BRATTLEBORO — Writer Deborah Lee Luskin will be teaching a workshop in narrative nonfiction at Marlboro College Graduate School in the fall semester.
This 3-credit course is open to educators across the curriculum and to writers beginning or already engaged in a work of narrative nonfiction. It will meet on four Sundays (Sept. 20, Oct. 11, Nov. 15, and Dec. 13), from 12:30 to 6 p.m. at the Marlboro Graduate Center; all other work will take place online.
Students will learn the elements of good writing in all fields, including education, management, technology, science, social studies, history, and literature. They will study methods of discourse, rhetorical strategies, and argumentative logic while attending to diction, syntax, and structure. Also covered will be rules of evidence and citation, how to choose and control voice and point-of-view, and how to address different audiences in different formats.
Students will be expected to draft a sustained piece of expository prose, to be presented to the class. These presentations will become the basis for learning the Critical Response Process, Liz Lerman's multi-step, group system for giving and receiving useful feedback on creative works-in-progress.
Luskin is an award-winning novelist, a widely published essayist, regular VPR commentator, a blogger, and a seasoned educator who has been teaching writing for more than 30 years.
She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University, and has taught writing to a full spectrum of learners, from Ivy League freshmen to inmates in Vermont prisons. She is also a technical writer, who translates complex medical research into comprehensible prose.