Virtual Class, 7:00-9:00 pm EDT / 6:00-8:00 pm CDT, Wednesdays from September 17 to October 22

Whether you’re writing your first personal essay or your hundred and first, the experience can be an emotional and intellectual challenge. Where do you start? How do you know what to tell and what to leave out? How do you turn your experiences into a vivid narrative that will move and engage readers? And what do you do if your scrupulous, factual account of events simply doesn’t capture the truth? 

Shaping the Personal Essay is a five-week online class that will help you answer these questions as you draft new work or revise works-in-progress. We’ll learn from published essays by well-known authors and develop strategies for structuring a narrative and bringing people and places to life. Generative writing will be a feature of each session, and students will be invited to workshop their pieces. By the end of the class, you can expect to have a substantial start on an essay you can be proud of and a game plan for finishing it in the weeks to come.

The class also includes the opportunity to submit up to ten pages of your writing to your instructor. Whitney will provide extensive written feedback, as well as the opportunity for a thirty-minute, one-on-one Zoom call to discuss your work. In addition, at any point within three months after the end of the class, you may submit up to twenty pages of your work for additional written feedback and another half-hour Zoom meeting with Whitney. The cost includes all class sessions, personalized written feedback from Whitney, and both one-on-one Zoom calls.

Financial assistance is available.

Cancellation Policy:

• Two weeks or more before the start date: full refund
• Less than two weeks before the start date: 10% cancellation fee
• Less than one week before the start date: 20% cancellation fee
• 24 hours or less before the first class meeting: no refund.