Theme and Variation: Repeating Forms in Nonfiction [Liza Birnbaum]

All Levels | How might deliberate formal repetitions shape a book and its inquiries? In this reading-centered class, we’ll explore Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had, Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies, Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, and Paisley Rekdal’s Appropriate, each of which uses a particular constraint or structure to generate a series of essays. We’ll pay close attention to the ways that form both arises from and influences content, how patterning relates to experimentation, and how these authors might influence our own writing.