Saturday, June 1st, 2024

Live Seminar Via Zoom 11AM – 2PM CST

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.

Led by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, a National Magazine Award finalist. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI's The World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, The Millions, and elsewhere.

Read an interview with Antonio on How to Conceive & Structure Personal Essays.

This class will teach you how to turn your own experiences, anecdotes, fears and ideas into compelling essays.

One of the most popular and innovative forms of writing today is the personal essay. In this class, students will learn to pair traditional journalistic methods and structures with the narrative energy of short fiction and memoir in order to craft compelling essays. The class will focus on:

• Basic elements and structures
• Figuring out the frame of the essay
• What to summarize and what to put into short scenes
• How structure changes depending on length (800 words versus, say, 2000)
• Expectations of fact-checkers and how to fact check your own memory

TAKE THIS CLASS IF:

• You're writing or interested in writing personal essays.
• You're having trouble turning your life experiences into a coherent essay.
• You're curious about what goes in to craft personal essays.

This class will meet via Zoom on Saturday, June 1st, 2024 from 11AM - 2PM CST

• Antonio Ruiz-Camacho | Live via Zoom

• June 1st, 2024 | 11AM – 2PM CST
  

• Seminar is fully ONLINE and meets via Zoom
  

Instructor Antonio Ruiz-Camacho was born and raised in Toluca, Mexico. He moved to the U.S. at the age of 31 and began to write in English at 35. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly and elsewhere. He is the author of the story collection Barefoot Dogs (Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction 2015) and the forthcoming novel The Healing Room.