Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

Six Weeks, Five Essays: Overcoming Writer's Block

In this generative class for serious writers of nonfiction, you will explore different tools for times when you feel blocked or overwhelmed about where to begin. Class is structured around a series of fun writing prompts designed to lead you to your best work, as well as readings that correspond to the prompts and motivating video lectures in which I share writing tips and advice for breaking through creative blocks. Writers will leave class with five wildly varied essays to expand upon, and with a keener sense of how to move forward next time you’re stuck in a project. At the end of class, I will provide encouraging and constructive feedback to each student in the form of an editorial memo that addresses all six prompts–this note will include individual reading lists and personalized advice on publication (from venues to the submission process). Students will also give and receive feedback on each other's work, and we will discuss the work submitted in our weekly live chats. 

*no class meeting Monday, Oct. 22; makeup class will be Sunday, Oct. 21 at the same time

Chloe Caldwell

Chloe Caldwell is the author of The Red Zone: A Love Story, the critically acclaimed  novella WOMEN and essay collections I'll Tell You in Person and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The Cut,  Longreads, NylonBuzzfeed, and more. She lives in Hudson, NY. 

Testimonials

“Chloe Caldwell tells you all her secrets in a controlled mania so that we can devour them in a more compulsive fashion. I couldn’t stop reading this book, and when I was finished I kept looking around to see where my awesome new friend went. She’s right in here, brimming with most excellent girl-dom, a commitment to experience that feels religious. I love this person’s life and I love the way she writes about it – funny and blunt and chatty and truthful.”

Michelle Tea author of BLACK WAVE, VALENCIA, and HOW TO GROW UP

“Chloe Caldwell is one of our great stylists, one of our most candid and electric voices. Caldwell has the rarest gift: Her writing has charisma. I would follow it anywhere.”

Diana Spechler author of WHO BY FIRE, SKINNY, and the NEW YORK TIMES column "Going Off"

“WOMEN by Chloe Caldwell is a beautiful read/a perfect primer for an explosive lesbian affair/an essential truth.”

Lena Dunham

“WOMEN is a skillfully and engrossingly written novella, a small slice of overwhelming love and heartbreak, and the search for belonging and self. Caldwell proves herself as a writer to watch in the coming years.”

THE MASTERS REVIEW

“You might think a small-press autobiographical novella called WOMEN that features one transgender man and texts with one cisgender man would find its way into the hands of only so many people. In the case of Chloe Caldwell’s book, this has not been true. Perhaps because the story interacts with the reader, with The Narrator exposing her own fears, obsessions, and insecurities as we follow along.”

Buzzfeed Books

“I’ve read Chloe Caldwell’s essays online, one on the tiny screen of my phone just because it was too good to stop reading. She’s young. She’s talented. She’s not even halfway to where she’s going yet, but she’s got it in her to go. Her prose has a reckless beauty that feels to me like magic.”

Cheryl Strayed author of WILD, TORCH, AND TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS