Starts Wednesday, June 5th, 2024

Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays, 7:00PM EST - 9:00PM EST.

Now Enrolling!

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

Taught by Jenessa Abrams, a writer, literary translator, and practitioner of Narrative Medicine. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Tin House, Electric Literature, Guernica, BOMB Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Public Library, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA in fiction and literary translation. Jenessa has taught at Columbia University and Rutgers University.

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

This course is designed for writers at all stages of their careers to dedicate time and space to writing through illness either in a fictional or creative nonfictional exploration of experiences of the mind and/or the body.

We will engage in the close reading of texts that are committed to this work, including narratives by: Audre Lorde, Mieko Kawakami, Melissa Febos, Miriam Toews, Yiyun Li, Paul Kalanithi, Annie Ernaux, Akhil Sharma, Edouard Louis, Meghan O’Rourke, and Leslie Jamison. 

We will have weekly in-class writing exercises based on the selected readings to begin the practice of saying the unsaid and learning to put language to our experiences either in fiction or creative nonfiction. 

Writing Through Illness will conclude with a writing workshop where students can share work they’ve developed during the course to receive in-class feedback from their peers and the instructor. Students will also be given written feedback, line edits, and a longer feedback letter from the instructor.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Students will deepen their understanding of how writing about and through illness can help us better process our experiences and how the act of writing can lead to self-reclamation.
• Through extensive close reading and a series of in-class writing exercises, students will gain the necessary tools to help transfer their experiences of illness onto the page where they can be better examined/explored/unpacked.
  
• Students will complete the course with at least one polished piece of prose about explorations of illness that they may pursue a path to publication.
  

COURSE SKELETON:

• Week 1: Introductions; On The Importance of Telling; Close Reading; In-Class Writing Exercise; Reading Assignment. 
• Week 2: Writing Share; Who Tells The Story?; Discussion of Reading Assignment; In-Class Writing Exercise; Close Reading; Reading Assignment. 
• Week 3: Writing Share; Saying The Unsayable; Discussion of Reading Assignment; In-Class Writing Exercise; Close Reading; Round 1 Writing Assignment; Reading Assignment. 
• Week 4: Crafting An Illness Narrative; Discussion on Reading Assignment; Round 1 Workshop; In-Class Writing Exercise; Round 2 Writing Assignment; Reading Assignment. 
• Week 5: The Art of Revision; Discussion on Reading Assignment; Round 2 Workshop; In-Class Writing Exercise; Round 3 Writing Assignment; Reading Assignment. 
• Week 6: Closing Discussion; Discussion on Reading Assignment; Round 3 Workshop; In-Class Writing Exercise.

Instructor Jenessa Abrams is a writer, literary translator, and practitioner of Narrative Medicine. Her fiction, literary criticism, and creative non-fiction has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Tin House, Electric Literature, Guernica, BOMB Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Public Library, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA in fiction and literary translation. She previously taught at Catapult.