Radical Revision The first time I flew on a plane, my luggage was lost. I left Boston when it was ninety degrees, sunny, and humid, and I remember I spent weeks picking out the perfect traveling outfit: something comfortable but … Continue reading →

In Journalism, there’s this thing they teach us called the inverted pyramid. A writer must start with the most broad, important details because it’s almost guaranteed everyone will read the first sentence. However, the details that are more specific must … Continue reading →

Final Project from Kelly Danckert on Vimeo.

Jonathan Kern creates a set of rules to follow when writing for reading on the air, and one of the most important things to keep in mind when reading for the air is to read slowly so that people have … Continue reading →

Alduous Huxley points out three poles of reference for the various poles of essays: the “personal,” the “concrete-particular,” and the “abstract-universal” (88). He claims that each essayist tends to have one pole they are most comfortable with, and that it is … Continue reading →

Benson believes the true essayist is not “concerned with discovering a theory” but rather concerned with “observing, recording, interpreting, just as things strike him, and letting his fancy play over their beauty and significance; the end of it all being … Continue reading →

The essay has always been a very personal genre, with the writer being able to honestly reflect on an idea that more often than not strikes a chord in someone else. In Leslie Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams,” it’s so clear … Continue reading →

Joan Didion’s essay opens on an incredibly personal note: a confession of sorts of why she and who the reader assumes to be her significant other, broke up. It’s a snapshot of her life at a single moment in time; … Continue reading →