Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Elena Passarello

Course Description

This course will address the four key components of Creative Nonfiction: Scene, Commentary, Research, and Form. Over the eight weeks of this course, we will read and discuss a dozen or so published essays, each of which uses those four elements to varied effects. As we read and chat, we'll also try our hand at several short weekly exercises. For the first half of the course, we'll use the prompts to "build" an essay that focuses on people—the self and the family. In the second half, we'll work through another linked series of prompts and essays on the world around us. We will meet weekly in our online video classroom for live lectures and discussion. Each week, four of us will submit what we've been working on to the class for workshopping so we can discuss each writer's process and progress at that particular stage of the term. The course will run from July 12, 2015 to September 6, 2015.

Participants

Twenty-four writers hailing from Brazil, Canada, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Zambia were selected from a pool of 400 applicants to participate in this seminar.

Nonfiction Writing Seminar 2015

24 writers are enrolled in the Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Elena Passarello

Instructor

Elena PASSARELLO is the author of Let Me Clear My Throat and the forthcoming Animals Strike Curious Poses, both with Sarabande Books. Her essays on music, popular culture, and the natural world have appeared in Slate, Creative Nonfiction, Oxford American, Ninth Letter, Iowa Review, and The Normal School, and in anthologies including After Montaigne and Cat is Art Spelled Wrong. The recipent of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, Elena teaches in Oregon State University's Creative Writing MFA program.

Happening Now

  • We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

  • Our congratulations to 1986 Fall Residency writer Kwame Dawes, who has been named the new poet laureate of Jamaica.

  • Congratulations to our colleagues Jennifer Croft and Aron Aji, who are among those serving as judges for the National Book Awards this year, in their case in the category of translated literature.

  • Ranjit Hoskote’s speech at the 2024 Goa Literary Festival addresses the current situation in Gaza.

  • In NY Times, Bina Shah worries about the state of Pakistani—and American—democracy.

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