Today I’m rising up after two days of food poisoning to teach a class on the Raymond Carver story “Tell the Women We’re Going.” There has to be a story within a story there somewhere.
May!
It’s May. How did May get here? I spent four hours today trying to catch up on yard work by digging in our small patch of front garden with a pitchfork. I turned over dirt and sprinkled grass seed and…
It’s been a busy fall
As you can probably tell by the lack of lengthy posts on this blog over the past few months, I’ve had a busy fall. In addition to my usual freelance work (maintaining social media accounts and writing/editing/blog research for various…
Starting a Semester During the Snowpocalypse
As I sit here, chilly and tired at 2 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, another snowstorm is headed toward Boston. I’ve lived in several snow-friendly regions over the years, from upstate New York, where snow days were a regular part…
Wrapping Up: Alternative Creative Nonfiction
So far in our Creative Nonfiction Writing workshop we’ve attempted to define creative nonfiction, we’ve explored the difference between the “situation” and the “story” in CNF writing, we’ve read a guest post by Michael Steinberg on The Role(s) of Memory…
The Lyric Essay – What We Can (or Can’t) Say with Words
This week our Creative Nonfiction Writing class will discuss lyric essays. Rather than try to define the form, I played around with it and came up with this: Morning, Late October Max Maxim, the foster cat, settles on the bed…
This Week in Our Creative Nonfiction Writing Course: Personal Cultural Criticism
So far in our semester-long undergraduate Creative Writing class, we’ve learned some basic (if argued over) definitions of Creative Nonfiction; we’ve examined the difference between the “situation” and the “story” in personal essays (a differentiation that helps us structure our…
Next Up in our Creative Nonfiction Writing Class: Personal Reportage
Two weeks ago, in our continued semester-long examination of Creative Nonfiction, we talked on this blog (and in my undergraduate college class) about “The Brave New World of Video Essays.” The week before that we enjoyed a guest blog post…
The Brave New World of Video Essays
If you’re following this online chronicle of a semester’s Creative Nonfiction Writing Workshop, you know that last week guest blogger Michael Steinberg wrote about “The Role(s) of Memory and Imagination in Literary Memoir.” “And now,” to quote the old favorite,…