Creative Nonfiction: Writing the Self-Implicating Essay

INSTRUCTOR: Justin Jannise

TIME: Two Tuesdays, August 23 and 30, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. CST

PRICE: Early bird price: $85 for members, $100 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Wednesday, August 17. After Wednesday, August 17: $100 for members, $115 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here.

LOCATION: Online via Zoom

LEVEL: All Levels

CAP: 15

When we sit down to write about ourselves, we often get caught up in defining just who that self is. Often writers get around this question by making use of a persona, simplifying or exaggerating certain qualities in order to sidestep themselves completely so they can move on to the fun stuff.

But there’s another tactic, and it involves embracing the very risks of the narrator’s subjectivity. The self-implicating essayist, as we’ll call her in this two-week course, renounces the privilege of making herself look good. She confesses her crimes. She owns up to being clumsy or foolhardy. Inevitably, she tells us that the work we’re reading — the fruits of her endless labor — may be part of the problem she’s trying to solve.

Together, we’ll look at examples of this very modern type of essay with the dual aims of learning how to write one and using its techniques to become better storytellers no matter whose story we’re telling.