A Four Week Workshop on the Art & Craft of Writing Personal Essays

Acclaimed author and instructor Marin Sardy is leading a four-week workshop on the art and craft of the personal essay. Explore the art of the personal essay, get extensive feedback on your writing, and learn the process of finding publication -- all with support from a successful author and instructor.

  • Four weeks of in-depth lessons on the art and craft of writing personal essays.

  • Detailed feedback on your writing from Marin Sardy.

  • Personal guidance on the process of finding publication.

  • Access to live office hours with all of our instructors, even after the course has finished.

  • Full access to our private community of writers, so you can network with your fellow students.

Explore the Art & Craft of the Personal Essay

With Critically Acclaimed Author Marin Sardy

You are invited to join Marin Sardy for a month-long workshop on the art and craft of writing the personal essay.

During this course, you will study the craft of writing the personal essay, so that you can share your story in the most meaningful and impactful way possible.

During this course, students will:

  • Practice the craft elements integral to personal essay writing.
  • Explore the possibilities inherent in the essay form.
  • Read and discuss work by writers like Joan Didion, Alexander Chee, and Claudia Rankine, looking to them for insights as we move into increasingly fluid, fragmentary, and innovative approaches to personal essay writing.
  • Consider topics ranging from scene building to finding resolution.
  • Discuss the writer’s practice, revision process, and paths to publication.

Ultimately, this course will strengthen and expand students’ sense of how an essayist can powerfully convey life experiences and also communicate their lasting emotional and symbolic significance.

Marin Sardy’s memoir was published by Pantheon, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Her essays have been published by Tin House, The New Yorker online and The Paris Review Daily, among many other places.

She is not just a successfully published author, she is also an experienced professor and writing teacher, who cares about connecting with students and helping them grow as writers.

Marin is offering extensive feedback on student writing, as a core part of this course. Each week, you will have the opportunity to submit work for feedback from Marin. She will give you detailed notes on up to 3 essays, totaling 5,000 words. She will also help you revise one essay, and guide you through the process of finding publication.

The course starts on Monday, September 5th and ends on Friday, September 30th. For those who need extra time, students will have a full six months to submit work for feedback. You will also be welcome to attend office hours after the course is officially over.

Because of the extensive personal feedback in this course, enrollment is strictly limited to 22 students. Once the course is filled, we will immediately close enrollment.

If you are planning on joining this course, I urge you to enroll right away.

About Marin Sardy


Marin Sardy is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia (Pantheon, 2019). Sardy’s book was excerpted in the New Yorker online and her essays have appeared in Tin House, Guernica, the Missouri Review, the Paris Review Daily, and many other journals, as well as in two award-winning photography books. Sardy has three times had her essays listed as “notable” in the Best American series and has been awarded residency fellowships at Hawthornden Castle and Catwalk Institute.


Workshop Schedule

The course starts on Monday, September 5th and ends on Friday, September 30th, 2022. The course comes with daily lessons you can study on your own time, and interaction with Marin Sardy. Everything is provided online, through the digital learning platform hosted by Thinkific.

Note that you will have up to six months after the course finishes to submit your writing for feedback. Also note that you will have access to office hours even after the course is complete.

  • Daily lessons, available to study any time on our online learning platform, hosted by Thinkific.

  • Personal feedback on every lesson via email, our online discussion platform, or our private Facebook Group.

  • Weekly opportunities to submit your work for detailed feedback from the instructor.

Enroll Now

Enrollment is strictly limited to 22 students.
The early bird tuition is available until Monday, August 22nd.

Reviews of This Course

5 star rating

Totally appropriate, and exactly what I needed.

Dee Knight

I loved this course. I only wish it could be longer. Every selection was interesting. The writing exercises were provocative and enjoyable. The feedback on my essay submissions were good and useful. I want more!! (That's because the essays I submi...

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I loved this course. I only wish it could be longer. Every selection was interesting. The writing exercises were provocative and enjoyable. The feedback on my essay submissions were good and useful. I want more!! (That's because the essays I submitted were early chapters of a book manuscript that is under review by a publisher. So any additional help could be very helpful to me.) While Marin's general concept of "the personal essay" doesn't always fit what I'm trying to do, everything she taught was useful to me, and very interesting. It there's a sequel, I would like to sign up!

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5 star rating

Inspiring and Instructive

Susan Cohen

Marin Sardy provides excellent examples and instruction on different essay writing techniques while encouraging writers to share their challenges and fears. Her feedback is tactful and clear, with a keen intuition on where a writer wants to go a...

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Marin Sardy provides excellent examples and instruction on different essay writing techniques while encouraging writers to share their challenges and fears. Her feedback is tactful and clear, with a keen intuition on where a writer wants to go and how to get there. Great class, highly recommended.

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5 star rating

Highly Recommend This Fantastic Workshop!

Dana Kinsey

Marin is a gifted and caring teacher, supplying exactly the right feedback to assist in revision. Her honesty was refreshing and her insight was valuable. I never take courses to learn what I'm doing right; I take them to learn the opposite. Th...

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Marin is a gifted and caring teacher, supplying exactly the right feedback to assist in revision. Her honesty was refreshing and her insight was valuable. I never take courses to learn what I'm doing right; I take them to learn the opposite. The pieces she chose as anchors inspired me to reach beyond my current style and really take some risks in terms of content and form. Her suggestions for publishers also proved super helpful. I could say much more, but I think it could be most telling to simply post a link (https://www.prose.onl/read/dana-kinsey) to the first piece I wrote with Marin that was actually published today, one week after the course ended. Without this workshop and Marin's expertise, it would not exist.

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5 star rating

Excellent Introduction to Different Types of Personal Essays

Mary Atkinson

Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop covered so much in a short time. She provided great examples of different ways to approach personal essays along with her insightful comments about them. I especially appreciated her emphasis on each writer's ...

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Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop covered so much in a short time. She provided great examples of different ways to approach personal essays along with her insightful comments about them. I especially appreciated her emphasis on each writer's personal process. We write to discover what we want to say and why and then dig deeper in revision. She is truly knowledgeable and passionate about the personal essay. I highly recommend her course!

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5 star rating

The Personal Essay with Marin Sardy

Isa De Quesada

Excellent...when I started I had no idea how to begin an essay and get it published. This course gave me the tools necessary to funnel my writing into an essay form. The structure of the course was incredibly helpful in organizing myself and my wr...

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Excellent...when I started I had no idea how to begin an essay and get it published. This course gave me the tools necessary to funnel my writing into an essay form. The structure of the course was incredibly helpful in organizing myself and my writing. I would love to take a level 2 Personal Essay Workshop with Marin.

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5 star rating

Excellent workshop

anneke campbell

Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop has been powerful, educational and fun. The workshop is very well organized in bite sized pieces with the right balance of reading, writing and exchange. I particularly appreciate her clarity and the fact that...

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Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop has been powerful, educational and fun. The workshop is very well organized in bite sized pieces with the right balance of reading, writing and exchange. I particularly appreciate her clarity and the fact that we have a half year to complete the work and get feedback. Highly recommended.

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5 star rating

Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Class

Linda Luther-Starbird

I very much enjoyed this class, and I learned that I liked personal essay much more than I had anticipated. This morning I read a review about using personal essay in memoir, which made it all the more interesting. Marin is a very good teacher. Sh...

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I very much enjoyed this class, and I learned that I liked personal essay much more than I had anticipated. This morning I read a review about using personal essay in memoir, which made it all the more interesting. Marin is a very good teacher. She was highly organized, had very useful readings and references for us, and her feedback/critique on my homework assignments was very helpful. I would recommend this class to anyone desiring to learn a new form, or to those already interested in personal essay.

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FAQ

  • What is the course schedule?

    The course starts on Monday, September 5th and ends on Friday, September 30th. Each week, we will release five lessons that you can study on your own time. These will be a mix of text-based lessons, recommended essays, and pre-recorded lectures. Each lesson comes with text-based discussion with the instructor and the class.

    At the end of each week, you will have the opportunity to submit an assignment to the instructor for in-depth feedback.

    There will also be two office hour sessions held via Zoom, which will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. They have not yet been scheduled.

    Note, that if you fall behind on the course, you will have a full six months to complete the course and submit your work for feedback from the instructor.

  • How much time will the course require?

    Overall, expect to spend around 30 minutes a day on the course. Some days will require less work, some days will require more.

    Lessons are released weekly, which gives you flexibility. Based on our experience with other courses, some students do the bulk of their work in one or two days each week, while others spend a little bit of time each day on our courses.

  • How many students will be allowed to enroll?

    Because of the personal feedback Marin is providing, the workshop is strictly limited to 22 students. Once we reach that number we will immediately close enrollment.