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Image by Jess Bailey
Image by Robert Katzki

4-Week Essay Bootcamp

Essay Bootcamp
Summer 2022

Session One: Welcome, The Basics, Considering The Single-Scene Narrative Essay
  + What is an essay/creative nonfiction?
  + Optional Reading: Phillip Lopare's "The Essay, An Exercise In Doubt"
  + Reading: Joe Brainard's "I Remember" (excerpts)
  + Exercise: "I Remember"
  + Read: T Kira Madden's "Pencil"
  + Exercise: "Introduction By Way Of Metaphorical Object"
  + Reading: Sandra Cisneros' "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn"
  + Reading: Diane Seuss' "I Hoisted Them, Two Drug Dealers, I Guess That's What They Were..."
  + Exercise: The Stream-of-Consciousness Essay

Session Two: Employing Repetition & Small, Specific Moments
  + Reading: Justin Torres' "We The Animals"
  + Exercise: Repetition, Anaphora, and Parallelism
  + Reading:
Dave Lucas' "That Father Lost"
  + Exercise: The List Essay

Session Three: The Single-Scene Narrative Essay & Experimental Forms

+ Reading: T Kira Madden's "The Lizard" 
+ Exercise:
The Small Made Large
+ Reading: Dylan Nice's "Teeth"
 
+ Reading:
Ryan Van Meter's "First" 
+ Exercise: The Single-Scene Narrative Essay

Session Four: The Lyric Essay & The Associative Essay
+ Reading: Michael Martone's "Some Space"

+ Exercise: The Lyric Essay
+ Reading: Jenny Boully's "Between Cassiopeia and Perseus"
+ Reading: Jenny Boully's "Mourning Suit"
+ Exercise: The Twenty Little Essay Projects

+ Reading: Matthew Gavin Frank's "A Brief Atmospheric Future"
+ Exercise: The Associative Essay

Reading & Writing Beyond Our Time Together: The Braided Essay, In Media Res, Writing Other People's Stories
+ Reading: Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter"
+ Exercise: The Braided Essay
+ Reading: Kyle Minor's "The Question of Where We Begin"
+ Exercise: In Media Res
+ Reading: Jo Ann Beard's "Werner"
+ Exercise: Writing Other People's Stories

Image by Jess Bailey
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