Prose Workshop: Writing Your Way Home: Personal Nonfiction and the Personal Place
Week 7 | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room | Ages 18+
The relationship between the personal essayist and his or her place is central to understanding the self and the world. Whether the setting is a Midwestern downtown, a childhood bedroom, an immigrant’s landing spot, a hiking trail, or all of Manhattan, writers possess unique authority, authenticity, and insight when exploring the places that formed them. Through short readings, writing prompts, craft lessons, and workshop exercises, writers will generate ideas and develop them into personal creative nonfiction essays. Generative. (ages 18+)
Class Times
David Giffels is the author of six books of nonfiction, most recently Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America, described by Publishers Weekly as a “trenchant mix of memoir, reportage, and political analysis,” and selected as one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2020. His other books include the memoirs Furnishing Eternity and All the Way Home, both winners of the Ohioana Book Award, and The Hard Way on Purpose, a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice.” His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Parade, The Iowa Review, Esquire, Grantland, and many other publications. He also wrote for the MTV animated series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where he serves on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program.
