The Story of the Self: Writing Personal Essays and Memoir

(EGL 316 W)

In this online course for nonfiction writers, we will learn practical ways to shape personal experience into compelling prose. Whether you are writing personal essays, commentary, or memoir, we will explore the creative possibilities of this adaptable and popular genre. Through readings by contemporary writers such as Tobias Wolff, Elizabeth Gilbert, David Foster Wallace, and others, we will study principles of craft available to us from other genres, including voice, tone, point of view, character, plot, scene, and more. We will then apply these tools and techniques to our own work with writing assignments and virtual workshops, responding to each other’s work in progress with an eye toward revision.

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Robin Ekiss, Former Stegner Fellow

Robin Ekiss is a 2007 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Award for emerging women writers. Her personal essays and literary criticism have appeared in The Southern Review, Canteen, at PoetryFoundation.org, TheRumpus.net, and elsewhere. Ekiss has received residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her book of poems, The Mansion of Happiness, was recently published.