Speculate, Explore, Propose, Reconsider: all of these verbs describe the thinking-work in essays—the way the writer does more than just tell a story but uses that story to (as Andre Aciman says) explore some kind of thought, argument, or idea. And yet such thinking does not come without effort. In this brief course we’ll discuss the difference between memoir and essay, examine the work of published authors to explore the way different essayists think on the page, and then do a few exercises to spark some thinking work of our own.

Students in this workshop will:

• Understand the difference between memoir and essay

• See how a variety of essayists think on the page

• Experiment with different strategies of producing new thinking-work – making claims, proposing ideas, reconsidering arguments (it’s hard!)

• Explore ways of adding thinking-work to a finished piece or a work in progress

Who is the Instructor?

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her collection Be with Me Always was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019 and her anthology of lyric essays, A Harp in the Stars, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2021. Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Rumpus, Brevity, and Creative Nonfiction. Currently she is the founding editor of the online literary magazine After the Art and teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA Program and Goucher's MFA in Nonfiction Program. You can read more at her website, www.randonbillingsnoble.com.

 When is this class offered?

This one-session class is offered live, on Zoom, Thursday, Oct. 24 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST. It is open to writers of all levels.

Interested in taking the class but the date and time does not work for your schedule? No worries. All students will receive a recording of the session.