Like I did last August, I’m going to focus the month on “writing life” pieces. If you’d like to revisit last year’s, there was: “On To-Do Lists and My Notebooks“; “For Better Writing”; “On Affirmations”; “On Money”

For the next three Mondays, I’ll be sharing selections from my summer essay workshop syllabuses along with my notes on the readings. If you like this kind of thing, consider signing up for the reported (tomorrow) or cultural criticism (next Tuesday) workshops for the full presentations and great discussion—or the five-week food essay course.

First up: personal essays. We discussed how you can use the personal to bring huge subject matter—from climate change to grief to immigration and beyond—into focus for the reader, and how personal essay functions as complementary to journalism. Throughout these workshops, we read a lot of essays by novelists, so we also discuss how they are especially good at taking the stuff of reality and making it believable and alive on the page through characterization, setting, and tone.