S145. Essaying on the Edge: Teaching alternative Forms of Nonfiction

Monument, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four
Saturday, February 11, 2017
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

Hybrids. Microprose. Hermit crabs. Fraudulent Artifacts. Collage. Experimental nonfiction is an increasingly popular subgenre, inspiring anthologies, contests, and even bestsellers. It blurs boundaries and often resists definition—which can make it difficult to model and assess in a classroom setting. Join a panel of experienced instructors with a wide variety of teaching experiences as they offer lesson plans, tips, and tricks for effectively bringing this engaging subgenre to students.


Participants

Moderator:

Chelsea Biondolillo is the author of the prose chapbook Ologies. Her essays have appeared in Orion, Brevity, River Teeth, Hayden's Ferry Review, Passages North, and others. She has an MFA from the University of Wyoming, and she has received an O'Connor Fellowship and the Carter Prize for the Essay.

Silas Hansen's essays have appeared in the Normal School, Colorado Review, Slate, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

Alexis Paige is winner of the Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award. Her first book is Not a Place on Any Map. Her work has appeared in the Rumpus, the Pinch, Fourth Genre, Pithead Chapel, and on Brevity, where she is an assistant editor.

Marco Wilkinson is a lyric essayist whose hybrid pieces have appeared in Kenyon Review, Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, Terrain, and elsewhere. He is working on a lyric memoir using weeds as the framework for imagining a queer immigrant life. He is the managing editor at Oberlin College Press.

Brian Oliu is an instructor at the University of Alabama and director of the Slash Pine Press Internship. He is the author of four books of nonfiction and two chapbooks, ranging from Craigslist Missed Connections, to computer viruses, to Google Maps, to 8-bit video games, to the arcade game NBA Jam.

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