ENC 4311 Fall 2024 - Horack

Advanced Article & Essay Workshop (ENC 4311) is a course on the craft and art of creative nonfiction writing, only available for students who have satisfactorily completed Article & Essay Technique (ENC 3310). This course assumes you have a serious interest in writing, reading, and discussing creative nonfiction. Our concerns are mainly practical and craft-based: where you as author wish to go with a particular draft, and how we, as readers and writers engaged in a common cause, might help you get there.

Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.

This semester, we will mostly limit our writing and study to: (1) portraits and profiles; (2) literary journalism; and (3) the personal essay. Accordingly, we will examine how various craft points are at work in a number of published nonfiction pieces, with these texts serving as templates for imitation and inspiration. That said, this class will primarily follow the workshop model, and therefore student writing, and the discussion of same, will be our main focus. To that end, over the course of the semester students will be required to produce and share a short essay of between 500-750 words, as well as two longer essays (8-15 pages each).