Nonfiction Storytelling
- Builds writing self-confidence
- Develops voice
- Shapes tone and style
One of the most popular genres in the literary and publishing communities, nonfiction storytelling focuses on true stories told with the drama, verve, and descriptive language of fiction. These courses will inspire you to tell your own story through a memoir or a personal essay, or to write about people, places, and things you know. Other topics covered include travel writing, profiles, and opinion pieces.
Creative Nonfiction Writing
Explore the process of writing nonfiction with clarity and precision as well as with a poet’s eye.
The Art of the Essay: How to Write Op-Eds and Nonfiction and Personal Essays
Learn how to write essays and then get them published in magazines, in newspapers, and online.
Writing Your Memoir
Bring focus and clarity to a memoir through writing exercises, analysis of published memoirs, and guidance.
Autobiographical Fiction: Exploring Both Fiction and Memoir
Explore how to use your own life experiences to inspire your writing and to create autobiographical fiction.
Creative Writing for Beginners: Saturday Afternoon Workshop
Boost your creativity with an evening of cutting-edge exercises, and identify your next steps as a writer.
The Art of Self-Editing
Explore strategies for editing your own writing, from organizing your material to polishing your prose.
Write What You Know
Sharpen your writing skills by reporting and writing on personal (or other people’s) experiences.
Writing Parenthood: Writing for a Growing Market
Produce a polished, ready-to-publish work of nonfiction about parenthood for a growing market.
Writing in Stillness
Use meditation, mindfulness practice, and free writing to deepen the writing process, sharpen your voice, and clarify the story that wants to be told.
Crafting Great Essays from Personal Experience
Turn personal experiences into marketable essays or op-ed columns for newspapers or the web.
Escape Artists: Writing in the Margins of Genre
Experiment with the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction as you compose exciting new creative writing that resists classification.
Essentials of Writing Essays: From Personal to Persuasive
Read published essays as models of the form, and then, discuss and practice the full range of this nonfiction craft.
Better Writing Through the Senses
Learn how to engage your readers by immersing them in rich worlds of sights, sounds, smells, textures, and flavors.
Getting into the Writing Habit
Through writing prompts and exercises, this class helps you to jump-start your writing project.
Writing Out on the Edge: Writing Queer
Gain an understanding of how to write and market your nonfiction work on LGBTQ issues and culture to LGBTQ and mainstream markets.
Inspired by Nature
Harness the forces of nature to discover its many sources of inspiration in this summer writing workshop.
Jumpstart Your Memoir
This class is for anyone who always has wanted to write a memoir but can’t quite get things rolling, or is stuck in a rut.
Witness to History: Personal Essays and Memoirs
Choose a reported event and craft a personal essay that recounts it from your own perspective.
How to Find a Literary Agent
Learn submission techniques and the standard practices of most literary agents in order to find publishing success.
New York Stories: A Writing Workshop
Read and discuss seminal works of writing about New York City, and then write your own stories, poems, or narrative nonfiction in response.