Braiding the Personal and the Cultural in the Essay. Amanda Montei, Instructor

Apr 29, 2024 - May 20, 2024

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IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

Spring 2024

Braiding the Personal and the Cultural in the Essay (Four-Week Workshop)

Amanda Montei, Instructor

Dates/Time

Mondays on Zoom, April 29–May 20

12:00–3:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
1:00–4:00 pm Eastern Time
10:00 am–1:00 pm Pacific Time
11:00 am–2:00 pm Mountain Time

Fee: $550

Course Description

This course will consider various approaches for blending autobiographical writing with culture writing. Memoir can provide a critic a connection to the larger world and the body, offering a sense of both embodiment and context. For memoirists, the incorporation of archival texts or research can move a personal story beyond the self, situating it within a social and historical landscape. In this class, we will look at contemporary forms and models for mixing memoir with a range of nonfiction. We will also consider questions of form, narrative, voice, balance, shape, and blend.

This class is open to writers exploring cultural trends, objects, ideas, or issues, as well as those blending research with a personal story or framework. It is also open to those writing reviews or essays about or inspired by books, film, television, visual or performance art, fashion, or other media who want to use personal experience to deepen their analysis.

This course is open to all levels, but it is recommended that participants have some workshop experience and a rough idea for a subject or story before the start of the course. In the first week, expect to settle on a concept and form, as well as complete some preliminary writing, for a 1,500-2,500-word essay or other nonfiction piece. Students will receive early generative verbal feedback from other participants and from the instructor, which they can use to draft their essay by week two. Expect to complete the course with a polished piece ready for submission, as well as strategies for mixing the personal and cultural in any future piece of writing.

This course also includes a 30-minute individual conference, in which students will receive more extensive verbal feedback from the instructor.

Takeaways:

Complete one essay or other nonfiction piece, with feedback from your instructor and other classmates.
Models and methods for blending memoir with cultural writing, popular culture, archival materials such as diaries and family documents, reporting, and/or history—including and beyond braiding techniques.
Suggestions for possible publication venues for your piece.

Instructor

Amanda Montei is the author, most recently, of Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, & Control. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, TIME, The Cut, Mother Tongue, Slate, Electric Literature, Vox, The Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, Poetry Foundation, and in numerous literary journals. She was a 2020 Best American Essays notable. Amanda has been teaching writing for over a decade. She has taught, lectured, and presented work at universities around the country, including Stanford University, Columbia University, New York University, The University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. She has also taught with many literary organizations such as Catapult, Corporeal Writing, Hugo House, Writing Workshops, and Write or Die. She holds an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo. She runs the popular newsletter Mad Woman and lives in California.

Registration & Fees

The fee for this course is $550. Payment in full is required to register.

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Class size is limited to 10.

Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center.”

Refund & Cancellation Policy

If you need to cancel your enrollment, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel one week prior to the start of class. After that, before the start-date of class, we can offer a 50% refund. We cannot refund day-of cancellations, and we cannot refund or partially refund registration fees once the class has begun.

Terms & Community Policy

1.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.

2.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person.

Questions?

Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160.

Our small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!

Full course description