Class Meetings: Tuesdays, April 3-April 24, from 6:00-8:00PM, in the Poetry Center Alumni Room 205. 

***SOLD OUT***

There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, to fill in the pockmarks of our flaws, and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy on the page, but less interesting. In this nonfiction seminar, students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting space. In everything we write, we build a persona for ourselves; in this class, we intentionally heighten its texture. Drawing on essays by nonfiction writers like Leslie Jamison, Rian Malan, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Lauren Slater, we will enter the playground of the best and worst of ourselves, discussing how to resist both victimhood and self-flagellation, essaying emotional truths, and using age-old archetypes as a way to explore our gorgeous, contradictory selves.