Here you can share more thoughts on the reading, make your own recommendations, ask the course tutor questions and discuss your writing.
You’ll need to have internet access for the Zoom meetings, and to interact on Slack now and again. The course tutor will send you links and instructions for both.
Course dates
Weekly Zoom meetings on Wednesday evenings, 7pm (1.5 hours for the reading groups, 2 hours for the feedback groups).
This runs for 10 weeks: Oct 26, Nov 2, Nov 9, Nov 16, Nov 23, Nov 30, Dec 7, Dec 14, (a three week break over Christmas), and returning for Jan 11 and Jan 18.
The course will run with a minimum of 8 participants and a maximum of 10 to ensure we all get time to share our ideas and receive feedback on our work.
The first lot of reading material is distributed one week before the start date.
