The New School
Summer Writers Colony: Nonfiction Workshop
June 3 –June 21, 2013
Discover the writer’s life in New York City. This intensive three-week program provides a supportive yet demanding atmosphere in which to develop as a writer, whether you are embarking on a new writing project or developing a work-in-progress. In a daily writing workshop you and your peers share and critique one another’s ongoing projects moderated by a member of The New School’s distinguished writing faculty. Instructors also provide detailed written feedback on all work submitted. In the evenings, our literary salons bring notable writers into conversation with the students and faculty of the colony.
In supplemental sessions, you can try your hand at specialized writing activities such as experimental fiction, children’s writing, or writing a walking poem during a literary tour of Greenwich Village. The entire Summer Writers Colony community gathers for celebratory readings of student and faculty work.
Courses meet from 12:00 noon to 8:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Mornings and weekends are reserved for individual writing practice, and for enjoying your summer in New York City.
Undergraduate students can earn 6 credits for transfer. The Writers Colony is also open to noncredit students.
2013 Summer Writing Workshop Faculty
Kathleen Ossip, Madge McKeithen, Sharon Mesmer
2013 Visiting Writers
We are pleased to feature Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham and her new collection of poems, Place Chad Harbach and his novel, The Art of Fielding, a New York Times Book Review Book of the Year Ben Lerner and his novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, winner of the Believer Book Award National Book Award finalist Domingo Martinez and his memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas James Laughlin Award winning poet Brenda Shaughnessy and her new collection of poems, Our Andromeda and Whiting Writers Award winner John Jeremiah Sullivan and his nonfiction collection, Pulphead.
The Familiar ( or Personal) Essay
Aug 29 –Dec 12, 2013
This is a workshop for those particularly interested in writing essays using skills and tools often associated with other genres and art forms. Writers with comic or poetic sensibilities and an interest in the aesthetic value of surprise are encouraged to enroll. We read two essays weekly–one by a humorist, one by a poet–and discuss their strengths separately and in juxtaposition. Students also write weekly, and their work is reviewed in a supportive workshop setting. Guest authors visit, and publications and presses are discussed. We read from Woody Allen, Jonathan Ames, Margaret Atwood, Max Beerbohm, Robert Benchley, Wendell Berry, Charles Bukowski, Anne Carson, Annie Dillard, Nora Ephron, Louise Gluck, Ian Frazier, Robert Hass, Edward Hirsch, Fran Lebowitz, David Lehman, Steve Martin, Czeslaw Milosz, Montaigne, Naomi Shihab Nye, David Rakoff, Adrienne Rich, Mark Rudman, May Sarton, David Shields, David Sedaris, Floyd Skloot, Tom Sleigh, Jon Stewart, James Thurber, Sarah Vowell, and Adam Zagajewski. (3 credits)
Writing Personal Essays in a Changing World
January 23–May 16, 2013 (and Jan 30-May 15, 2014)
The world of writing and reading is changing rapidly, in large part because of technology. This writing course is designed for students interested in autobiographical essays as well as arts and cultural criticism, race and ethnicity, and social and political change; it is also especially appropriate for those eager to use new technologies to write personal essays. Assignments focus on the tensions and connections between individual experience and social context. Students write five short pieces and two longer essays. They use online keyword search tools, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to explore questions of self, voice, and audience. Readings include selections by George Orwell, George Packer, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Orhan Pamuk, Pico Iyer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Griffin, Natasha Trethewey, Ian Frazier, Bruce Chatwin, Alain de Botton, Eula Biss, and Charles Baxter. (3 credits)