Click Select Date and Time to see options for each seminar.
In this ninety-minute seminar, we’ll discuss the importance of giving your reader a strong impression and/or image of the people in your essays (including your persona, the “I”). I’ll share excerpts from essays, memoirs, and even shots from films, to help you think about various ways to create portraiture. Then I’ll offer three writing experiments for you to try. We’ll take a 15-minute break and come back to hear your amazing portraits.
In this hour-long seminar, we’ll look at the ways various writers think about the concept of persona (the “I”) in their essays and look at excerpts from their essays. Then you’ll do a persona inventory, followed by practicing with creating a persona for a few made-up essay ideas. My goal is for you to leave inspired to return to essay drafts of your own to (re)shape the persona or to start new drafts knowing which persona the essay needs.
In this two-day seminar, we’ll discuss how establishing the When and Where for your essay and your persona (“I”) offers your reader an immersive experience. We’ll look at the openings of various essays to see how writers ground the reader in time and place. Finally, I’ll point out occasssions when and why those details may be omitted. On day two, we’ll return to hear your (revised) openings of existing drafts or new openings for new ones.
Select the best programs for you and your writing | Create a dynamic and personable Statement of Purpose | Choose the strongest writing sample | Select references to create a comprehensive perspective of you as a student, writer, and instructor | Create a cohesive application package
My advice is based on years of successfuly mentoring students through their MFA application process, as well as reading applications from students applying to MA, MFA, and PhD programs.
Joan Didion begins “Goodbye To All That,” “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” In this ninety-minute seminar, we’ll read and write about ends, endings, lasts, but not the big ones. We’ll narrow our subjects to the quotidian, the everyday, the ordinary—maybe a phone call? the closing of a door? the last movie you saw at what’s now an abandoned drive-in? —in an exploration of how ends, whether we clearly saw them in the moment or recognized them later—stay with us.
This seminar is one of the most rewarding for me, and the most helpful for writers who might be experiencing grief, needing closure, or finding ways to make the ordinary extraordinary.
In this two-day seminar, I’ll share a couple of recurring patterns in opening lines from essays (classical to contemporary), and I’ll discuss the “promise of” the opening line. On the second day, we’ll return to hear your revised openings of your own essays or new openings for potential essays.
Note: Each of these seminars features different recurring patterns, so feel free to register for more than one (discounted).
Coming Soon
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Elements of Portraiture
In this ninety minute Zoom seminar, we’ll look at ways to describe the self and others in nonfiction with examples from essays, memoirs, and films, followed by three sample exercises and sharing (if you want!) of your own amazing portraits.
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The Art of Crafting Persona in the Essay
In this hour-long virtual seminar, we’ll do a few writing exercises, and we’ll look at how some writers have described their idea of persona (and their struggles in writing one!), and you’ll create various personae for potential essays you want to write so that you will leave our session inspired to revise a current draft or begin a new essay with attention toward the persona the essay needs.
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How to Begin: The Opening Lines in Essays
On the first day of this two-day seminar, I’ll share some recurring patterns in opening lines from classical to contemporary essays, and I’ll point out the significance of the opening line in essays. On the second day, you’ll return with (a) revised opening line(s) of your own essay draft(s), and we’ll end by celebrating opening lines of essays we admire.
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MFA Application Studio
Select the best programs for you and your writing
Create a dynamic, unique, and personable Statement of Purpose
Choose your Writing Sample
Select references to create a comprehensive view of you as a student and writer (and instructor, if applicable)
Craft a cohesive application package and tailor it toward each MFA program
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When and Where in the Essay
Learn how to situate your reader in time and place—for the essay and the persona. In this ninety-minute seminar, I’ll share several examples from essays that clearly and quickly ground the reader, and then you’ll experiment writing openings establish your reader in time and place.
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On Lasts that Last
In the opening line of her seminal essay, “Goodbye To All That,” Joan Didion writes, “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.” We’ll narrow our subjects to the quotidian, the everyday and the ordinary in an exploration of how ends, whether we clearly saw them in the moment or recognized them later—stay with us. On the first day, we’ll look at a few brief essays together. On the second day, you’ll return with an experiment you’ve written about a last of your own.