March 14: Spring Break; no class

March 21:

Bring two copies of your personal essay to class. You will do one-on-one critiques and discussion in class with one another. You will also give me a copy.

This should be a completed first draft that relies on your free-write from the class exercise. Your next step will be expanding your draft to include reportage and research. You should be thinking and planning what information/content you need for your piece.

By complete draft, I mean that you should have written everything you can based on your own internal knowledge, and the piece should have a sense of a beginning, middle and end. This may be only one or two pages at this point, but should be a complete draft in the sense that you’ve written everything you have to say at this point prior to doing research. Again, the next step will be one-on-one peer review to gather ideas for expanding the draft with research.

Types of reportage and research:

• interviews

• immersive experience

• reading/research from books and articles

You can review the class exercise and our discussion of the Personal Reported Essay here.

Read for class: “Autopsy Report” by Lia Purpura (Touchstone Anthology, p. 405) and “Watching the Animals” by Richard Rhodes, (Touchstone, page 411).

Please read these essays thoroughly with an eye toward:

• structure

• content/reportage

• theme

• voice