INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE NON-FICTION WITH CAREY BARAKA

Meeting day: TBD

Time: TBD

Start date: TBD

Online via Zoom

10 sessions over 10 weeks

Cost: US$150 or KES 15000 payable in up to 2 installments via PAYPAL, MPESA, WorldRemit and other

Carey Baraka is a writer from Kisumu, Kenya. He writes about, among other things, politics, sports, literary culture, food, and the environment. His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, Serious Eats, Gay Magazine, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and SB Nation, among others. He sings for a secret choir in Nairobi.

This class introduces participants to the fundamental elements of creative non-fiction, with special attention paid to personal and critical essays, as well as to longform non-fiction and narrative journalism, through exposure to over 50 pieces of creative non-fiction and critical work. Participants learn how to structure essays, how to develop arguments, and how to use themselves and other people as characters in their non-fiction. Carey will offer detailed feedback to participants on their writing, and weekly writing exercises mean that participants will, at the end of the class, have ten different pieces of writing that can be expanded into longer work. This is an intensive class suitable for writers who are willing to read a lot, and who are beginning to write creative non-fiction more deliberately.

Topics covered:

1. Introduction to Creative Nonfiction

2. New Journalism, a history

3. Narrative Techniques in long form non-fiction

4. The Profile

5. The Writer as Subject (the ethics of personal essays)

6. Sports as Metaphor

7. Writing as Activism

8. Fact v/s Fiction in Creative Nonfictiom

9. Place, Nature and Animals

10. Publications and How they Politick

Email makenaonjerika@gmail.com with subject line "Creative Non-Fiction with Carey Baraka" for more details