Begins Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025

The class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7PM - 9PM Eastern

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

Melissa Petro is a cultural journalist and author of SHAME ON YOU: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification (Putnam Books, 2024). Her writing has been featured in New York Magazine, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone and many other national publications. She was one of three finalists for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize, an annual award that recognizes a promising young writer of an unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multicultural issue. She holds a BA in Women’s Studies from Antioch College, an M.Ed in Childhood Education from Fordham University and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the New School, and was on the faculty in the Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College until the school’s closure in August 2024.

In this six week course, you'll learn how to transform tragedy, trauma and injustice into outstanding literary nonfiction— writing that will change your life and positively impact the world.

Everyone experiences personal difficulty at some point in their lives. As writers, we often find that we want to write about loss, grief, trauma or injustice in order to both understand how our personal narrative has changed us, and to relate our changed self to the world. We want to have an impact on the world that extends beyond our individual selves.

The course will present strategies for strong creative nonfiction writing about these subjects, and discuss cross-disciplinary research in creating trauma narratives. Each week will include a written lecture, specific reading recommendations tied to the lecture, and a writing assignment.

Course Texts - Pat Schneider, Writing by Ourselves and With Others Philip Lopate Reflection and Retrospection Betsy Lerner Forest for the Trees Mary Karr Sacred Carnality

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week 1: Why Write About Grief, Loss, and Trauma In this first week we’ll look more closely at what motivates us to write about trauma and other difficult experiences that have changed us. We’ll discuss how writing can be a powerful vehicle for self-discovery, personal transformation, and social change. Which writers do we admire and why? What are some vivid examples of creative nonfiction that has influenced public conversation and “made a difference"? We will discuss our “right to write.” Participants will complete an optional writing exercise to share with the group.
• Week 2: Writing the Tough Stuff We’ll talk about how we choose moments for material (and how these moments sometimes choose us). Following this, we’ll talk about our purpose for writing, and theme. How can we make our stories relevant to our readers, and more than simply about us? We’ll consider the idea of “positionality,” and alternate points of view. Participants will complete an optional writing exercise to share with the group.
• Week 3: Creating Complicated Characters In real life, there are no heroes or villains. Accordingly, the main characters in our stories need to be individual, complex and fully revealed. This week, we’ll consider all the ways to show our stories’ characters' authentic natures while discussing the challenges to do so. Who are the characters in your life? What makes them interesting and important? What motivates characters to act as they do? Assignment #1: Participants will write an essay or memoir draft using the craft techniques explored so far.
• Week 4: From Truth to Art Are memoirs completely true stories? Or, is it more accurate to say— as memoirist Judith Barrington does— that “there is no more an absolute truth in memoir than there is in life”? This week, we’ll discuss how the realities of memory, as well as subjectivity, impacts the factual accuracy of our writing. We’ll talk about factual versus emotional truth, and consider a couple recent day controversies where memoirists got in trouble for “bending” the truth. How creative can we get when we’re writing creative nonfiction? We’ll ask and answer this question. Participants will have an optional writing exercise.
• Week 5: So What? Having trouble organizing your material? This week ought to help. We’ll talk about plot, and the elements of a narrative including scene, summary and reflection. We'll consider the role of detail in creating compelling scenes on the page. We’ll also delve deeper into what motivates our central character, define the concept of Major Dramatic Question, and find our answer to the question: so what? Lastly, we’ll define the elements of an essay, and consider a handful of mentor texts with effective ledes. Assignment #2: Participants may revise their first submission as this week’s assignment, or write something new.
• Week 6: Publishing, Practice & Everything Else During this final week, we’ll discuss what we’ve learned so far about ourselves through our writing. We’ll talk about what our writing practice currently looks like, and what more we could do to support our work. We’ll talk about what steps to take next, and explore the option of publishing our writing.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

By the end of the course, students will better understand how writing can be a powerful vehicle for self-discovery, personal transformation, and social change. They will read mentor texts, write and share their writing each week, as well as write and revise up to 25 pages of creative nonfiction

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 $495 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: Melissa Petro
• This class will start on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025
• Live class via Zoom will meet on Wednesdays from 7:00PM - 9:00 PM EST.
• Tuition is $495 USD

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