Creative Nonfiction - Workshop Description
Wrestling with the Muse: Memoirs & Personal Essay

Focusing on both the memoir and the personal essay, this workshop will cover how a piece gets its "personality through close attention to voice, tone, and stance. We'll also look at "personalizing" pieces that are otherwise based on issues or research, addressing structural issues and strategies to strengthen a piece's natural tendencies, while keeping in mind the larger project. There will be a mix of discussion and exercises designed to generate new writing, new directions, and new techniques. Bring an intriguing photograph from your personal album.

Judith Kitchen

Professor at Pacific Lutheran University

• Only the Dance
• Distance and Direction

Kitchen has also edited three collections of short nonfiction for W. W. Norton: In Short, In Brief, and Short Takes.  Her awards include an NEA fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the S. Mariella Gable award for her novel, The House on Eccles Road.