Creative Nonfiction: How To Tell the Story

(EGL 122)

This course is all about helping you find the right voice, structure, and style to write dynamic creative nonfiction. What makes writing creative nonfiction so exciting is that as a writer you have incredible freedom in the form, genre, and manner of telling. Whether it’s memoir, personal essay, hybrid forms, lyric meditations, nature writing, travel writing, journals, or cultural commentary—there’s a place for it under the big tent of creative nonfiction. Together we will read a wide variety of shorter essays and longer works by authors such as Mary Karr, Joan Didion, Adam Gopnik, Philip Lopate, and David Sedaris. We will also try new forms and exercises that will foster your ability to write and think creatively. The course will be divided into two parts. First we will focus on published authors and shorter writing exercises before workshopping a longer essay or chapter by each student. The workshop will be a great opportunity to receive honest and constructive feedback on your work. Students will leave this course with confidence in their writing, and lots of new tricks and techniques to take their writing to the next level.

Joshua Rivkin, Former Stegner Fellow

Joshua Rivkin’s work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, The Southern Review, The Crab Orchard Review, The Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review Online, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Verse Daily, AGNI online, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston and has received fellowships and awards from the Inprint-Brown Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, as well as a travel fellowship to the Krakow Writer’s Seminar.