Instructor: Kip Robisch
Date: 3 Thursdays: May 1, 8, 15
Time: 7-9 p.m.
Location: IWC
Cost: $114 Nonmembers, $78 members, $66 student/teacher/senior members

Have you thought about writing that memoir or autobiography? Or maybe you want to write about someone else–a family member, friend, or even a total stranger whose story you think should be told. Maybe you'd like to write about nature, or food, or you have thoughts you'd like to get on paper about a political issue that matters to you. Are you the one whose posts on Facebook tend to go long? Are you curious? Do you like a good discussion? If you're nodding your head to any of this, then you might be an essayist, and it's worth a try to find out. In this class you'll learn techniques of sharp, clear, detailed writing, investigation, logic, structure, and effect. Our work will concentrate on techniques to help you start, develop, and follow through with a topic until it becomes an essay of any length. By the end of this class you'll have a skill set more than sufficient to produce everything from blog entries to book-length manuscripts on truths that are often stranger than fiction.

Kip Robisch holds a Bachelors degree in Journalism, a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and a PhD in American Literature. He has published several short stories and two dozen essays, and currently contributes essays to a website called The Good Men Project. His book, Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature (U of Nevada Press, 2009) has sample pages on Amazon and is available from any bookseller. He teaches Fiction Writing at IUPUI, and has taught both high school and college writing and literature for 25 years. He is available for individual project work ghost writing, editing, instructing, and coaching.