The personal essay is a uniquely playful and liberating literary form. It’s fun, but it’s not easy. More craft and conscious shaping is involved than people realize. We’ll read and discuss essays from Phillip Lopate’s Art of the Personal Essay and other examples of the form. We’ll do in-class exercises designed to help writers cultivate the ability to follow and record the undulations of their own thinking. Working in stages, we’ll each produce one substantial essay, offering one another constructive criticism and encouragement along the way.
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Fall 2015, Writers Workshops,
Personal Essay 2015-306
About the instructor
EMILY FOX GORDON is the author of two memoirs, Mockingbird Years: A Life In and Out of Therapy and Are You Happy: A Childhood Remembered. Her novel It Will Come to Me was published in 2009, and a collection of personal essays Book of Days in 2010. One of her essays, “At Sixty-Five,” was reprinted in Best American Essays 2014, and she was the recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship.
By registering for an Inprint Writers Workshop you are agreeing to Inprint’s registration policies. Remember to sign up for the waiting list if the workshop you would like to take is full. To see the full Fall 2015 workshop schedule click here.
