Summer 2020 Online: Collage in Creative Nonfiction

Do you have a nonfiction story or essay that struggles to mold to a traditional structure? Sometimes the most personal stories or essays do not want to follow a linear trajectory. Collage and braided forms of creative non-fiction rely instead on fragmentation, silence and resonance to build suspense and/or complex thinking.

In defense of disruption and silence, Louise Gluck reflects that “in the broken thing, human agency is oddly implied: breakage, whatever its cause, is the dark complement to the act of making; the one implies the other.”

In this class, we will consider how writers use these strategies of breakage and disruption to their benefit, using historical, literary or biographical “braids” that weave in and out of their narratives. Class time will be spent discussing outside reading, engaging in writing exercises, and responding to each other’s work. Students will leave class with a deeper understanding of these nontraditional forms as well as a draft of a new story or essay.