Mary Otto
Monday 2:30 – 4:30 PM
January 9 through February 13, 2006
D.O.C. House
Creative Nonfiction encourages writers to record and reflect on actual events, real people, and personal stories and memories within the context of literature. Different from reporting, Creative Nonfiction - and for this course, specifically personal essay and memoir - invites us to focus both on writing what is real and true and to make decisions about the effects of a narrator and his/her point of view, the tone, the language, the use of dialogue, the structure of the story we wish to tell, and the ultimate point of the piece. The course will involve regular writing, both in class and at home, and will include frequent opportunities to give and receive feedback during class sessions. Individual appointments can be set up with the instructor at any time. There will also be opportunities to read essays of well-known writers such as E. B. White and Donald Murray and to analyze their effectiveness. Ultimately we will hope to "finish" one or two essays and to compile a class collection of these pieces.
Materials needed: a notebook - utilitarian or beautiful - that you can become attached to for daily writing, a pen you enjoy using, and access to a computer and a printer so that you can easily bring multiple copies of typed drafts to class to share with peers.
MARY OTTO worked for many years as a high school English teacher and as a teacher educator, specifically as part of the National Writing Project. She is a graduate of Grinnell College, in Iowa, as well as of New York University, from which she has a Ph.D. degree. She has most recently taught at The Sharon Academy, in Sharon, VT, and before that in Scarsdale, New York, and at the American School in London. She is a writer herself and considers this her ultimate career.
