Advanced Nonfiction: Writing Biography

The biography is one of the most popular and enduring genres of nonfiction writing. This course teaches students the skills needed to bring people to life through biographical writing. Students read excerpts from different types of biography—scholarly, popular, and experimental—as well as read about the process of writing biography. Students practice interviewing, learn about accessing archival resources, and work on aspects of prose and style that bring characters to life. Students work to complete one chapter of a biography in progress. By the end of the course, students have the skills to enhance all their nonfiction writing projects, making them more marketable to editors and agents and more engaging to readers.