The Joys of Not Knowing:
A Memoir Workshop
Writing Workshop in New Jersey
January 15-18, 2027
Led by Catherine Pierce
In this supportive workshop, we’ll focus on creative nonfiction essays that turn their gaze outward while remaining deeply and idiosyncratically personal. We’ll identify subjects we’re particularly well-positioned to write about: our relationship to a bit of pop culture or a particular place, our perception of cultural attitudes toward job success, social structures and more. We’ll also read interesting contemporary pieces and discuss how to use their craft lessons in our own work. Through inspiring writing exercises and workshopping our essays-in-progress, we’ll learn how to turn our pieces into stories only we can write. This workshop is open to those who are brand new to creative nonfiction, and those who already have projects-in-progress.
*Limited to just 10 participants.*
“The workshop was an extremely supportive environment that yielded a lot of awesome writing for me. I loved the personality of everyone in the group and how welcoming and attentive everyone was to each other’s creative ideas.”
~ Chris, Brick, NJ
Catherine Pierce
Catherine Pierce is the author of the memoir-in-essays Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood (Northwestern University Press, 2026), as well as of five books of poems, including Dear Beast (Saturnalia, 2026). Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. From 2007-2024, she was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. She recently moved with her family to her home state of Delaware and founded Studio & Craft, an online poetry community through which she teaches workshops and offers manuscript consultations. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, Catherine served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.
