ENC 3310-0004 - Fall 2026 -Jemison

“The problem is, first, to know when you are not writing well and, then, to be able to fix it” - Toni Morrison This course is a workshop-centered exploration of creative nonfiction, where students will develop essays rooted in memory, observation, research, and lived experience. Through drafting, peer workshop, and sustained revision, we will examine how writers shape truth through narrative structure, imagery, voice, and reflection. Workshop will function as an editorial conference: a space to give and receive thoughtful feedback, to practice reading like writers, and to revise toward deeper clarity and resonance. Students will produce original creative nonfiction essays and engage in generative exercises designed to help uncover material, experiment with form, and strengthen revision practices. Together, we will consider how nonfiction writers transform personal and cultural experience into art. We will read and discuss works by writers such as Toni Morrison, Roxane Gay, Melissa Febos, Joan Didion, Imani Perry, Beth Ann Fennelly, and others whose essays move between the personal, the critical, and the archival. By the end of the semester, students will have developed multiple drafts of original nonfiction, practiced the craft of workshop, and gained tools for shaping memory, experience, and inquiry into intentional literary form.