The Nonfiction Writer's Guide to Lit Fest 2023

By: Torin Jensen
May 09, 2023
The Lookout

Below you'll find the complete guide to everything nonfiction at Lit Fest 2023, including craft seminars and readings from headliners Grace M. Cho, Andre Dubus III, Leslie Jamison, Amitava Kumar, Nadia Owusu, Michelle Tea, and more. Choose intensives, seminars, and events á la carte or sign up for one of our festival passes for the full experience.

Two-Day Intensives

June 10-11

Obsessions
William Haywood Henderson, 9:00am - 12:00pm
All writers have a particular lens on the world, a way of seeing, a way of understanding, and certain questions that they return to time and again across their writing career. It’s interesting to discover what you’re obsessed with and why—you can use this knowledge to dig deeper into what matters to you, and it’s only through exploring your obsessions (and fears and desires) that you’ll find your most individual and compelling voice and vision. In this intensive, we’ll dig into your brain and see what’s hidden there, and then we’ll explore how your material shapes itself on the page.

The Ghost, The Glimmer: A Generative and Experimental Workshop
Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, 1:00 - 4:00pm
Using divination techniques like bibliomancy, Tarot, and other oracles, we’ll borrow from Pam Houston's “glimmer” to draw down the muse. Thinking about what haunts us, we’ll rummage in the etymology of words, excavate the archives, and call upon our ancestors. We’ll explore the zeitgeist and the overlap of past, present, and tomorrow in narrative. We’ll throw the stones, write down the bones, and wrap our fingers around our roots. Considering the power of the invisible (subtext, secrets, the arcane, the “truth,” or even God), this intensive is generative while focusing on the art of revision as resurrection for some of the darlings we had to kill.

June 13-14

Humor Writing for People Who Are or Aren't Funny (Yet)
Elissa Bassist, 4:00 - 7:00pm
We’ll break down a short comedy piece in order to write/publish our own in venues like NewYorker.com’s Daily Shouts. We’ll discuss premise, structure, speaker, target, deviating from reality, and other tricks that apply to all writing, including personal essays, novels, and dating profiles. There will be readings, handouts, and brainstorming exercises to bring out what you have to offer as a writer. After day one, each participant will write a short (150-500 words) piece (parody, satire, character monologue) to share/workshop the next day. After two days, everyone will have new skills, but if not, it's not the instructor’s fault.

June 15-16

Beyond the "Me" In Memoir
Anna Qu, 4:00 - 7:00pm
Memoir is not just ‘my’ story, but a story of a community, a culture (maybe more than one), and a unique world. In this two-day intensive, we'll begin to ask questions like who do we carry in our work? Who are we holding space for, and how do we balance those stories with our own? We’ll focus on writing complex memoir with multiple narratives, and balancing character, society building, and scene, to create a fully fleshed-out world.