Writing from the Personal for a Public Audience
Date & Time
Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m.
Oct. 19 - Nov. 30
Class Size
6 Students
Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m.
Oct. 19 - Nov. 30
6 Students
In the ongoing debate over the creative value of the personal essay, few detractors or enthusiasts of the genre have attempted to narrowly define what “the personal” encompasses and how it can best be harnessed in the context of visible public writing. This course will offer a remedy to the absence of language and standards around personal writing and introduce techniques for writing in this genre that both protect the writer and resonate more deeply with readers than less thoughtful attempts in the genre do.
During this six-week intensive workshop, each student will workshop twice and meet once with the instructor for an individual conference.
*no class Nov. 23rd
Alana Massey is a writer covering the intersections of identity, culture, vice, and virtue. Her work regularly appears in New York Magazine, The Guardian, Elle, Hazlitt, and more. She is the author of two forthcoming books from Grand Central Publishing: a collection of pop culture criticism called All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers, and Worth Less, an exploration of the social expectations and language surrounding women and the desire for money examined through the lenses of theory, popular culture, and personal experience.
"Alana Massey’s writing often makes me uncomfortable, and sometimes makes me feel like resisting—but it also makes me laugh, and always—certainly—makes me feel. Her prose is to brutal honesty what a mandolin is to a butter knife: she’s sharper; she slices thinner; she shows the cross-section of a truth so deftly—so powerfully and cannily—it’s hard to look away, and hard not to feel that something has shifted in you for having read her."
"Alana Massey’s book is a diamond, in both the glitter of its prose and its capacity to cut through inferior things. This is a manual for survival disguised as culture writing. A stunning and necessary book."
