Fracturing Form: A Workshop on the Lyric Essay

Fracturing Form: A Workshop on the Lyric Essay

Ever looked at an auto body shop—with its mess organized and barely contained—and thought: I want to write a personal essay just like that? If so, this workshop is for you. In four weeks, we will read and write essays that explore personal memories, anecdotes, and experiences with an attention to form and content. 

We will write stories only to break them apart and write them anew. Reading excerpts from writers like Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, and Alexander Chee, we will be inspired to craft our stories utilizing different structures. Perhaps we’ve always kept our spare parts in one big drawer; now, we will take each one, consider its shape, and place it in a box, potentially next to an item it’s never been near before. In doing so, we will pull together different sides of ourselves and see our “I” anew.

This workshop is for adults of all writing levels interested in creative nonfiction. If you have a story to share, and are open to sharing it in a new and different way, you are welcome in this workshop.

Materials provided. 

Sessions take place on Tuesdays from 6:30pm–8:30pm on the following dates:

• August 19
• August 26
• September 2
• September 9
• September 16 (Final Reading)

Laura Gill (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and editor. Her essays have appeared in Agni, The Los Angeles Review, Electric Literature, and The Carolina Quarterly, amongst others. She edits nonfiction for Hobart.

Host or Publisher O, Miami