The Art of the Reported Essay

The Art of the Reported Essay is a 6-week-long workshop with award-winning writer and researcher Lauren Markham. The class will take place on Zoom on Tuesdays from October 7 until November 11 from 5 to 7 p.m. PST. Each participant will be able to submit one (1) piece of writing for workshop and receive written feedback from the instructor.

The essay is a capacious form with infinite possibility. Perhaps my favorite kind of essay to write and to read is the reported essay—a category that contains multitudes in and of itself, but that generally involves a combination of looking inward and outward, of faithfully reporting the facts while also ruminating upon their meaning. Sometimes this is a journalistic pursuit, but one could just as easily write a reported essay about the town they grew up in, their family, or some sociopolitical dynamic that implicates or involves the writer. In this class, through discussion of published works, our own work in progress, and the alchemy of turning fact into art, we’ll work on becoming better readers, writers, planners, and, yes, reporters of the reported essay. Each participant will be invited to submit a piece of writing of roughly 3,000 words for workshop or, if preferred, an outline of a piece they’d like to write for feedback and planning support.

This workshop is $480. Registration closes on September 30 at 11:59 p.m. PST. For more information, please contact workshops@lareviewofbooks.org.

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Lauren Markham is a writer based in California whose work regularly appears in outlets such as Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and the critically acclaimed A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025.