Although writers and critics are still arguing over the exact definition of “creative nonfiction,” personal storytelling is hotter than ever. Not only are memoirs about grief, addiction, family, and travel still popular, but writers are participating more in their own reported stories about true crime, celebrities, and politics. Meanwhile, online publishing platforms have created new outlets and demand for everything from diary-writing to long-form journalism.

In this class, we’ll read outstanding recent examples of personal essays about parenting, travel, illness, natural disasters, popular culture, and writing itself, by authors such as Joan Didion, Mary Roach, David Sedaris, Sandra Tsing-Loh, and Colson Whitehead. We’ll also workshop our own personal essays and talk about how writers can make themselves part of the story—or all of the story—without sounding arrogant, self-obsessed, or simply boring. Students will finish the course with drafts of one long personal essay or two shorter ones.

Other Courses of Interest:

Who Should Attend:

Adults, 18 and over
Writers at all levels interested in working on non-fiction.

About the Instructor: Kate Harding is co-author of Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body and founder of the internet’s most popular body acceptance blog, Shapely Prose. As a body image expert, she’s been interviewed by CNN, Reuters and The New York Times, among others, and is in demand as a speaker for college audiences. Kate has contributed to numerous websites, including Salon, Jezebel and The Guardian, and published essays in the anthologies Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009), and Feed Me: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the MFA in writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Chicago with her husband and their devil puppy, Murray.