This class focuses on writing about how we spend our working lives. Often, the funniest—and most poignant—stories we tell our friends are about the jobs we’ve done to make money. But there are also stories to be told about our unpaid work: emotional labor, the caretaking of friends and family, housework, and “adulting.” 

Over the course of five weeks, we will read and write micro-memoirs about some of these experiences.

This class will also encourage writers to experiment with creative forms on the page: we will find new ways to tell stories we’ve told a thousand times before as well as stories we’re telling for the very first time.

***Please Note: This class is asynchronous, which means that there are no live video meetings. The course is fully online, remote, and conducted through email. We do not meet together on Zoom; you work at your own pace within weekly deadlines. If you are looking for a class that takes place on Zoom, contact me to get on my mailing list for future real-time options.***

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Dates

Five weeks, June 1st to July 6th, 2021.

Cost of Full Class

$50-$250, sliding scale. Pay what you can afford. I am also happy to offer two scholarship spots in this class (indicate your interest on the sign-up sheet). Participants will engage with weekly class readings and prompts, receive personalized feedback on your writing from the instructor, and participate in a weekly feedback exchange with other writers in the class. 

Too busy to give and receive feedback? Consider the auditing option.

Audit Option: You can sign up as an auditor for $50 and receive all of the material each week and work at your own pace independently. Feedback from classmates and instructor is not part of this option—you’ll be flying solo.

Audit + Feedback Option: For an additional $75 ($125 total), you can submit a portfolio of up to ten pages of your writing from the class for written feedback from the instructor when the class ends on July 6th, 2021. During the class itself, you’ll be emailed the material and work independently. There is no peer exchange of feedback in the Audit + Feedback option, just feedback from the instructor at the end of the class. (The portfolio must be submitted to the instructor by July 6th at the latest; you’ll receive feedback on your portfolio within two weeks.)

Sign up for Micro-Memoirists Write about Work

What will we write about?

Your first job, your worst job, the job where you met your best friend. Unpaid work and care work like parenting, caretaking, community organizing, cooking for yourself, cleaning your home, and assisting elders. The dream job off in the distance, the dream job you have, workplace discrimination and harassment, unions, being unemployed, being “funemployed,” being self-employed, the family business, sex work, working outside, working a “sit-down job,” sick days, being paid under the table, uniforms, the job hunt, bosses, co-workers, answering the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?,” heart work, vocation and avocation, “working for a living,” career changes, customers, family leave, minimum wage and the Fight for $15, being an “essential worker,” working from home, the work of writing, being an artist with a day job, and more.

All participants will sign an agreement that they will not share the work of others outside of the class.

Student Responsibilities:

• Each Thursday morning, you will receive a short reading in your inbox and a prompt for your writing assignment.
• You will have five days to turn in your writing (600-1,200 words) by each Tuesday at midnight.
• Each Wednesday morning, you will be placed in a group with two other writers. You will read their micro-memoirs and give them casual feedback. In turn, you will receive feedback from your group and the instructor. (The weekly deadline for feedback is each Thursday night with a grace period until the weekend.)

Time Commitment: Expect to spend at least 3-6 hours per week on this class, though some students have spent up to 10 hours a week on reading, writing, and responding to classmates.

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Who is teaching this class? 

Freesia McKee is a writer, teacher, writing coach, and editor. She’s taught writing classes at Florida International University, Johnson & Wales University, the Loft Literary Center, and independently. Since May of 2020, more than 75 students have participated in Freesia’s online micro-memoir classes. Freesia is author of the poetry chapbook How Distant the City. Her writing has recently appeared in the Grabbed Anthology, Cleaver Magazine, Pandemic Meditations, k’in, Zone 3, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and elsewhere. Freesia is the essays editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog.