Registration Opens Feb. 5 at 9am PST
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Elevating Life Into Art
A Creative Writing Workshop in Nonfiction
Memoirs. Travelogues. Lyric Essays. Literary Journalism. Testimonios. No matter whether you are conducting an internal excavation or an external investigation, all forms of Creative Nonfiction are welcome in this workshop. Submit a manuscript of 8-12 pages, and together, we will strive to push it to the next level by taking risks both in content and in form. Questions we’ll be asking: Where is the essay’s pulse? How can it beat louder—or deeper? Should the story follow a classic rise-fall arc or be a fractured narrative with a scrambled chronology? In addition to critiquing each other’s work, we will also discuss ways of feeding ourselves as artists both figuratively and literally, by sharing our motivations and strategizing on sustainable ways of fueling our practice. So join us. Together, we will be pilgrims wandering the wilderness of memory. Arbiters of the dynamic Fourth Genre. We will elevate life into art. We will write words that matter.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her five award-winning books include the memoirs: All the Agents and Saints; Mexican Enough; Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; and the best-selling guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. Beacon Press will publish her latest book, Art Above Everything: Global Women with a Singular Vision, in 2026. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Travel + Leisure, and Oxford American. Distinctions include a Henry Luce Scholarship to China, a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton, and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Prize. Currently the Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed on five continents in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department.
Learn more: StephanieElizondoGriest.com