Begins Wednesday, January 8th, 2025

The class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7:00PM - 9:30PM CST

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

Leslie Contreras Schwartz served as the 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and the 2019-2021 Houston Poet Laureate and is currently a core faculty member in poetry and creative nonfiction at Alma College’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. She is the author of four books of poetry and, more recently, a memoir, with experience in teaching undergraduate poetry workshops at Rice University and creative nonfiction for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program in Writing.

Her books include Black Dove / Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020,) which was named for finalist for the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for 2020 Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters; Who Speaks for Us Here (Skull + Wind Press, 2020); Nightbloom & Cenote (St. Julian Press, 2018), a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky; and Fuego (St. Julian Press, 2016). She is also the author of a lyrical memoir, From the Womb of Sky and Earth, which won the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Award.

Her work has been featured in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the Poetry Foundation, Paris Review, AGNI, EPOCH, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, [PANK], Verse Daily, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Toast, Houston Noir (Akashic Books, 2019), and 2019 The Best Small Fiction anthology, among others.

Students will practice honing storytelling craft techniques by experimenting with imagery, voice, and other writing elements to take their life experiences and craft nonfiction that moves readers.

Storytelling carries the power to build worlds by creating compelling narratives around true and meaningful experiences. Through the power of imagery, idiosyncratic textures, glittering landscapes, intimate spaces, and encounters, narratives can move beyond the retelling of a story and enact experiences through specificity—engaging readers in ways that move them and carry impact.

This course will help students practice and strengthen storytelling techniques and build upon writing from prompts, rough drafts, and the development of the use of imagery and sensory details toward the goal of completing a polished short narrative.

Through writing prompts and study of texts, we will explore storytelling techniques that focus on experiences that bewilder or mystify us, and how to deepen the meaning of our resultant insight.

Readings include Esmé Weijun Wang, Lidia Yuknavich, Matthew Gavin Frank, Carmen Maria Machado, and others as we draw from raw experience to write new material, shape these narratives, and work toward an edited piece. Students will have the opportunity to share their work for critique and feedback.

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week One: Imagery as a Craft Building Block
• Week Two: Conveying Emotion
• Week Three: Diction and Syntax
• Week Four: Form and structure
• Week Five: The Narrating Self: Introspection and Reflection
• Week Six: Narrative Distance

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Students will learn the basic elements of writing creative nonfiction.
• Students will produce a draft of a short creative nonfiction piece.
• Students will cultivate a writing practice that they can continue outside of the class.

TESTIMONIALS:

"The reading selections were amazing -- such a broad selection -- the instructor's insights were incredibly helpful and I could see students incorporating their learnings into their writing. That does not happen in every class."

"The readings were well chosen and arranged around craft elements. Nice job."

"I liked the way Leslie incorporated deeply uncomfortable literature such that it encouraged the students to speak up and write intimately."

"I learned a tremendous amount in her class through the lectures and discussion of readings. She thinks deeply about the writing craft and she was able to convey insights about the craft of writing memoir much better than others."

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: Leslie Contreras Schwartz
• This seminar will meet on Wednesday, January 8th, 2025
• Live Seminar via Zoom 7:00PM - 9:30PM CST
• Tuition is $495 USD

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