Personal Essay Workshop
with Ken Foster

There is no such thing as the impersonal essay-or at least there shouldn't be. In the era of the blog and with the rising importance of the op-ed page, the art of the personal essay has never been more relevant. Nor has it ever been more maligned. Often mistakenly relegated to the "personal memoir" ghetto, the essay form is as pliable as that of the short story. Not limited merely to personal experience, the essay achieves the personal by exhibiting a distinct point of view. In this intensive workshop, writers will be expected to read and critique the work of their peers, write weekly assigned short essays (600-800 words each week) and workshop one longer piece-up to 2,500 words--of their choice.

Lectures and student discussions will focus on:

--How to make personal stories universal in their appeal.
--How to use anecdotes as a springboard for a discussion of larger issues.
--How to have a point of view in the era of "Patriotism".
--How to avoid the limiting "I" of first person narratives.
--How to use deadlines to your advantage.

Required reading for the course: Mythologies by Roland Barthes

Admission requirements:
You should submit a letter of interest, including a brief work history, previous coursework and a writing sample of no more than 3 pages. See class details, below, for exact instructions.

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Ken Foster is the author of a collection of stories, "The Kind I'm Likely to Get," which was a New York Times Notable Book. He is also the editor of two anthologies, "The KGB Bar Reader" and "Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines." His memoir about dog rescue, "The Dogs Who Found Me," will be published in 2005. In addition, his work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, the Believer, the Village Voice, Newsday, Urban Dog, Salon and many other publications. From 1994 to 1998, he was the founding curator of the KGB Bar reading series in New York. His column, "Storied Shorts," a review of current short story collections, appears in the Westchester Journal News. The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, Sewanee Writers Conference and the New York Foundation for the Arts, Foster has taught at the New School, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and Florida State University. As an editor of The KGB Bar Reader, Dog Culture, and Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Ken has edited and published essays by Chris Offutt, Tom Perrotta, Elissa Schappell, Tom Paine, Chuck Palahniuk, Lucy Grealy, Meghan Daum and many others.