6-Week Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Speculative Nonfiction with Haley Swanson— Starts July 9

So much of our life experience, or rather how we reflect back on it, is the “what if.” What if we’d left earlier, spoken louder, moved here or there, known our parents before they had us, known our lovers before we loved them, known our adult selves as children? These are the scenarios our minds often flip through—however impossible they are in reality. How do we ethically bring these speculations into our nonfiction?

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis

In this six-week speculative nonfiction workshop, we’ll engage with memoirs, poems, and essays that play with the “what if” of things. Readings will include selections from Jo Ann Beard’s Festival Days, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, and Laura Kasischke’s “Bike Ride with Older Boys,” among others.

How do these writers speculate on what could’ve been—in relation to events, time, and past selves?

How does this strengthen their narrative conceits?

How can we implement these tools in our own essays?

We’ll also engage on this level with each other’s work. Each student will workshop one essay they either feel needs to engage with speculation or is currently asking these impossible questions. Writers will leave this class with a deeper understanding of how to employ speculative nonfiction tools in their work as well as written and verbal feedback from peers and the instructor on an essay draft of their choosing.

COURSE EXPECTATIONS

This is a class designed for writers with past workshop experience who understand the commitment of intentionally reading and responding to classmates' work. In order to ensure all participants receive equal amounts of feedback on their workshop selection, attendance to virtual classes on the day a student is being workshoped will be mandatory for all participants. Written feedback (minimum one page, double-spaced) in addition to the verbal workshop will also be required.

Students are expected to complete two reading assignments before the first class, followed by 5-10 short reading assignments thereafter. Additionally, each student will workshop one essay of their choosing (up to 12 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font) and submit guiding questions to their classmates the Friday before their workshop discussion. Written feedback from students is required after the workshop in the form of an editorial letter (minimum one page, double-spaced). The instructor will provide the same.

WORKSHOP MEETING DATES

Wednesday, July 9

Wednesday, July 16

Wednesday, July 23

Wednesday, July 30

Wednesday, August 6

Wednesday, August 13

About the Instructor

Haley Swanson is a writer and co-editor of Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic (Harper Perennial, 2022). Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Glamour, Electric Literature, Bustle, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She's received support from Disquiet International, an NES Artist Residency, and taught writing at Catapult. Before receiving her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she worked in editorial at both Viking/Penguin Random House and HarperCollins. She lives in New York.