Upcoming Kundiman Events:
The Essay as "Attempt":
Making Sense of the World WITH Personal Essays with Matt Ortile
Saturday, MaY 14th
2:00 PM–5:00 PM ET
It was once decreed that “the personal essay boom is over.” In the years since, the personal essay has evolved: Authors are making the personal more explicitly political, connecting their individual experiences to broader cultural topics, trends, and ephemera in order to better understand the former, the latter, or both. But this evolution, Montaigne might argue, is in fact a return to its roots; they are “essays” or “attempts” at making sense of the confounding world we live in. In this one-day craft class, we’ll discuss why and how to deploy the personal essay form to elucidate the issues that trouble and fascinate us most as writers of color.
We will begin with a short seminar on the personal essay, followed by generative exercises to develop ideas for essays that tell compelling personal narratives and incorporate fact-based research, reporting, and/or analytical commentary. The second half of class will be devoted to a short workshop on how to pitch personal essays to magazine editors. In discussing the place of the personal essay in today’s literary and media landscape, we’ll consider arguments by writers like Jia Tolentino, Morgan Jerkins, Kyle Lucia Wu, Matthew Salesses, and more.
eligibility:
This craft class is open to all writers of color. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This class will be held over Zoom. There is one scholarship spot available, and the applications are open through April 25th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Matt Ortile (or-TEE-leh) is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name, and the co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Body Language. He is also the executive editor of the National Magazine Award-winning publication Catapult, where he was first its managing editor. He is a MacDowell Fellow and writes regularly for Condé Nast Traveler. Previously, he was the founding editor of BuzzFeed Philippines and his work has appeared in Vogue, Self, Out, Into, and BuzzFeed News, among others. He is a graduate of Vassar College, which means he now lives in Brooklyn.