I have met some impressive people in my life – many, in fact. María Luisa Arroyo, the inaugural poet laureate of Springfield, Massachusetts (2014-2016), is one of those people. From her bravery in confronting her own pain in poetry to…
Back to Work
Life is slowly resuming. Tomorrow I start teaching in the winter/spring semester at Lasell College. I’ll be teaching “Writing 2: The Art of Life Writing,” a course designed to help freshmen improve their writing skills and complete a research paper…
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…
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 “Situation” and the “Story” in Creative Nonfiction
We’re already on week three in our semester! Below I continue with a basic discussion of topics covered in our undergraduate Creative Nonfiction Writing seminar: Vivian Gornick’s craft book, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, was…
What IS Creative Nonfiction?
Last week, in the first installment of this semester’s weekly posts and in the first class of our creative writing workshop, we asked, “What does it mean to ‘read like a writer?’” In this second week, we’re going to take…
What does it mean to “read like a writer?”
If you’re interested in learning more about creative writing, or writing creative nonfiction, but don’t have the time or money to take a course, follow my blog this fall — I’ll be blogging about some of the basic concepts I…