This course is designed for writers at all stages of their careers to dedicate time and space to writing through illness either in a fictional or creative nonfictional exploration of experiences of the mind and/or the body. We will engage in the close reading of texts that are committed to this work, including narratives by Audre Lorde, Mieko Kawakami, Melissa Febos, Yiyun Li, Akhil Sharma, Meghan O’Rourke, and Leslie Jamison.
We will have weekly in-class writing exercises based on the selected readings to begin the practice of saying the unsaid and learning to put language to our experiences either in fiction or creative nonfiction.
Jenessa Abrams is a writer, literary translator, and practitioner of Narrative Medicine. Her fiction, literary criticism, and creative non-fiction has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Tin House, Electric Literature, Guernica, BOMB Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Public Library, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA in fiction and literary translation. She has taught writing at Columbia University, Catapult, Rutgers University, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center.
Jenessa is new to The Porch. Welcome!
