CREATIVE WRITING COURSES

Cecilia Fernandez

Subject U: Memoir and First-Person Narratives

6 weeks: Tuesdays, June 14 - July 19, 2011, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
$125 (Current MDC faculty and credit students: $100)

Course will take place at Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus

Want to register? Click here for instructions and registration form.

This course will explore the basics of writing first-person narratives and examine the differences between the personal essay, memoir, and creative or literary nonfiction. We will write five short pieces, including opinion or personal essays, slice-of-life pieces, childhood memoir, stories about other people, reported stories in the first person. Our writing will offer tantalizing views of our inner selves while shedding light on the larger world around us. We will read and discuss student work in class. We will also read the work of writers whose first-person narratives provide examples of writing to be emulated.

You will learn:
· How to find a narrative voice to weave throughout your writing
· How to tell a personal story  
· How to tell someone else’s story
· How to know what to leave in and what to leave out.

Please bring to the first class: three short ideas, no more than two or three sentences, describing personal essays you would like to write. Bring three other short ideas describing personal essays you would never consider writing in a million years, because they’re too shameful, would hurt too many people, would destroy your career, etc.

Cecilia Fernandez is an independent journalist with a passion for immigrant literature. Her work has appeared in Latina Magazine, Accent Miami, Upstairs at the Duroc, Vista Magazine, and Le Siecle de George Sand. Recently, she finished a memoir entitled Leaving Little Havana which was selected as a finalist in the 2011 Bakeless Literary Prizes book competition. She has been a reporter for The Stockton Record, The San Francisco Chronicle, and for the television stations WPBT, WSVN, WSCV, and WLTV.  Cecilia earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, an MA in English Literature from the University of Miami, and a BA in Journalism from the University of California.
 

Date and Time
Tuesdays
June 14 - July 19, 2011
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Fee
$125, pre-registration required
(Current MDC faculty staff and students: $100)

 

This is a Community Education (non-credit) course.

Want to register? Click here for instructions and registration form.