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Writers Workshops

Inprint Spring 2019 Life Writing Workshop

Tuesdays Starting April 2 5:45 pm–7:15 pm running 8 weeks
Instructor: Will Burns

Where

Houston Methodist Dunn Conference Center
6565 Fannin Street
Houston, TX 77030 United States
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Nonfiction Narratives


“The art of nonfiction is an acting job, and, like an actor, the essayist performs a character role each time he or she starts a new piece. The author’s theater is the page, and his/her persona is a function of textual, rather than physical or audible, ‘gestures.’” Natalie Kusz


Rather than seeing a work of nonfiction as a dry catalog of facts or an attempt at a full transference of an author’s “real” essence to the page, we will examine texts with the assumption that the author is writing through the lens of a consciously-constructed character, thus emphasizing the creative element. We will examine the character the author has created, and we will continually ask ourselves who is speaking—at-the-desk character or the on-the-page character. Conversations will center around persona, point of view, and voice.


With everything we read for the class, we will be keeping in mind what sorts of techniques we can take from various authors to use in our own writing. We will use in-class writing exercises to explore the implications of various point of view/voice decisions, and we will submit works of creative nonfiction to be constructively criticized in workshop.

About the instructor

WILL BURNS grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and received his MFA in fiction writing from The New School. He is a fifth-year PhD candidate at the UH Creative Writing Program, a recipient of an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship, and a former Assistant Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. He is currently working on a magical realist novel set in Arkansas.