Personal essays are everywhere. Some say their heyday is over but their popularity hasn’t abated. With popularity comes criticism — Personal essays and their authors have been called hyper-confessional, self-indulgent and even narcissistic, but there’s much more to writing a personal essay than chronicling a wild or salacious experience. The best personal essays show how an experience changed the author through vivid sensory details, engaging scenes and well-developed characters. In this class, we’ll break down the specific elements that make an essay great, and we’ll read model essays. We’ll also do a ton of writing.

One day. Five hours. $30.

About the facilitator: 

Vanessa Mártir is a NYC based writer, educator and writing coach. She is currently completing her memoir, A Dim Capacity for Wings, and chronicles the journey at vanessamartir.blog. A five-time VONA/Voices and two-time Tin House fellow, Vanessa’s work has been widely published, including in Bitch Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, the VONA/Voices Anthology, Dismantle, and the NYTimes Bestseller Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay. Vanessa is the founder of the #52essays2017 challenge, and creator of the Writing Our Lives Workshop, which she teaches in NYC and online. She has served as guest editor of Aster(ix) and The James Franco Review. When she’s not writing or teaching, you can find Vanessa either on a dance floor, in a gym punching a bag or in the woods hiking and talking to nature.