ENC 3310 Spring 2024

“Article & Essay Technique” is an introductory course exploring the craft of creative nonfiction. We will engage in an interrogation of ourselves and the world around us through our writing and reading as we explore the possibilities of creative work centered upon experience, truth, fact, and memory. Our explorations will take us from writing about the self and others, to writing about place and nature, to essays integrating research. We will examine personal essays, lyric essays, literary reportage, braided essays, cultural criticism, and more. Our reading will be wide-ranging, incorporating contemporary essay writers alongside essay writers from “the canon,” plus craft essays on how to write creative nonfiction. We will write and workshop two longer pieces of creative nonfiction, one of which will be revised at the end of the semester, as well as engage in regular generative exercises building up to these longer pieces, familiarizing us with the variety of directions creative nonfiction can take. We will also discuss and build our own class document of creative nonfiction craft terms and writing tips to guide us as we read and analyze published essays and the work of our class. By the end of the semester, we will have learned to uncover ourselves and our understanding of the world in ways we didn’t expect at the beginning of the semester, and to express it in finessed form.