Craft Seminar: Finding Your Voice in the Age of AI with Jennifer Michael Hecht
Craft Seminar: Finding Your Voice in the Age of AI with Jennifer Michael Hecht
2 Sessions: Sundays, August 9 + 16
2:00-3:30pm ET
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), as well as Doubt (Harper Collins) and Stay (Yale), and her three poetry books include Who Said (Copper Canyon). Her prose and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Vox, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, Tin House, and The Kenyon Review. She has taught writing in the graduate programs of The New School and Columbia University.
Dutiful but dull, AI can do your chores for you but can't shine with the full wattage of a nimble human author. This two session seminar will be a discussion of specific ways to find your own voice and make sure it stands out from what AI can do. Before AI, finding one's voice was already key, now it's everything. We'll look at traditional ways to develop one's voice, such as using regional terms and speech patterns. We'll also ask what AI can't accomplish, such as speaking from personal experience, and we'll think about the development of voice in these terms. All levels are welcome.
In the class, we’ll read short excerpts from writers whose voices are unmistakably their own and discuss what qualities make them so effective, such as rhythm, surprise, specificity, emotional risk, obsession, humor, and repetition. Some of the authors we’ll consider are James Baldwin, David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Zadie Smith, and Tim O’Brien. Participants will experiment with exercises designed to loosen predictable prose and move toward language that is wholly their own. The goal of the course is not only to resist AI, but to become more deeply, fully ourselves on the page.
A special feature of the class is that participants will be invited to send the instructor a short piece of writing and will receive feedback by the second session. This can be a writing sample or a description of a project. This is entirely optional.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn how to attract agents and editors.
Discuss techniques for exciting prose and developing your own voice.
Learn to use structure to get from idea to finished.
This class has 2 partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by
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.
