About

In the world of creative nonfiction, forms such as the abecedarian are proliferating. In this four-session class we will scrutinize models of three different forms (abecedarian, the A/B form, and the collage) and generate three new creative nonfictions of our own based upon these forms. In class we'll write in our notebooks in the timed writing method developed by Natalie Goldberg. As we develop our pieces, we'll work on prose style—sound and syntax—toward bringing them into the realm of highly publishable. The required text is the Second Edition of The Writers Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life (available in September 2018).

Instructor: Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based writer of poetry, creative nonfiction, science, fiction, and history, and is a long-time independent teacher of writing. Her work appears widely and her books are Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (University of Georgia Press), Minding the Muse: A Handbook for Painters, Poets, and Other Creators (Coffeetown Press), and Crossing Over: Poems (University of New Mexico Press). Her how-to-write guide is The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life . She is also author of Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry. Her awards include a National Magazine Award. Her science column, Science Frictions, ran for 92 weeks in The American Scholar. She earned an MFA from the University of Washington and serves as Founding and Consulting Editor of www.historylink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She grew up on a dairy farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.