BREAKING UP WITH FORM:
Experimental Essays
A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction
Taught by Cleaver Editor Tricia Park
5 weeks
February 5 – March 5
Zoom meetings: 11 AM – 1 PM Eastern Time on Sundays 2/5, 2/12, 2/19, 2/26, 3/5
$300
Questions: [email protected]
“Creative nonfiction” is an expansive genre of writing that encompasses a range of styles and techniques to tell life stories. Whether you’re telling a story for the first or hundredth time, it can be in this retelling that we are able to rearrange time, reconsider the nuances of memory, and begin to reorganize the turmoil of the past. Beginning with the origins of the word, “essay,”—from the French essayer, or to try—we will explore: How can form help us better tell our stories? How can choosing the right container illuminate our essays’ contents? And how can contemporary forms free up our stories and reflect the complex nature of memory?
Each week, we will explore different essay forms, discuss how these forms impact the reader’s experience of the essay, and experiment as we borrow and integrate new techniques in our own writing. The class will offer weekly readings, writing prompts, and feedback on your writing.
In this class you will:
- Experiment with prompts and strategies
- Read inventive essay examples
- Generate new writing
- Receive instructor and classmate feedback
We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for exploration, accountability, structure, and supportive feedback on their work.
Tricia Park is a concert violinist, writer, and educator. Since making her concert debut at age thirteen, Tricia has performed on five continents and received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. She is the host and producer of an original podcast called, “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy.” Tricia has served on faculty at the University of Chicago, and the University of Iowa, and has worked for Graywolf Press. She is the co-lead of the Chicago chapter of Women Who Submit, an organization that seeks to empower women and non-binary writers. She is a Juilliard graduate and received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2021, Tricia was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Seoul, Korea, where she worked on a literary and musical project. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine and F Newsmagazine. She was also a finalist for contests in C&R Press and The Rumpus. Currently, Tricia is Associate Director of Cleaver Magazine Workshops where she is also a Creative Nonfiction editor and faculty instructor, teaches for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and maintains a private studio of violin students and writing clients.
Learn more about Tricia at: www.isitrecessyet.com. Listen to Tricia play violin at: https://www.youtube.com/c/triciapark
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Claire Oleson is a queer writer and 2020 Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. Her work has been published by the Kenyon Review online, the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal Limestone, the LA Review of Books, and Newfound Press, among others. She is the 2019 winner of the Newfound Prose Prize and the Poetry Editor at Cleaver Magazine. Her chapbook, Things from the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, debuted May, 2020. She is represented by Eloy Bleifuss at Janklow and Nesbit.
Marnie Goodfriend is a writer, sexual assault advocate, and social practice artist. She is a 2018 VCCA fellow, recipient of the Jane G. Camp scholarship, and a 2016 PEN America fellow. Her advocacy work, 
Kristen Martin is working on a narrative nonfiction book that deconstructs myths of American orphanhood for Bold Type Books. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, NPR Books, The Baffler, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Believer, Bookforum, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Università degli Scienze Gastronomiche in Italy, where she was a Fulbright-Casten Family Scholar. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Columbia University, and CUNY Baruch College, as well as for the Philadelphia literary community Blue Stoop.
Andrea Caswell’s writing has been published widely in print and online. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Columbia Journal, Atticus Review, and others. She holds a master’s from Harvard University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a fiction editor for Cleaver Magazine, and is the founder of Lime Street Writers, a monthly workshop north of Boston. In 2019 her fiction was accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Los Angeles, Andrea now lives and teaches in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Contact her at 
Sydney Tammarine’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, B O D Y, Pithead Chapel, The New School’s LIT, and other journals. Her essay “Blue Hour” was selected as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2021. She is the co-translator of a book of poems, The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and teaches writing at Virginia Military Institute. She has led workshops at The Ohio State University, Hollins University, Otterbein University, and at high schools, including as Writer-in-Residence at Appomattox Regional Governor’s School. She serves as flash and creative nonfiction editor for Cleaver.
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Emily Steinberg, MFA, is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on painting and comics and serves as Cleaver’s Visual Narrative Editor. Her work has most recently been published by The New Yorker Magazine and is included in 
Michelle Renee Hoppe’s special education teaching outcomes helped to win court cases against the NYCDOE. She holds a partial MSED in special education and is a candidate for an MA in TESOL from MIIS. As founder and creative director of 
Karen Rile is the author of Winter Music (Little, Brown), a novel set in Philadelphia, and numerous works of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as The Southern Review, American Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Other Voices, Superstition Review, Tishman Review, and has been shortlisted among The Best American Short Stories. Karen has published articles and essays in The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and others. She is the founding and chief editor of Cleaver and the Director of Cleaver Workshops.
Claire Oleson is the winner of the 2019 Newfound Chapbook Prize and a graduate of Kenyon College, where she studied English and Creative Writing. She has participated in graduate writing workshops with the Kenyon Review, where she also worked for the entirety of her undergraduate career. She has worked as a TA for Northwestern University’s summer creative writing courses. Her work has been published by the Kenyon Review online, the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal Limestone, the LA Review of Books, and Sugar House Review, among others. She currently serves as the poetry editor for Cleaver and lives and works in NYC.
Dinah Lenney has played countless roles on stage and television, from Lady Macbeth to ER’s Nurse Shirley. She’s a graduate of Yale, where she didn’t study theater, the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she did, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she presently teaches nonfiction. Dinah’s taught writing and acting in schools all over the country, and co-wrote Acting for Young Actors with director Mary Lou Belli. The author of The Object Parade and Bigger than Life, she also co-edited Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction with the late Judith Kitchen. Her latest book, Coffee, was published in Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series. Dinah lives (reads, writes, grinds, brews—in a Chemex, by the way) with her husband in Los Angeles.
Drew Pham is a queer, transgender writer of Vietnamese heritage. A child of war refugees, her work centers on legacies of violence in times of conflict. She has published in Blunderbuss Magazine, McSweeny’s, Slice Magazine, Foreign Policy, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, and Columbia Journal, among others. She lives with her two cats in Brooklyn, NY, and she serves as an adjunct English lecturer at CUNY Brooklyn College.
Claire Rudy Foster is an award-winning queer, nonbinary trans author from Portland, Oregon. Foster’s critically acclaimed short story collection Shine of the Ever was an O: The Oprah Magazine pick for 2019. Their essays, fiction, reporting, book reviews, and other writing appear in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Allure, on NPR, and many other places. Foster is Senior Features Editor at The Rumpus. They still believe in the power of well-written sentences.
shea wesley martin is a fat, Black, queer, non-binary writer based in the mountains of Vermont. they write about the joy, pain, and triumph of being Black, queer, and not-quite-woman in and beyond this world. a freelance educator, they also research, consult, and write about creating and sustaining liberatory learning spaces.
Cleaver Poetry Reviews Editor 
Sydney Tammarine
