Are you wishing you had signed up for The Personal Essay in Progress at GrubStreet? Feeling major regret in your creative writing class choices for 2019? Worrying you’ll have FOMO because you’re missing so many great workshop discussions about the craft of essay writing? Was ten weeks too much of a commitment? Well, you’re in luck! The class start date is now February 5th (two weeks from today!) and runs for eight weeks, on Tuesdays from 6pm-9pm.

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Are you working on some essays of your own? Do you need guidance, motivation, deadlines, and/or a workshop of cheerleaders and helpful editors to keep you going? Spots are still available in The Personal Essay in Progress at GrubStreet! Class starts 1/22 (a week from tomorrow!) and runs for ten weeks, on Tuesdays from 6pm-9pm.

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My summer classes at GrubStreet start very soon! If you are considering signing up, stop stalling and register today.

• Non-Fiction by Non-Men (Monday nights, 6pm-9pm, June 4th through August 6th) starts in less than a week.
• Intro to Creative Nonfiction: Online (no set class times, runs for six weeks starting June 12th) begins two weeks from today.

Please contact me if you have any questions. Hope to see you around GrubStreet (either in person or virtually) this summer!

The post Just a reminder! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

It’s not too late to sign up for my class 6 Weeks, 6 Essays at GrubStreet! It now starts this Wednesday, April 25, and runs through Wednesday, May 30. Six sessions, meeting 10:30am to 1:30pm. Here’s the course description:

In this fun, intensive class, over the course of six weeks, writers will produce six short essays (between 500 and 1,000 words each). Each week we will look at model essays, including pieces by, but not limited to, Eula Biss, Roxane Gay, Brian Doyle, Margo Jefferson, Natalia Ginzburg, David Sedaris, Leslie Jamison, and Daisy Hernández. Students will respond to prompts based on the works we have read and bring copies of their completed essays to class each week, where they will read them aloud and receive on-the-spot feedback in brief workshop sessions. At the end of the class, students will leave with a path forward to possible publication for their half-a-dozen essay drafts!

Sign up today!

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Sign up now! Contact me with any questions.

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Creative Nonfiction I
Fridays, September 15 – November 17, 6pm-9pm

• 10-week course.
• Open to all writers.
• Scholarships available!

What defines creative nonfiction? Writers can’t even agree on the name: “Few seem willing to embrace the term,” writes essayist and memoirist Dinty W. Moore, “though by this point, almost everyone uses it.” And yet, the fundamentals of creative nonfiction are as old as Montaigne, and the genre has thrived in recent decades—from the tell-all memoirs of Mary Karr to the online personal essay boom. More readers are feeling “reality hunger,” it seems, craving stories based in fact.
 
In this course, we’ll explore what creative nonfiction is, what it isn’t, and what it might be, examining a mix of published nonfiction works—personal essays, memoirs, lyric essays, narrative journalism—to better understand the array of styles and approaches writers bring to true stories they tell. Focusing on voice, details, perspective and language, we’ll analyze work that fits neatly within nonfiction norms as well as boundary-pushing work that lives on the fringe, and apply this craft awareness to our own writing. Authors may include: Hilton Als, Eula Biss, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Brian Doyle, Roxane Gay, Leslie Jamison, Margo Jefferson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Maggie Nelson, and/or Mary Roach.

During ten weeks of class, students will submit at least two manuscripts up to fifteen pages each, and learn to critique the work of their peers. You’ll gain a strong foundational knowledge of creative nonfiction, along with a sense of its possibilities and where such work is being published. This class is ideal for novice writers or more experienced writers looking to delve into this ever-evolving and flourishing genre.

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FREE Brown Bag Lunch Writing Series
Wednesday, October 18, 12:30pm-1:15pm

• Open to all writers.
• ***100% COMPLETELY FREE!*** 
• No registration necessary!

Do you work downtown and want to fit some writing into your day? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Join our FREE Brown Bag Lunch Writing Series.

Bring your lunch and come on over to GrubStreet on Wednesday, October 18th from 12:30pm – 1:15pm. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Led by one of our award-winning instructors or ambassadors.

Best of all, you’ll leave lunch with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day and beyond. No need to RSVP — just come!

*Be sure to arrive early, as space is limited!

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Young Adult Writers Program: Playwriting for Drama Queens and Kings
Saturday, October 21, 12pm-4pm

• Open to writers aged 13-18 years old.
• ***100% COMPLETELY FREE!*** 
• Includes free pizza for lunch!

Has someone ever told you to stop being so dramatic? If so, disregard that advice and come take Drama Queens and Kings! Through acting and improv games, you will generate material to create the beginnings of your own play and figure out what it takes to make drama exciting, interesting, and, well, dramatic. In addition to theatre exercises, you will work off writing prompts to help inspire engaging dialogue and read excerpts from great playwrights, both contemporary and classic. By the end of the class, you will have one or more scenes that you will be able expand into a play. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own. For writers age 13 – 18 ONLY.

Join GrubStreet’s Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), a FREE creative writing workshop for Boston-area high schoolers. Our students come from a wide variety of high schools in the Boston area and enjoy cool writing exercises, mingling with fellow young writers, snacks, and an optional open mic. After four great years, YAWP has already been recognized by the Boston Globe as Boston’s hub for writing teenagers. You must be 13-18 years to register.

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Writing About Family
Saturday, November 11, 10am-5pm

• 6-hour seminar.
• Open to all writers.
• Scholarships available!

Course description and sign-up link coming soon!

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Young Adult Writers Program: Writing Inspired by Found Objects
Saturday, November 18, 12pm-4pm

• Open to writers aged 13-18 years old.
• ***100% COMPLETELY FREE!*** 
• Includes free pizza for lunch!

Have you ever found an old photograph at a flea market and wondered: who are these people, and what is their story? That’s how Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, structuring the plotline entirely around found photographs. Using Miss Peregrine as our model, this course will be all about looking for inspiration for your writing in the objects that surround you, creating narratives out of things that already exist. We will look at an array of items––old photographs, video footage, antique maps, even junk and trash––and find the stories and poems hidden within. You’re welcome to bring in your own items, but objects will be provided––you just need to find their story. We will even take a trip to the antiques store next to GrubStreet for inspiration! This course will also explore the relationship between images and words, looking at examples such as Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck and Tom Phillips’s A Humument. A great course for those who are visual artists in addition to writers. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own. For writers age 13 – 18 ONLY.

Join GrubStreet’s Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), a FREE creative writing workshop for Boston-area high schoolers. Our students come from a wide variety of high schools in the Boston area and enjoy cool writing exercises, mingling with fellow young writers, snacks, and an optional open mic. After four great years, YAWP has already been recognized by the Boston Globe as Boston’s hub for writing teenagers. You must be 13-18 years to register.

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