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Creative Nonfiction

Creative Nonfiction is a class for any writer who wants to learn the techniques of creative nonfiction, with no prior background required. The course is designed to help you write compelling narratives that braid observation and personal experience while cultivating your voice.

This class is an in-depth exploration of what’s possible within the essay and book-length nonfiction form. Focusing our attention on language, voice and structure, we will explore and practise the tools needed to be able to write works of nonfiction, outside of the typical conventions of academic writing. These tools will offer new approaches to story-telling and research-driven narrative, and enable you to both generate new material as well as develop an objective view of how to move the drafts from sketches to publishable outputs.

What you will learn

This course provides you with

  • An introduction to the form of nonfiction, which offers a creative freedom to explore what’s possible with language
  • Instruction in how to use scene, dialogue, narrative structure, and tension to dig deeper into the heart of the story you want to tell
  • A space to explore both a truly creative nonfiction form and the form applied within lyrical academic writing
  • Editorial feedback (written or oral) from your instructor on your newly-written work, with clear signposts for how to proceed to the next draft.

How it will be taught

We will study essays and excerpts from books that successfully demonstrate the beauty and freedom of what’s possible in creative nonfiction. Focusing on writing by authors such as Helen Macdonald, Keise Laymon, Melissa Febos, and others, we will see how these writers have created possible roadmaps for the kind of work you want to write.

The class combines three modes of learning each week:

  1. Craft lessons – close study of the language, voice, and craft tools, assessing their possibilities for narrative and the choices behind them
  2. Writing exercises – hands-on practice applying craft techniques to your own material
  3. Feedback – structured response to your writing from the instructor and your peers

What you will get

At the end of the four weeks, you will have a clearer sense of what lies at the core of the story you want to tell, and a set of craft tools to be able to articulate that story with voice and with heart. You will have learned how to braid detailed, embodied description with research, how to articulate complex concepts without losing the reader, and have had time and space to both practice writing as well as give and receive feedback in a safe and intimate group setting.

  • Working with Ro is a joy and a privilege. Our meetings are the highlight of my week. She has an innate understanding of what makes a captivating story, and she always has a great recommendation up her sleeve!
    Prof Rebecca Jarman, Professor of Humanities, University of Leeds

  • I have published over 50 scientific articles, but it was my first time venturing into creative writing. Ro taught the course with such ease. She cultivated a beautiful creative space for us all to practice together each week. I learned so much about the craft and also about the dedication needed to become an effective writer. I am now reading with a fresh vigor and relishing my new ability to identify the anatomy of effective writing.

    Conor Ryan, Honorary Research Fellow, Scottish Association for Marine Science

Class Faculty

  • Ro Skelton

    Ro Skelton is an award-winning writer, former reporter, and editor whose investigative journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, and the Observer. She is currently working on her first book, Easement, a memoir about radical acts of gardening, and her fiction has won the Larry Levis Fellowship and appeared in Four Way Review and Waxwing.

Free • Monthly Sessions

The Writer’s Room

For any writer who wants community — to write, learn craft, and meet others. We meet online every month, starting with a short craft lesson, then moving into a 45-minute generative writing session. We’ll offer a prompt, which you’re welcome to follow or not. Camera on or off — we don’t mind either way.

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