Prose Workshop: Essaying Essays
Week 5 | July 25–29 | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room | Ages: 18+
In this workshop, we'll explore the essence of nonfiction's most vibrant and elastic form. The essay has been at the heart of nonfiction writing since Montaigne first published his in the sixteenth century, and is having what some call a "golden age" in the United States now, a swell of interest that goes beyond what we've seen before and is creating new forms of the essay, what some call lyrical, graphic essays, epistolary, short forms, long forms, fractured forms . . . all of them though somehow tied to the thrilling desire at the heart of the essay: to speak intimately, to ask difficult questions, to stumble upon coincidences and the fortuities of language that take us places we had no idea we'd end up when we sat down urgently needing to write something in prose. We'll read some varied examples of the form (Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, C.K. Chesterton, Nancy Mairs, Hanif Abdurraqi, Lia Purpura. . . . ) do some exercises, and the last 2-3 days workshop the varied work produced by workshop members.
Flexible. These workshops are structured to both workshop the writing of those with drafts relevant to the workshop focus and produce useful craft analysis and discussion with optional take-home prompts for those looking to generate new work during the week. (Ages 18+)
Class Times
David Lazar
David Lazar is the author of thirteen books, most recently Celeste Hom Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age and the anthology Don't Look Now: Writers on What They Wish They Hadn't Seen. He is also the author of the essay collections I'll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms, Occasional Desire, The Body of Brooklyn, and the prose poem collections Who's Afraid of Helen of Troy and Powder Town. Ten of his essays have been named "Notable Essays of the Year" by Best American Essays. Lazar was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Nonfiction in 2016. He is the founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika, in its twentieth year, and co-editor and founding editor of Ohio State University's 21st Century Essays imprint, the only exclusively essay imprint in the country, which will publish its thirtieth title next year. He has taught for over thirty years--at Ohio University and Columbia College Chicago, and created the undergraduate and graduate nonfiction programs at those schools. He is originally from Brooklyn, NY.
For more information: https://www.lazar.org/
