- Total price
€240.00
8 sessions
- Schedule
Every Wednesday
Oct 28 – Dec 16
- Time
17:30–19:30
- Class size
Min 6 · Max 10
Over eight weeks, we’ll read writers including Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Zadie Smith, Patricia Lockwood, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and practice writing our own essays alongside them. Rather than follow the form chronologically, we’ll move through some of the problems essayists have returned to again and again: describing the sublime, capturing another person, making art from tragedy, and creating change. We’ll read closely, discuss about works and what doesn’t, and pay attention to the choices — of voice, structure, detail, omission — that make an essay come alive. And then we’ll see what happens when we make those choices ourselves.
Oct. 28: Intro - Why we write
Explore what the essay is, what’s worth writing down (and what isn’t?) and how memory intersects with craft in non-fiction.
Readings:
- On Keeping a Notebook, Joan Didion
- The Art of the Impersonal Essay, Zadie Smith
Nov. 4: Awe
How to write about the beautiful, the absurd, and everything else that feels beyond description.
Readings:
- Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard
- When I Met the Pope, Patricia Lockwood
Nov. 11: Portrait
Hell is, famously, other people. Write about that hell! How to see people and write relationships.
Readings:
- Mr. Lytle, John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Him & I, Natalia Ginzberg
- Oof, Tim Kreider
Writing:
- Essay #1: Personal narrative essay - Awe / Portrait.
Nov. 18: Workshop I
Break up into small groups to give feedback on each other’s pieces.
Nov. 25: Tragedy
Essays sometimes have a reputation for being “downers.” We discuss making meaning out of that which is painful.
Readings:
- Thanksgiving in Mongolia, Ariel Levy
- Selections fromBluets, Maggie Nelson
- How to Write About Trauma, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Dec. 2: Criticism
Work that critiques, questions, enacts change. How to make waves.
Readings:
- Time and Distance Overcome, Eula Biss
- Grand Unified Theory on Female Pain, Leslie Jamison
Writing:
- Essay #2: Personal narrative - Tragedy / Criticism.
Dec. 9: Workshop II
Break up into small groups to give feedback on each other’s pieces.
Dec. 16: Final class - Be brave
Get inspired to write big stories.
Readings:
- Create Dangerously, Albert Camus
- The Creative Process, - James Baldwin
- Losing My Religion, Jia Tolentino
About Valerie Slaughter
Before moving to Spain, she worked as a bookseller and events coordinator at McNally Jackson Books in New York and the Santa Maddalena Foundation writers’ residency in Tuscany. She currently works developing editorial strategies for companies.
Valerie studied Literature and Creative Writing at NYU and holds a master’s degree in Linguistics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she wrote her thesis on the discursive construction of class.