In this workshop, you will learn how to dig into and shape personal narratives, whether they are pieces of an autobiography, sections of a memoir, journal entries or blog posts, into a form that can move others.

Since your own work will be the core of our material, you will get a chance to write a lot for this class, with detailed feedback from the instructor and your peers.

Each week we will turn to classic and contemporary essayists for tools to make our work better.

(This workshop is designed to be a long-term home for essay writers and you’ll be welcome to repeat it to continue building your material and your network.)

Additional Courses of Interest:

Who Should Attend:

Adults, 18 and over
All writing levels

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.