The Nonfiction Journey: From the Idea to the Page
Michael Signer
Five Fridays:
May 31 - June 28, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Price: $120 ($110 members)
Books:
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide, Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, ed.
Additional reading will be provided by the instructor
This class is now fully enrolled. Email mravenscroft@politics-prose.com to be added to the waitlist.
REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.
This five-week workshop is designed for students with an idea for a serious work of nonfiction who are looking to bring that idea to the professionally printed page. The course will help students actively examine several different aspects of nonfiction, including: inspiration and goals; developing an authorial voice; narrative and structure; and characters and protagonists. One session will also focus on practical aspects of book publishing—developing book proposals, and finding agents and publishers. The course will concentrate on “trade” nonfiction books—commercial, book-length works for a general audience—as opposed to academic or industry-specific books.
The course is designed as a discussion-intensive workshop. Each week will include optional short readings (under 50 pages), which will be provided by the instructor. Students should be prepared to bring in and discuss at least one idea for a work of nonfiction. Hopefully, each idea will advance toward a book proposal by the conclusion of the class.
We will have one assigned text, from which we will do short readings each week: Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, ed., Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide (New York: Plume, 2007). Other readings will be short excerpts from texts (usually 5-10 pp) and will be emailed to students as PDFs. Students will receive more detailed readings upon registering for the class.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Michael Signer is the author of Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) and is at work on the forthcoming Becoming Madison: The Making of an American Statesman, to be published by PublicAffairs. He is the author of essays, opinion pieces, and book reviews in venues including The Washington Post, The New Republic, Dissent, USA Today, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, and The Richmond Times-Dispatch. He is Managing Principal of Madison Law & Strategy Group, PLLC, and a Visiting Professor at Virginia Tech’s Government and International Affairs program in Alexandria, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley; a J.D. from the University of Virginia; and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University. He and his wife live in Virginia.
