Description
Do you like writing about your life experiences? Would you like to learn some techniques for making your nonfiction writing more compelling and creative? Are you interested in sharing your voice in this historic moment? Join this class to write your own unique piece of creative nonfiction!
In this class you will learn a method of personal writing sometimes used by researchers who study and write about people and cultures–otherwise known as anthropologists. It’s called “autoethnography” and it combines personal storytelling with writing about the details of your own world. Young writers will learn how anthropologists research, learn and write about the people and societies they explore, and then apply that approach in an exploration of their own personal worlds and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the techniques will even provide a fresh approach to enhance your fictional character development!
Students will participate in skill-building activities for writing from different perspectives and using various techniques, from personal experience and self-reflection, to gathered observation, interviews, and investigation. There will be opportunities to work on your own drafts as well as collaborate with others in a peer review process.
This course is appropriate for ages 11-14, though we may be able to accept younger students. Parents of younger students who are interested should contact us to discuss this.
Instructor: Laura Moran
Laura Moran is a member of the Stone Soup team. She coordinates the Refugee Project, and most recently, facilitates the Stone Soup Book Club.
Laura is also a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from The University of Queensland, in Australia, and a master’s degree from Oxford University in the UK. She recently published her first book-length ethnography with Rutgers University Press (Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World: Refugee Youth and the Pursuit of Identity, 2020). She teaches at Emmanuel College in Boston, MA and also enjoys working with middle and high school aged students. Laura’s 11-year-old daughter is an avid reader and a published Stone Soup author who participates in the Book Club and the weekly Writing Workshop.
