Places have pulse and memory. Places breathe and shift. More than just a site or setting, a place often takes the shape of a character: taking significant, often shifting, space in our knowledge of self. Whether writing about a house, a street, a city, a region, or a country, a sense of place is central to constructing (and deconstructing) a sense of identity in personal narrative.
This Catapult course is intended for nonfiction writers of all levels seeking to begin or complete essays or memoirs that explore their relationship with a physical environment. Studying Joan Didion's California, Alexander Chee's New York, Kiese Laymon's Mississippi, Joy Priest's Kentucky, Latria Graham's South Carolina, Natalia Sylvester's map of borders and bodies, Diana Cejas' tobacco farm, Toni Jensen's classroom, and the instructor's now-notorious home, we will draw from various forms, techniques, angles, and approaches to writing about place. Each week, we will look at select passages from two to three writers, take prompts from their oeuvre to generate new work or revise projects in progress, and learn to look at place as an extension of our persons.
Catapult class meetings will be held over video chat, using Zoom accessed from your private class page. While you can use Zoom from your browser, we recommend downloading the desktop client so you have access to all platform features.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- Practical writing techniques for place-based memoir and essay
- Generative prompts (of various forms) from four weekly sessions that build your confidence in constructing a strong sense of place
- Personalized feedback from the author of a memoir and essay collection, and the editor of several books on place(s), including an essay anthology on the American South
- Identify markets and opportunities for nonfiction writers
- 10% discount on all future Catapult classes
COURSE EXPECTATIONS:
Students will read two to three excerpts or essays before every weekly session. At each Zoom session, the instructor will break down forms, techniques, angles, and approaches to place, and will field questions from the group. After each session, writing prompts will be assigned. After the third session, students may submit one work (up to 2,000 words) generated during the course to submit to the instructor. Work will be returned with personalized feedback on the fourth session, including ideas on where the particular piece may find its, well, place... and how the writer can help lead it home.
Only 12 spots open.