In this workshop for writers at all levels, you’ll learn how to take a story about something you experienced and develop it into an essay that readers can identify with, whether or not their life experience has been the same as yours. This is a generative workshop, in which I’ll break the personal essay writing process down into doable steps, and share writing prompts and exercises to get participants going on a piece, or more than one, that they can keep working on after they leave. Those who wish to share bits of the writing generated in class will be invited to, but those who prefer not to share their work are under no obligation to. 

About the Instructor: 

Sari Botton's memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual "5 Over 50" feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. She was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.