Upcoming Kundiman Events:
The Creative Nonfiction Toolkit
with Hannah Bae
August 2nd–September 20th
Mondays, 6:00 PM–8:30 PM ET
“The art of storytelling, I have learned over time, involves a series of critical decisions about what you leave in and what you edit out. As commonly happens when BIPOC creators work with white gatekeepers, I’ve found myself feeling powerless while witnessing what gets edited out of my own work—what I’ve been told does not matter to mainstream white audiences, who I supposedly need to reach—or what never gets published at all. However, my life in America has not been one note: Of course I’ve experienced bigotry and suffering, but I also live a life filled with love, acceptance, hilarity, and hard-won understanding.”
––Hannah Bae, Bitch Media: “In Its Joy, ‘Minari’ Expands the Boundaries of the American Dream”
“Creative nonfiction” can be a very wide umbrella term that spans multiple forms of writing: personal essay, memoir, cultural criticism, journalism, hybrid forms, and more. This class, fit for BIPOC writers of all levels and backgrounds, will offer a survey of these types of writing, breaking down elements of craft, as well as the practical business of pitching, revising, and publishing nonfiction work. There will be assigned readings every week that will, in the latter weeks of the class, include workshop submissions from fellow students.
All students will have the option to workshop twice over the course of the class:
1) The first will be a concise potential pitch for a nonfiction piece based on information that we will cover and then compose in class
2) The second will be a nonfiction piece in progress no longer than 1,500 words. Workshops are always optional, and we understand if this process isn’t helpful for every writer.
Classes will be a mix of close reading, generative writing exercises, and workshop.
eligibility:
This workshop is open to all writers of color, and students must be able to attend all 8 sessions of the workshop. The non-refundable tuition fee is $495. This workshop will be limited to 12 participants and will be held over Zoom. There is one scholarship spot available, and the application is open through Monday, July 12th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Photo Credit: Gaby Deimeke
Hannah Bae is a Korean American freelance journalist and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, which is supporting her memoir-in-progress about family estrangement, mental illness, childhood trauma, and cultural identity. Her essays have appeared in Catapult, Slice Magazine, Bitch Media, and Pigeon Pages, among other publications. She is the recipient of recent fellowships from The Kenyon Review, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and The Poynter Institute. Her essay, “Survival Mode,” was published in the anthology, Don’t Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health (Algonquin, 2018). She has worked full-time for organizations including CNN, Newsday, and the U.S. State Department.