Muse & the Marketplace 2018

Personal essays are, by their nature, about the personal, about you. But often, in personal narrative, despite one's best intentions, a narrator's voice can feel generic, superficial, or at an emotional remove; or, even worse, preachy, whiny or sentimental. In this session, we'll discover how to do the opposite: how to create a voice and technique that feels truly personal, one that is individualistic, honest, vulnerable, with a clear three-dimensional sense of the "I" character (you), and one that delves deeply into your deeply personal stories. This is what, in "The Situation and the Story," Vivian Gornick calls the presence of a "mind puzzling its way out of its own shadows—moving from unearned certainty to thoughtful reconsideration to clarified self-knowledge." Our method will read work by exemplary essayists, ranging from Jaquira Díaz, Cheryl Strayed, Lee Martin, and Brian Doyle, and then to try writing prompts that will force us to be daring, brutally candid, and create an intimate bond with our readers. You'll leave having written a few passages and stretched your voice.