Craft Seminar: Crafting Nonfiction: From Idea through Publication with Jennifer Michael Hecht
Craft Seminar: Crafting Nonfiction: From Idea through Publication with Jennifer Michael Hecht
2 Sessions: Sundays, August 10 + 17
1:00-2:30pm ET
Jennifer Michael Hecht
This course is taught by bestselling and award-winning nonfiction author and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht. Hecht has published eight books including Doubt: A History with HarperCollins; Stay, with Yale; and The Wonder Paradox with FSG and she holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. She has also published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The American Poetry Review, and Tin House.
Nonfiction has its own rules, traditions, and shortcuts—for both writing and publication. We’ll talk about practical issues, like when to send a proposal and when to send a full draft, and literary issues, like how poetic to be, and how to be poetic. Drawing on experience in all aspects of nonfiction writing from memoir, to popular history, to essays, and academic work, the course will cover some secrets of writing true stories and getting them published. In both sessions the class will be open to questions of all kinds. In the interval between the two sessions, students will have the opportunity to have a bit of their work read by the instructor and to receive a brief response.
Workshop Highlights:
A deeper understanding of the poetics of nonfiction writing.
Some specific how-tos for publishing memoir, essays, and popular nonfiction.
An opportunity to have work read and responded to by the instructor.
This class has 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, August 3.
Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. Her most recent book is The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023) a guide to using poetry to find meaning, invoke awe, and rest in some clarity of mind. She is the author of the bestseller Doubt: A History, a history of religious and philosophical doubt all over the world, throughout history. Her newest book is Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It (Yale University Press, 2013). Her The Happiness Myth (HarperOne, 2007), brings a historical eye to modern wisdom about how to lead a good life. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won Phi Beta Kappa’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “For scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” Her books have been translated into many languages. , a guide to using poetry to find meaning, invoke awe, and rest in some clarity of mind.
