2 Sessions: Sundays, July 13 + 27
1:00-3:30pm ET
Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee is the author of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, named most recently as one of the best nonfiction books of the century (so far) by Kirkus Reviews. He is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction and guest edited Best American Essays 2022. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.

When I sat down to put together my first essay collection, I made a study of collections I admired and spoke to some writers who had written essay collections too. Some hadn’t thought about the organization much. Some had. Some hasn’t revised their essays—and some had. I had a vague idea of how a short story collection came together but that didn’t quite map onto this form—it mattered that I would be a speaker in these essays, and a character, too. But I didn’t want this to be a memoir, either. But some of those I read did. This class collects my thinking about this newly popular literary form as it expands. I will look at more collections, now that I am at work on my second essay collection, and offer a survey of the form by way of a mix of classics and newer works, discussing collections by Vladimir Nabakov, Barry Lopez, Cathy Park Hong, David Wojnarowicz, Elif Batuman, Jenn Shapland, Lucy Ives, among others.

This is a lecture class in two parts with suggested but not required readings and 6 writing prompts, 3 per class, that I have used to write essays for my next collection. There is no workshop component. Students will be sent a suggested reading list after registration. Reading the collections under discussion is recommended but not required.

Students will learn how to take an essay they admire and turn it into a writing prompt; and then do the same to an essay collection they admire. We will discuss the differences in approach between the essay collection written all at once, as a discrete aesthetic project; the essay collection drawn from your history of publication; the memoir in essays. And we will cover approaches to revising them, and looking for essay ideas you abandoned but could still finish among old drafts, old blogs and pitches that were never accepted.

To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 6.