This is an online workshop that takes place via Zoom.
On Home: Personal Essays & Flash Memoir
Home can have a million little meanings. It can be physical, emotional, a person, a family, it can be a moment in time or future dream. For centuries, writers and oral storytellers have attempted to answer these questions: What is home? What does it mean and how do we discuss it?
In this class, we will examine ideas of home in the personal and nonfiction essay. We will read works by James Baldwin, Carmen Maria Machado, Michelle Zauner, Inara Verzemnieks, Hisham Matar, Eula Biss and others. Students will write “flash memoir” or short personal essays for discussion every class and work on one longer personal essay for a writing workshop. Class time will focus on workshopping student writing and discussions of the assigned reading. Writers from all genres and experience levels are welcome.
About the Instructor
ELENA VARELA BRUESS is a writer and investigative journalist based in Houston where she covers the environment and climate for the nonprofit newsroom, Capital & Main, and has previously worked with Houston Landing and the San Antonio Express-News. She has also worked in comedy writing at The Onion and ClickHole as an editorial fellow in Chicago. She is a recipient of the 2025 MIT Environmental Journalism Solutions Fellowship and was a 2020 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow. Bruess has studied creative nonfiction writing and literature through University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Writing Program, where she focused on her Greek heritage and holds an MS in health and environment journalism from Northwestern University.
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