This full-day workshop day is devoted to all aspects of the personal essay. We’ll discuss practicalities like audience, length, and subject matter, but more importantly, we’ll be looking at ways of finding our voice. How does an essayist say something important? How can she avoid self-indulgence or polemic? We’ll begin by considering this question: how do the great essayists keep our eyes on the page? Why do we keep reading a personal essay? We’ll discuss, and practise, ways of turning a bland or dull opening paragraph into something urgent and memorable. We’ll consider how an ending works to bring together meaning, to make an essay echo in the reader’s mind long after it has been read. And we’ll look at the way movement occurs in your writing: are you telling too much, or not enough? How can we fix these problems and learn to recognise when we are writing at our best?
Suitable for: Writers of any genre interested in the personal essay.
Where: Workshops are held in Crows Nest, Sydney - details provided on booking. Please note that access to the venue is via stairs with no lift.
About Tegan Tegan Bennett Daylight an essayist, fiction writer, teacher and critic, the author of four books for adults and several for children and teenagers. Her latest book, Six Bedrooms, a short story collection, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Steele Rudd Award and the ALS Gold Medal in 2016. Her essays have appeared in The Guardian,Best Australian Essays 2016 and 2015, Island Magazine, The Australian, The Sydney Review of Books and Good Weekend magazine.For more about Tegan, click here.
