Begins Saturday, February 8th, 2025

The class will meet weekly via Zoom on Saturdays, 7:00PM  - 9:00 PM Eastern

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

Instructor Ellen Boyette is a PhD student in English and Creative Writing with a concentration in Film Studies at the University of Georgia. Her specialization is Occult Poetics, specifically female poets of the modern and contemporary era. She received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received the Alberta Kelly Fellowship and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. Her work appears in poets.org, Poetry Daily, The Columbia Review, Denver Quarterly, Bennington Review, New Delta Review, and elsewhere.​ She is the author of two chapbooks, NITROUS OR MY VELVET KNIFE (2024) and CUFFING SEASON (2023). 

Learn more about Ellen in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

This course is part generative workshop, part literary discussion. We will explore the current fascination with identity-based writing, and how we as writers have not just the freedom but even the OBLIGATION to convey ourselves any way we desire. Themes will include privacy, transparency, authenticity, and persona.

Our world is obsessed with molding the way we present ourselves into an aesthetic--on social media, in literature, even in the grocery store. Surveillance (and alternatively, witness) is the impetus of our drive to seem like we have it all together-- are cultured, cultivated, and competent. This, of course, ignores the grotesque underbelly of our true selves: fragmented, fragile, and full of contradiction. In our writing, do we have an obligation to present ourselves as an authentic or curated subject?

In this course, we will read poetry and nonfiction that negotiate the autobiographical self to varying degrees of transparency and discuss the implications and consequences of each mode. We will also try on these different hats as writers-- channeling degrees of intimacy and trust with our readership through navigating subtextual devices like syntax and motif that can influence an audience to think they know more than they really do.

Readings will be brief but rich with discussion provoking topics. Writing exercises are flexible-- students can work towards a larger project, submitting bits and pieces as they go, or work exclusively in shorter modes. 

Excerpts will be taken from Lisa Robertson's THE BAUDELAIRE FRACTAL, Fernando Pessoa's THE BOOK OF DISQUIET, Julia Fox's DOWN THE DRAIN, Anne Carson's THE GLASS ESSAY, and Byung Chul-Han's THE TRANSPARENCY SOCIETY. Poems by Joyelle McSweeney, Megan Boyle, Kamden Hilliard, and Harryette Mullen.

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week One: Transparency-- bearing it all (read Boyle and Fox).

• Week Two: Selective Admission--negotiating privacy with confession (read Lisa Robertson and Kamden Hilliard).

• Week Three: The Obscured or Ideal Self-- manipulating the text to suit your vision (read McSweeney and Pessoa).

• Week Four: Hermetically Sealed-- generative privacy (read Mullen and Carson) 

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Examine our relationship to identity and autobiography as writers

• Compose either three to six poems or one shorter nonfiction piece that explore vulnerability and admission.

• And conceptualize this approach for future, potentially larger bodies of work. 

TESTIMONIALS:

"Ellen Boyette is a fantastic instructor. I enjoyed taking Creative Writing with her. She made the assignments for the class and her expectations clear. She gave excellent feedback in person and through feedback through emails. She did a good job prompting discussions when there was little engagement. Overall, she is very easy to approach and kind." -former student

"I thought Ellen did a great job helping us to further our writing skills. The discussions were always very informative and there was always something important to learn from the assigned readings. She gave very informative and helpful, yet kind and sensitive feedback on our writing, offering advice without harming." -former student

"Overall, I really enjoyed this course. I learned a lot and greatly improved my writing abilities and confidence thanks to the meaningful insights and feedback from the Ellen. I would recommend Ellen as an instructor and would love to be able to take more classes from her in the future." -former student

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class meets weekly via Zoom. Come prepared for a super fun class with live interaction on Zoom each week and plenty of writing, reading, and talking!

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $299 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

• Instructor: Ellen Boyette

• Class Starts Saturday, February 8th, 2025

• The class will meet weekly via Zoom on Saturdays, 7:00PM - 9:00 PM Eastern.

• Tuition is $299 USD.

Contact us HERE if you have any questions about this class.