It was once decreed that “the personal essay boom is over.” In the years since, the personal essay has evolved: Authors are making the personal more explicitly political, connecting their individual experiences to broader cultural topics, trends, and ephemera in order to better understand the former, the latter, or both. But this evolution, Montaigne might argue, is in fact a return to its roots; they are “essays” or “attempts” at making sense of the confounding world we live in. In this one-day craft class, we’ll discuss why and how to deploy the personal essay form to elucidate the issues that trouble and fascinate us most as writers of color.

We will begin with a short seminar on the personal essay, followed by generative exercises to develop ideas for essays that tell compelling personal narratives and incorporate fact-based research, reporting, and/or analytical commentary. The second half of class will be devoted to a short workshop on how to pitch personal essays to magazine editors. In discussing the place of the personal essay in today’s literary and media landscape, we’ll consider arguments by writers like Jia Tolentino, Morgan Jerkins, Kyle Lucia Wu, Matthew Salesses, and more.

This class is a 1-day (3 hours long) craft class on Sunday, March 5th from 2:00 PM–5:00 PM ET. This craft class is open to all writers of color.

Check out the class page for more information. To see all of our upcoming classes, visit kundiman.org/online-classes.