Class Starts January 29th, 2024

NOW ENROLLING

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Taught by Jonathan Malesic, an essayist, journalist, and scholar whose writing has been recognized as notable in Best American Essays (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022) and Best American Food Writing (2020) and has received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology (2019). His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Washington Post, America, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, The Hedgehog Review, The Point, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. He has been the recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisville Institute. His first book, Secret Faith in the Public Square, won a ForeWord INDIES gold medal for the religion category (2009). His newest book, The End of Burnout, was named a Best Book of 2022 by Amazon and the Next Big Idea Club. It is being translated into nine languages. 

Read an Interview with Jonathan on Writing Spiritual Nonfiction.

Writing nonfiction about spirituality, whether your own or other people’s, is so rewarding because it is so challenging. It demands that the writer tell the truth about something elusive and often invisible that nevertheless motivates consequential human actions. But like other nonfiction genres, it rests on a foundation of characters, scenes, and the archives of memory, interviews, objects, and written texts. Whether you are religious or spiritual or neither, this class will help you meet the challenge and write more incisive, more inspiring, and more beautiful essays about religious lives. 

Each week, we will analyze classic and contemporary spiritual nonfiction from St. Augustine to Meghan O’Gieblyn, to see how the best writers in this genre deal with self-representation, conflict, structure, and other elements of narrative nonfiction. We will also discuss works of craft and criticism to guide the process of writing your own essays. And most importantly, we will practice workshop norms of respectful dialog and critique with the aim of making everyone’s work better through revision. You will have the opportunity to workshop and get instructor feedback on two pieces, one of up to 1,500 words and one of up to 4,000 words. This class is open to beginning students and more experienced writers alike.

ASSIGNED READING: The instructor will provide links to assigned reading material, so you won't need to buy books for this course.

TESTIMONIALS:

"I cannot say enough good things about Jonathan Malesic’s Spiritual Nonfiction class. I was worried about taking an asynchronous class, but Jon really made it work. The readings helped expand my understanding of spiritual nonfiction and were interspersed with short assignments that drove home what we learned. Jon also keeps an eye on publication, so he included a section on how to write a pitch, something I had never done before. His comments on the short assignments and the two longer essays were insightful and encouraging, and he also managed to facilitate a real sense of camaraderie among the participants. Jon’s class was a terrific contribution to my growth as a writer, so much so that I may even take it again." -Clare C.

“In this profound, humane, and timely book, Jonathan Malesic diagnoses our burned-out condition with more clarity than anyone before him. But just as importantly, he shows us a path through and out of the crisis—toward a thrilling yet achievable vision of life with our jobs no longer at the center.” —Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

“The End of Burnout is compassionate and wry, addictive and propulsive. It doesn’t just identify the causes of burnout; it offers us compelling examples of what the alternative offers and what it can look like. It’s one thing to identify burnout in your own life. It’s another to actively seek out the ways to embrace a posture that counters it. This book, one of very few that offer you a graspable glimpse of a different way of a life, feels like a revelation.” —Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class is entirely asynchronous which means you complete the weekly assignments on your own schedule. There are no set meeting times in order to allow for greater participation; your cohort will consist of writers from across different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices.

Along with your weekly deadlines there is plenty of interaction with Jon and your peers within Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom. Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online classroom environment.

You can get the work done as you see fit week-to-week, so it is perfect for any schedule. There are discussion questions each week inspired by the assigned readings and topics in the lecture notes. Students are encouraged to take these wherever is most compelling and/or useful for them. Jon engages with these discussions throughout the week and you will receive feedback from all assigned writing activities.

HOW DOES WET INK WORK?

Wet Ink was built and designed specifically for online writing classes. Wet Ink is private, easy to use, and very interactive. You can learn more about the Wet Ink platform by Watching a Class Demo.

• Instructor: Jonathan Malesic
  

• Class size limited to 9 writers

• Class starts January 29th, 2024
  

• Course is fully ONLINE; students can work according to their own schedule within weekly deadlines. Once you have enrolled the instructor will send you a link to our online classroom, provided via Wet Ink.

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

Instructor Jonathan Malesic is an essayist, journalist, and scholar whose writing has been recognized as notable in Best American Essays (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022) and Best American Food Writing (2020) and has received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology (2019). His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Washington Post, America, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, The Hedgehog Review, The Point, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. He has been the recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisville Institute. His first book, Secret Faith in the Public Square, won a ForeWord INDIES gold medal for the religion category (2009). His newest book, The End of Burnout, was published by University of California Press in 2022. He lives in Dallas.