Saugerties, New York, United States
Hi! I am a freelance writer and professor of nonfiction at the University of Chicago's Program in Creative Writing. My teaching career began seven years ago while I was earning my MFA at the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program ('18). Upon my graduation, I taught the NWP's first-ever online course in nonfiction, Intro to Creative Nonfiction, for two consecutive years, and I've been at UChicago ever since. I have received numerous awards and honors for my writing and teaching, including an Outstanding Teaching Award from the UI Council on Teaching, a Pushcart nomination, and the Summer 2020 Kerouac Project Writer-in-Residence Award. When I am not teaching or writing director's treatments for ArtClass, LLC, I am at work on a memoir about escaping a house fire with severe burns when I was a morbid teenager. Thank you for visiting my page!
I teach various creative nonfiction courses of my own design for the Program in Creative Writing.
For the second consecutive year, I continued to teach the University’s first online course in creative nonfiction.
I am teaching the Nonfiction Writing Program's first-ever online course in creative nonfiction!
Many writers look inward to solve problems of existence: to make sense of the senseless, to disentangle lies or contradictions, and to heal invisible wounds. Some write to seize the fleeting moment, to declare beauty, and to render private experience more significant. There are a few for whom personal writing is a matter of survival— the only means by which certain limitations can be transcended. In this seminar/workshop, students will learn how to map and navigate narratives as personal quests. We will encourage each other to write with increasing curiosity, honesty, and bravery. For inspiration we will read Nick Flynn, Mary Karr, Lucy Grealy, Kathryn Harrison, and others whose vitality seems to depend on introspection. We will examine the kinds of surrender and sacrifice that such writers undergo in pursuit of universal truths, resolution, and transformation. In addition to tracking creative development inside a journal and two self-evaluations, students will workshop and revise two autobiographical works for a portfolio that demonstrates risk, growth, and discovery. Tagline: Stories can make or break you. You decide.
"Wandering but Not Lost: Testing the Limits of Weird" Peek into a cabinet of literary curiosities— writing styles so unique and wild that they seem like rare endangered species— and let’s consider: how weird is too weird? Through an increasingly weird series of close readings and writing prompts, students will develop a refined sense of whether certain creative impulses should be tamed.