Creative Nonfiction III: Completing the Creative Nonfiction Book

(EGL 324 W)

Creative nonfiction is a popular and fast-growing genre that includes memoir, essays, biography, and writing on topics such as art, history, science, and food. Successful innovators of creative nonfiction such as Joan Didion, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Malcolm Gladwell tell true stories and make journalistic arguments, borrowing craft techniques from fiction, playwriting, and poetry. For those who want to write a book of creative nonfiction, this series provides invaluable instruction and a supportive community. While these three courses build upon one another, each course can be taken independently as well.

Creative Nonfiction III: Completing the Creative Nonfiction Book

“Genius is one long patience.” —Eugenio Montale, The Second Life of Art

In this course, you will pull sections of your writing together in order to envision a final draft. You have worked hard to build a supportive online community, develop an individual writing routine and an objective, critical eye when it comes to your own project. You have practiced craft techniques such as scene building, choosing significant detail, writing effective dialogue, and pacing your story. We will continue to workshop your writing, always mindful of your long-term goal of completing your book and presenting it to the world. Weekly writing assignments and our class discussions will build even further upon the craft of nonfiction, the importance of research, and the ways in which the non fiction writer can use such literary tools as imagery, voice, and narrative structure. Our texts, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and Alice LaPlante’s The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing Fiction and Nonfiction, will inspire the writer for the long term. Toward the end of the quarter, we will write anddiscuss book proposals and explore the many resources at hand to keep your work connected, growing, and headed toward completion.

This course is intended for students who have completed Writing the Creative Nonfiction Book I and II, or who have a significant nonfiction draft already under way. For more information about The Online Writer's Studio, please visit our FAQs.

Caroline Goodwin, Former Stegner Fellow

Caroline Goodwin’s work has appeared in Gently Read Literature, The New Republic, The Cimarron Review, The Comstock Review, and many other literary journals. She has published two poetry chapbooks, Kodiak Herbal and Gora Verstovia. She received an MFA from the University of British Columbia, where she studied poetry and creative nonfiction. She is currently at work on a nonfiction book, Arboretum, about the life and death of her second daughter, Josephine.