This short and sweet generative workshop will help you expand and develop ideas you already have for personal essays, and come up with fresh, exciting new ones. With a focus on identifying and honing your unique perspective, we’ll dig into what you have to add to the ongoing conversation about whatever topic(s) you want to write about, nailing down the difference between a topic and an angle once and for all.

This workshop is open to writers at any and every experience level, with feedback that meets you where your work is—from building blocks to high-level fine tuning. Bring in essays you drafted just for this class, or memoir chapters you've labored over for years—bring whatever you want to work on, as long as you also bring an open mind and excitement to read and comment on other writers' work.

Personal essays have gotten a bad rap in some circles, decried as hyper-confessional, self-indulgent diary entries. And the truth is, a lot of them are. But there’s so much more to personal-essay writing than that unfortunate trope. Successful personal essays don’t just recap something wild that happened to you -- they bring the reader through the story with vivid details and active scenes, and show how the experience changed you.

Creating a satisfying narrative arc out of your own life story is so difficult, partly because you're still living it. How do you write a story where there is no real "end," and when life doesn't actually develop in a series of "aha!" moments? There’s a certain amount of translation necessary to condense a sliver of the messy, complex, ongoing story of your life into something that fits into one book, and feels satisfyingly narrative to a reader.