Department of English

Students will read and workshop some of America's most talented “long-form” nonfiction reporter/writers. Prominent guest journalists will also share their expertise. Meanwhile, students in this course will nurture their own semester-long journalism projects. 

Long-form journalism is storytelling that rings with the truth of reported fact. Common fictional techniques—narrative sweep, dramatic arcs and scenes, structural cliffhangers, shifting points of view, writing style/voice, vivid dialogue—are employed to seize and sustain the reader’s attention. Indeed, contemporary journalists typically take these techniques for granted, perhaps unaware that they were developed by journalistic pioneers during the 1960s. 

But this is not just a reading course. The ultimate goal is for each student to take the best of these techniques and use them in the reporting and writing of a long-form nonfiction piece. Each student will nurture one project from January to April. And during the semester, we will schedule the time to workshop those works in progress—with class feedback and feedback from the instructor, functioning as an editor would.