Class Description

It’s time to write yourself into a discovery you never imagined. Throughout our six weeks together, we will use stimulating prompts—snippets of poems and essays, images and objects, lists, word play, and sensory exploration—to jumpstart deliciously lyrical work. Plan on spending each session just for you, diving deep into unknown territory. We’ll write, share work, give supportive feedback, drop in a bit of craft discussion, and write some more. We’ll explore memory, voice, description, dialogue, setting, point of view—all the building blocks that form original essays and memoir. This class is for writers at all levels who wish to explore stories through the lens of memoir, creative nonfiction, and speculative nonfiction—a personal favorite which blends factual writing with speculation and imagination. MIRA BARTÓK is the author/illustrator of the New York Times bestselling memoir, The Memory Palace, which won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her writing has appeared in many places, including the Massachusetts Review, Jubilat, Another Chicago Magazine, Fourth Genre, the Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, among others. She has also written and illustrated numerous books for children, including The Wonderling: Songcatcher, which was long listed for the UK’s Carnegie Medal and the sequel, The Wonderling: Singing Tree, forthcoming from Candlewick Press and Walker Books UK in 2027. Mira holds an MFA in painting and film from the University of Illinois and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Fiction, and has been a lecturer at numerous institutions, including Smith College, the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University among others. She is also a Fulbright Scholar in Folklore and Anthropology, specializing in the oral traditions of indigenous circumpolar peoples. She believes that stories are the lifeblood of a culture and would love to help you tell yours.