Personal/Political: The Delicate Art of Writing “Dangerous” Subjects

REGISTER NOW     $25.00

Writing your political passions without descending into ranting, manifesto, or plain old punditry is a delicate art.

The recent market for creative nonfiction shows deep interest in stories grappling with sociopolitical subjects– especially those grounded in personal narrative. Books like Bad Feminist, Hillbilly Elegy, and We Were Eight Years In Power have found massive readership among literary and nonliterary audiences alike by engaging, both directly and indirectly, the subjects cable news producers, campaign managers, and engaged voters obsess over.

But writing your deepest beliefs must still reach the “moveable middle”–not merely preach to your choir. Your approach, persuasion, and even the venue where you publish all create the power of your story. This webinar offers insight into how to bring that artfulness into your own writing.

In this webinar, you will:

• EXAMINE how all writing is political, even when it doesn’t mean to be, and how to take control and even take advantage of that strange fact in your work.
• CONSIDER the differences between essays, op-eds, and political commentary. Understanding these distinctions lets you write compelling narratives that move beyond simple argument and into the more complicated craft of persuasion.
• LEARN to engage and challenge readers without alienating them. We’ll consider ways of taking on “dangerous” subjects in a manner that avoids both the risk of antagonizing readers and the equally unhelpful pitfall of preaching to the choir.

This webinar is for writers who want to write confidently about sociopolitical issues they care about in their creative nonfiction.

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

JASWINDER BOLINA’S fourth poetry collection English as a Second Language and Other Poems is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in fall of 2023. His debut collection of essays Of Color was published by McSweeney’s in June 2020. His nonfiction has appeared at The Washington Post, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, The Poetry Foundation, and other outlets. His essays have also been featured in anthologies including the 14th edition of The Norton Reader, Language: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press), and Poets on Teaching (University of Iowa Press). He teaches on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

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