The Self and the World: Deepening the Personal Narrative through Research and Reportage

ONDEMAND WEBINAR DESCRIPTION:

The essay and the memoir have always been capacious forms but we’ve seen, in the last two decades, a real shift as essayists and memoirists look outward at historical and cultural contexts and pressures on their personal journeys. This OnDemand webinar will explore strategies for incorporating research and reportage in the personal essay and/or the memoir with an eye to deepening and enriching narratives. Hasanthika will particularly focus on archival research and techniques, and strategies, for using interviews and immersion experiences.

INSTRUCTOR BIO: 

Hasanthika Sirisena has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and is a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award recipient. Their short story collection The Other One won the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was released in 2016. Their essay collection Dark Tourist (The Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books 2021) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.