4-Week: The Art & Craft Of The Reported First-Person Essay

First-person essays have the unique and powerful ability to connect the individual experiences of the writer with their reader through artful prose. But reported personal essays have the capacity to attract an even larger audience by connecting the personal experience of the writer with larger social trends. In this four-week course, writers will study the craft of elegantly written personal essays that broaden the scope of the respective pieces through reporting and research. We'll discuss and analyze specific pieces in class, have in-class generative prompts, and identify personal writing projects that can leverage journalistic techniques to expand the breadth of the essay to include larger social issues and phenomena.