The Wedge: A Working Model for Nonfiction Storytelling

REGISTER NOW    $25.00

Learn a conceptual model for writing nonfiction to help you realize your vision.

What are we trying to accomplish when we write of our own experience? Beyond recounting what happened, how can we understand our past or current selves? Writing about a specific theme or subject, how do we make our experiences mean something new? By clearly understanding what we are trying to accomplish, and assessing the writing choices we have made and need to make, our work becomes better and more meaningful.  

In this webinar, we will consider different ways of thinking about what makes narrative work. What is the difference between telling what happened, and making an experience felt? What is the difference between a piece that is good, and one that changes our understanding of ourselves, of others, or of the world? 

We will explore a conceptual model for creative nonfiction craft adapted from the teaching of Ehud Havazalet that allows us to understand and name how our work is functioning (or not). We’ll also discover how the model might be applied, by close reading a short essay or two by Ira Sukrungruang and/or Joe Wilkins. 

We will then consider how this model might be tailored to our own intentions and tendencies as writers so that it works for each of us as we figure out what kind of writer we wish to be.

In this webinar, you will:

• LEARN different ways writers have attempted to define how narrative art works, and what the purpose of their writing
• DISCOVER the concept of the wedge as a conceptual model for fiction, and understand how that model can be adapted (and changed) to explore narrative nonfiction
• APPLY the wedge to understand how a piece of successful narrative memoir functions
• EXPLORE how the writing choices we make change depending on our intention and vision
• EXAMINE how this model, and the ways other writers conceive of narrative art, can help you realize your vision and intention in your work

This webinar is for…

• Writers who want to develop their artistic vision
• Writers interested in a conceptual model for successful narrative writing 
• Writers looking for a new way to think about the writing choices they have made, and need to make to revise and develop their work

Closed captioning is available ✔
All registrants receive the recording ✔

YOUR PRESENTER

MICHAEL COPPERMAN’S  prose has appeared in The Oxford-American, Guernica, The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, Boston Review, Salon, Gulf Coast, Triquarterly, Kenyon Review and Copper Nickel, among many others, and has won awards and garnered fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, Breadloaf Writers Conference, Oregon Literary Arts, and the Oregon Arts Commission. His memoir TEACHER: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi 2017), about the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta, was a finalist for the 2018 Oregon Book Award in CNF. His work is represented by David Dunton of Harvey Klinger.

Questions? Please email info@craft-talks.com