The Personal Essay

(WSP 167)

In this one-day workshop we will explore the art of the personal essay. How do you find the material from your life? How do you shape that into essay form? How do you best share the emotional impact with the reader? How do you make it dramatic and compelling? We will discuss markets for selling personal essays, and we will talk about how to protect yourself and your loved ones. We will borrow from the craft of fiction and learn how to apply many of the techniques used to create character, plot, and style while still committing to telling the truth in memoir. Finally, we will examine the editing process in order to learn how to make a good essay even better.

Due to its short format, this workshop cannot be taken for Credit.

Ellen Sussman, Lecturer in Continuing Studies

Ellen Sussman is the author of the novel, On a Night Like This, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She has taught at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Rutgers University. Her book, Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia Of Sex, was published by Bloomsbury in 2008. Her anthology, Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, was published by W. W. Norton in 2007 and became a New York Times Editors’ Choice.