Going There
Fernanda Santos
DATE TBA
Price: $60
Labels: We accept them, embrace them and at times make adjustments to who we are to adapt to them. We don’t usually stop to think about their true meaning, though. We don’t often consider how reductive or simplistic they can be. One of the necessary steps for writing honestly and memorably is getting past the definitions attached to the labels that are used to identify us and discovering who we truly are. In this workshop, participants will engage in a generative exercise to uncover their true selves and then discover how they might use that to empower their writing. We will then use the annotated versions of two of the instructor’s recent essays to explore ways to turn deeply personal experiences into universal stories.
Participants will receive a free 90-day trial to By Fernanda Santos, a Substack newsletter about writing and life (valued at $21). Link to activate will be given after registration.
Recommended readings (annotated versions will be shared in the workshop):
“Who will wear my dead husband’s clothes?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/sunday/death-husband-grief.html
“I didn’t see the insidious ways women are held back — until I became a widow”
Fernanda Santos is an immigrant, mother and writer who believes in the transformative power of a well-told story. She is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post; a co-writer for “¡Americano!,” a musical that’s opening Off Broadway in April; and a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, teaching narrative writing and bilingual reporting. Fernanda joined the Cronkite faculty in 2017 after a long career in newspapers, including 12 years at The New York Times. Her first book, “The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots,” published by Flatiron Books, received the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Book; she is currently at work on a memoir. Fernanda is vice president of The Sauce Foundation, created in memory of her husband to raise money for pancreatic cancer research and journalism scholarships for first-generation college students.