Department of English

In this creative nonfiction workshop we will be thinking about what it means to tell our personal stories and how that telling gets done. Home will be a centralizing theme. The ways in which we define home and the ways in which it defines us. The necessary remembering that both roots us in and suggests a means of escape. We’ll be reading Michael Ondaatje, George Hodgman, and Helen Macdonald, among others. Students should be prepared to reflect and discuss, take snapshots, and find stories inside music. Two long projects—a memoir and a narrative profile—will be required, as will a number of small pieces and in-class assignments. Students will also be contributing to a home-themed chapbook (as part of the Beltran Family program at Kelly Writers House) and will be invited to a special evening with Margo Rabb, A.S. King, and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto.