Course description: Where do we get story ideas from and how do we get started? How do we turn our life experiences, the mundane and the unexpected, into engaging prose? Can we take advantage of our day jobs, personal interests, or quirky obsessions to write intriguing stories? And how do we organize our ideas and craft the material at our disposal into compelling and convincing nonfiction pieces?

In this class, we’ll read each week a selection of personal essays, flash memoirs, idea pieces and reported articles, and explore the various nonfiction narrative forms. Our discussions will take place with an eye for the narrator’s presence, their voice, the story’s narrative arc, and the significant details. We’ll also examine the value research and reporting bring overall to a piece. The class will consist of in-class prompts, writing exercises, and the chance to work on a longer piece that will be critiqued by your peers and instructor. You’ll leave the course with a better understanding of nonfiction storytelling and more confidence to follow your curiosity and capture your ideas on the page.

Testimonials

“Write what you know” is common advice, and writers produce some of their best work by drawing on their personal experiences. But “write and find out” is an equally apt piece of advice because sometimes it’s in the very act of writing that we understand ourselves and our motivations, that we uncover what it is we are attempting to make sense of. Research is also a powerful tool to help us make previously unseen connections and get to the actual story.

In this class, we will explore various nonfiction narrative forms by reading a selection of personal essays, memoirs, idea pieces and reported articles. We’ll do close readings of texts, examining voice, pacing, and overall story arc. We’ll discuss the authors’ craft choices, how they introduce settings, create the narrator’s persona, and develop characters, and find inspiration for our own writing.

The class will consist of some in-class prompts, writing exercises, and discussions. Each student will have the opportunity to be workshopped once. You’ll leave the course with several short pieces of writing and a longer one that’s been critiqued by your peers and instructor.

Great fiction and nonfiction isn’t built on excessive self-contemplation, it has an outward lens, and writers of prose have a lot to learn from journalism. Journalists are trained to be outward looking rather than inward looking. They observe, follow their curiosity, ask questions, and search for answers and hidden truths. Experienced journalists know a good story when they see one and show tenacity and endurance when chasing it. This class will discuss journalistic instincts and some of the hard-won skills and proven techniques from the field, including tips for gathering information through research or interviews, and writing with more clarity and impact.

This class is open to writers of all levels, but students with a writing project in mind or already started will benefit the most. This course will consist of some readings, discussions, and some in-class and take-home exercises. The ratio of these activities will be adapted to students’ needs and interests.

Research is a fundamental part of long-form writing projects. Knowing where to find the info and how to access it (whether through research or interviews) is a key skill for writers across genres. Background information, facts, anecdotes, and different perspectives all make a story richer and more authoritative.

Drawing from journalism and the oral history tradition, this class provides tools for writers working on essays, profiles, memoirs, or novels.We'll create a road map for our research and discuss how to prepare and conduct interviews with relatives or strangers to collect information professionally, responsibly, and ethically.

We often think that to be creative we need a vast playground, but when the possibilities are numberless it can be daunting. That's why we dread the blank page! Where to start? How to find inspiration?

In this course we’ll read examples of writing born from constraints in length and form (such as haikus, hermit crab essays and tiny memoirs) and how creativity can flourish within set parameters. This will be a highly generative course with plenty of prompts, free-writing, exercises, in-class sharing, and discussions. Participants will also have the opportunity to develop one of the pieces they produce in this eight-week class and have it more formally critiqued by their peers and instructor.

You’ll leave the course with one critiqued story draft, several shorter pieces of writing and inspiration for your future writing. Writers of all levels are welcome and no previous workshop experience is needed.

Course description: Each one of us has access to a unique voice. It’s like a note that only you can sing. In this class, we encourage our students to express themselves in class and on the page, to follow their curiosity and to experiment with different writing formats. Once our students recognize their unique perspective and get comfortable with the basic tenets of storytelling, they naturally combine their sensitivities and their newly gained skills to free their voice as writers.

Class description: Ashtanga yoga focuses on the synchronization of breath and movement. This vigorous practice warms the body, producing sweat and removing toxins from the nervous system, the body and the mind. This is a 90-minutes led class based on a specific sequence of postures (Ashtanga half-primary series) and linked together with vinyasa. Everyone is welcome though some previous exposure to yoga is preferable as this is a dynamic, fast moving class.