I’ve put up the slides and lecture notes of all my workshops for download: Newsletter Workshop; The Self-Edit; Research & Organization As an Independent Writer; Personal Essay; Reported Essay; and Cultural Criticism are all available, with How to Create an Editorial Vision as a freebie. (The essay workshops all include full lecture notes, syllabi, and reading notes, not just the pieces I published this month.)

I record the five-week “The Food Essay” course, which will run again from September 15 through October 13, so you could take it in an asynchronous manner, but here the discussions really are robust, fun, and add so much to the understanding of both the pieces we read together and how food writing functions in the world.

You’ll never see this class in a download-only version because it’s really all about the group coming together, but don’t be intimidated: It’s a very welcoming vibe, every time.

I’m going to be revamping the syllabus for 2027, I think—or you tell me what kind of workshops you’d like to see from me!—so this is your last chance for the first edition, which was put together for the Boston University food studies graduate program.

It’s very much about giving everyone in the room a shared understanding of the essay’s history broadly, the essay’s significance to food writing, and then breaking down four types of food essay to understand how they work, how we can write our own food essays, and why it’s important to really sit with work. (Re-reading is a key part of the class.)

Folks have told me this course brings them back to reading in a deeper way, and so if you’ve been meaning to do that, this might be a way to be accountable to your attention. I know it makes me more accountable each time I teach it!

You can choose 11 a.m. or 7 p.m. EST sessions. Each class is 1.5 hours long. The structure of the Food Essay is as follows:

Week 1: What Is the Food Essay?
An overview of the essay as a form broadly and how it’s become specifically significant to food writing. 

Week 2: The Reported Essay
What is a reported essay and how does it work? How can reportage, anecdote, and personal perspective intermingle in an essay?

Week 3: The Personal Essay
The personal is never just personal. How can we engage strangers by the way we tell our stories?

Week 4: Cultural Criticism and/or Opinion
How can a food essay make a persuasive argument?

Week 5: Recipe
Narrative recipes allow for the writer to tell compelling stories about their lives in the kitchen, their families, and their cultures. How can we both teach someone how to make a dish and tell a story at the same time?

I hope to see you there!