New Class: "31 Days, 31 Revision Prompts"

This October, develop a full suite of tools that will allow you to polish and perfect your first-person writing. Plus, our fall workshop classes start next week!

One of our most popular classes since we launched Narratively Academy last year has been “30 Days, 30 Essay Prompts,” a fun, fast-paced generative memoir-writing class run by Narratively Chief Submissions Reader Amy Barnes. Students have come out of this class with tons of ideas for personal essays and memoir-writing. This October, Amy is debuting a brand new sequel: “31 Days, 31 Revision Prompts: A Month of Self-Editing Your Essays.” Open to any writer (whether you’ve taken Amy’s first prompts class or not), this month-long course uses a similar format to guide you in self-editing and polishing your drafts, whether you wrote them last week or years ago. Daily prompts, readings and exercises will give you new tools to add depth and background, make your narration shine, be more active with your word choices — in short, take what you’ve already written and prepare it for potential publication.

“31 Days, 31 Revision Prompts” starts October 1 and you can sign up now.

Plus, our fall workshop season starts next week. If you’ve been thinking about joining a group class to kickstart your writing practice this fall, now is the time!

Here’s the class to join if you want to…

…make a difference with your writing

A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, CNN and many other publications, Kavita Das also authored the book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues. Basically, she’s *the* expert on how to craft this type of writing. Writers have loved the seminars on social issues Kavita taught earlier this year, and we’re thrilled to have her teaching a more in-depth 6-week workshop on how to write about social issues this fall.

…figure out if your book is memoir or fiction

One of the most common thing I hear from writers is: I know I have a book in me, but I don’t know if it’s a memoir or fiction…or maybe somewhere in between. If that’s you, you’re going to want to check out this class. Instructor Rebecca van Laer is an acclaimed novelist and memoirist, and in this innovative Memoir vs. Autofiction writing workshop, she’ll lead writers in exploring the worlds of memoir (a story that’s strictly true) and autofiction (a story that draws on your own life but expands to include fictional elements), helping you decide which direction your story wants to go.

…get writing grants and residencies

One of our most in-demand courses is Abeer Hoque’s intimate workshop, The Insider's Guide to Writing Personal Statements and Applying for Grants & Residencies. Abeer is back for another round of helping writers perfect their personal statements and elevate their grant applications. This class is limited to just 8 students and sells out quickly.

…write that tough personal essay you’ve been thinking about for years

Great personal essays can set the web on fire and resonate with readers around the world. They’re also among the hardest things to write. In October, Caroline Rothstein will be teaching another session of her sold-out class, Deeply Personal: Writing First-Person Essays on Raw and Difficult Topics. It’s been so wonderful to see the writers in this small workshop class develop close relationships while they explore writing *those* kinds of pieces. You know, the ones you always want to write but that require a push to figure out how to tell them in the right way.

…write a memoir or nonfiction book that gets published

Back for the first time in a year is another one of our most in-demand classes, The Art of Writing a Nonfiction Book That Reads Like a Novel with Audrey Clare Farley. “Audrey has the rare ability to listen to each of her students, to synthesize their goals and questions and help find paths forward with our projects,” writes one past student in this class. If you’re aiming to get that big nonfiction or memoir book project moving this fall, this one’s for you.

Questions? Not sure which class is right for you? Don’t see what you’re looking for and want to suggest a different class we should offer? Want to teach a class yourself? Drop us a line: academy@narratively.com.