The art of the life story has blossomed with the growing genres of Personal Essay and Memoir, as well as in more unstructured forms, like journal-writing and blogging.
In this class, you’ll learn how elements such as dialogue, voice, detail, memory, metaphor, scenes and flowing language can transform musings and life experiences into lively and thought-provoking writing. Together we will dig deeper into storycraft and develop workshopping skills. This course is suited for beginning writers, or others who wish to get “back to the basics.”
Each week includes:
Writing prompts
Deeper exploration of craft elements and using language
Analyzing published work to learn to “read like a writer”
Giving and receiving feedback on student work
Lively discussion on issues around telling stories from our lives
About the Instructor: Ellen Blum Barish is a personal essayist whose work has been published and syndicated in national newspapers and blogs and has aired on WBEZ’s Chicago Public Radio. Ellen’s award-winning column on women and family issues was published in an Ohio-based newspaper for more than a decade. A collection of these were published as Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life, in 2007. Ellen teaches personal essay and life story classes at StoryStudio and has facilitated writing workshops at Ragdale, Off Campus Writer’s Workshop, New Trier Extension and Writer’s Workspace. Since 2004, she has been teaching writing at Northwestern University, working with graduate students at the Medill School of Journalism and first-year engineering students at the McCormick School of Engineering on technical, business and academic writing assignments. From 2004-2007, she edited the alumni magazine of The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern where she earned her masters degree in journalism. She edits and contributes to the Jewish spirituality blog Torat Chayeinu: Our Stories, Our Journey, and Creative Space, a women’s interfaith web publication. Ellen is currently at work on a collection of spiritual essays.
