How do artists and writers sustain creative lives—and what does it mean to actually understand and articulate the choices behind your practice?This literary seminar takes an experiential approach to the essay as a living form. We will begin where the essay began: with the great practitioners who established personal writing as art form, cultural criticism, and intellectual inquiry. Building on that foundation, we will examine how contemporary artists across disciplines theorize their own creative processes—solitude versus community, spirituality versus justice-oriented practice, neurotypical assumptions versus neurodiverse innovation—and what it means to make work in the digital age.Through close reading, critical discussion, and creative response, students will develop frameworks for understanding their own practice and the language to speak about it. We will also ask: what can you pitch, publish, or sell? For writers, this means engaging seriously with the personal essay marketplace and the forms editors want. For all students, it means learning to articulate a creative philosophy compelling enough to travel—into applications, proposals, and beyond.Whether you work in words, images, objects, or space, this course will deepen how you think about why and how you make—and sharpen your ability to express it. Students will deliver class presentations and complete critical and creative assignments, including an artist's statement.

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