Writing the Personal Essay

In this day-long class combining analysis of exemplary personal essays, exploration of writing process, and a workshop format, participants will be guided through a template for writing the personal essay. The day will be divided into didactic segments, writing time, paired feedback, and full-group discussions with the aim that all participants exit with a piece well underway and a clear plan for completion. Participants will be asked to read in advance of the workshop a few short essays (all of which will be provided) and to arrive with a preliminary idea for a fresh essay topic (about which they have not written in the past) to work on that day.

Lisa Gornick is a fiction and essay writer as well as a graduate of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Yale and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia, where she is on the voluntary faculty. Hailed by NPR as “one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America…immensely talented and brave,” she is the author of the novels Louisa Meets Bear and Tinderbox—both published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Picador—as well as A Private Sorcery, published by Algonquin. Her latest novel, The Peacock Feast, features Anna Freud as a character and will be published in February, again by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Excerpts from her novels and links to her stories and essays, which have appeared in The New York Times, Real Simple, Prairie Schooner, Salon, and Slate.