Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Stocking Your Creative Toolbox

Everyone has their own distinct writing style, one that can be strengthened by incorporating new techniques and approaches to craft. This class, open to writers of all types and skill levels, will explore how seemingly disparate elements—journalism and reporting, memoir, science writing, personal essay, embodied prose—can come together to create richer, more resonant nonfiction.

We’ll learn the basics of different techniques and explore the ways they can give our work larger social, cultural, and emotional relevance, as well as reach a wider, more diverse audience. Through weekly reading and writing assignments, as well as discussion, we’ll experiment in an open manner that allows us to learn from each other’s particular strengths and interests. Students may explore new themes and ideas each week but are also encouraged to approach the same subjects week-to-week through different lenses. At the end of the course, which includes two workshops per writer and a one-on-one meeting with the instructor, students will emerge with a deeper comfort with a range of techniques that will enrich their nonfiction writing and a stronger foundation for future work.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

- two workshopped pieces utilizing your new nonfiction skills and techniques

- greater fluency with blending different types of nonfiction, and an understanding of the possibilities this opens up in your work

- one personal, private conference with the instructor to discuss your writing and goals, with nurturing feedback on areas of improvement

COURSE SKELETON:

(Reading assignments still TBD)

Week 1: Introductions, Scheduling, Logistics

Week 2: Memoir, Workshop #1

Week 3: Journalism & Reporting, Workshop #2

Week 4: Personal Essay, Workshop #3

Week 5: Science Writing, Workshop #4

Week 6: Embodied Prose, Workshop #5

Angela Garbes

Angela Garbes is the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy. She was the staff food writer at Seattle newsweekly The Stranger, and her work has been featured in New York Magazine's The Cut and on NPR's Fresh Air.

Testimonials

“Angela Garbes has a unique voice and a powerful ability to turn supposedly 'un-sexy' topics into riveting reads. She does this through an impressive alchemy of science writing, memoir, and explanatory reporting—and if you have a chance to hear her tell you exactly how this alchemy works, you should take it! Angela has given me valuable feedback on my work, and any nonfiction writer could learn a lot from her about pulling captivating narratives out of important, complex subjects.”

Eli Sanders Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of WHILE THE CITY SLEPT

“Garbes has created an empowering resource rooted in emerging science and real-life stories. . .Throughout this thoughtful book, she speaks to her readers as peers.”

Publishers Weekly

“You don't have to be a mother or even a woman to be fascinated by the science and physiology that she writes about.”

Terry Gross NPR Fresh Air

“LIKE A MOTHER is a deeply researched history of human reproduction; it is jewel-bright memoir; it is hard science beautifully translated; it is funny; it is intersectional; it will crack you open and fill you with awe.”

Lindy West NYT contributing opinion writer and author of SHRILL: NOTES FROM A LOUD WOMAN