Personal Essay CLAS

Stevi Quate

Let’s Play

A Unit of Study on the

Personal Essay

Stevi Quate

Looking in my head….

Inquiry

Teacher as writer

and inquirer

Authenticity: what do writers do?

Stevi Quate

The personal essay

Stevi Quate

Best Guesses: What is a

personal essay?

Stevi Quate

Immersion

Stevi Quate

What is the Personal Essay?

Stevi Quate

A type of creative nonfiction

~Annie Dillard

Stevi Quate

…presents the reader with one person’s view on some aspect of

human experience. Katherine Paterson

Stevi Quate

…the most important form of nonfiction. It allows an individual writer to speak to individual readers.

--Donald Murray

Stevi Quate

What about the essay?

Stevi Quate

"One damned thing after another: a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.” Huxley

Stevi Quate

"an irregular, indigested piece, not a regular and orderly performance.” Samuel Johnson

Stevi Quate

Edward Hoagland: essay as a"greased pig."

Stevi Quate

The essay is, and has been, all over the map. There's nothing you cannot do with it; no subject matter is forbidden, no structure is proscribed. You get to make up your own structure every time, a structure that arises from the materials and best contains them. The material is the world itself, which, so far, keeps on keeping on.(Introduction to The Best American Essays 1988, Ticknor & Fields)

Stevi Quate

What it’s not• A

personal narrative

• A memoir

Stevi Quate

Idea Generating

Stevi Quate

Stephen King on writing:

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart.

Stevi Quate

Stephen King on writing:

You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world.

Stevi Quate

Stephen King on writing:

Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

Stevi Quate

Give it a go

Stevi Quate

https://sites.google.com/site/quatereadwriteworkshop

Stevi Quate

Stevi Quate