The literary journalism class will feature what is sometimes called New Journalism or literary nonfiction. It is journalism practiced with a literary twist. Both literature and journalism attempt to show the human condition through the written word. The difference is that literature is fictional while journalism is nonfictional. In literary journalism, the best of both worlds are united – literature’s style and forms with journalism’s emphasis on facts and contemporary ideas. Literary journalism has several prevalent forms, including nonfiction narrative, travel writing and the reflective essay. Literary journalism mimics several literary genres, including the novel, autobiography and history.

In this class, you will report in-depth and tell stories in an engaging, more literary fashion than in tradition news-writing classes, with an eye toward getting your articles printed in magazines. You will write intensively, with weekly assignments – some in class, some out of class. You will also choose one literary journalists to become on expert on; you will write a personality profile of that author based on a live interview and present him/her to the class; and you will write a final project examining some topic, issue or phenomenon in depth.

We will also sample the words of some of history’s greatest literary journalists. Among the writers that the class will study are Tracy Kidder, David Simon, Jon Krakauer, John McPhee, William Least Heat Moon, H.L. Mencken, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, John Hersey, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Gary Smith, Hunter Thompson, Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Ernie Pyle, Jimmy Breslin, Mike Royko, Annie Dillard, Arundhati Roy, Susan Orlean, Scott Sanders, Wendell Berry, Walker Percy, Studs Terkel, David Halberstam and Tom Wolfe – to name a few.