A monthly letter from Gotham’s dean of faculty, Kelly Caldwell (usually writing advice)
Last week, social media exploded when a literary journal published an essay about transgender people. Social media explodes about something every week, but in this case, it was justified.
The essay, in the Antioch Review, was crammed with opinions guaranteed (maybe even intended) to offend. (It was also chock full of mistakes and logical fallacies, so many that I can’t wait to use it as an example of mistakes to avoid in my Essay & Opinion Writing classes.) Continue reading “Outside Yourself”
Recently, I read a story about a writer who wrote a story that landed her in hot water.
In an essay published on a blog, the writer said she wrote a short story satirizing close family friends. The friends read her manuscript without her permission, and were wounded. One refused to speak to her and sent an intermediary to her door, to tell her that their relationship was now over. Continue reading “Bait and Switch”
“You call it excavation; I call it being triggered.”
My Memoir I class was midway through the term, which meant everyone had submitted pages for critique, and written homework assignments, and jumped into writing exercises many times in class. Continue reading “Give It a Name”