4-WEEK WORKSHOP | Writing From Photographs: From Image to Essay
June 14 @ 3:00 pm – July 5 @ 4:30 pm EDT
Photographs are a powerful source for creative nonfiction. Learn practical approaches to bring them to life as scenes, draft an essay, and get personal feedback.
Limited to 12 memoirists, essayists, and creative nonfiction writers
Live On Zoom | Sundays, June 14 – July 5, 2026 | 3-4:30 pm eastern
Starting a nonfiction piece can often feel daunting, despite having stories and experiences you wish to tell. Memories may feel incomplete—and can be inaccurate. But photographs can inspire your process and provide a starting point for our writing, serving as an object, an image, and a memory touchstone. When used as prompts for our writing, pictures can become rich reservoirs of personal and cultural history. Drawing on photographs that intrigue, haunt, or conjure forgotten memories, this four-week course explores the rich possibilities that photographs can serve in prompting your nonfiction writing and developing your craft.
You’ll work with your own photographs, inspiring your writing with concrete moments to describe, reflect, and expand on. At the end of the four weeks, you’ll have a short essay or the start of a longer piece.
This small-group, workshop-format course will include instructor feedback on 1,000 words.
Over these three weeks, you will …
- LEARN techniques of nonfiction narrative, including writerly presence, details and description, and the art of scene-making
- DISCOVER how to use photographs to create richly imagined narrative nonfiction stories
- EXPLORE the possibilities of your own photographs as prompts for expressive essays and scenes
- EXPERIMENT with crafting and refining narrative nonfiction both individually and with guided workshopping
Schedule
- Week 1. Photographs and Stories
We will look at how writers find stories in photographs and consider the different approaches a photograph can prompt. Then we’ll experiment with low-stakes writing inspired by your own photographs. - Week 2: Incomplete Photographs
Explore how to turn a photograph into a scene, filling what is outside the frame and delving into memory and experience in the process. We will consider ways of crafting compelling descriptions and writerly presence. - Week 3. Expanding the Writing
Expanding on the work from Week 2, this week will focus on refining a draft of an essay. We will uncover ways of giving focus and depth to the developing piece towards a more richly textured draft. - Week 4. Revision and Critique
The final week offers guided group feedback, helping each other in thinking about directions for giving the writing a more solid frame and focus.
This course is for beginning and intermediate writers who want to
- explore elements of creative nonfiction that draw on memory and experience
- experiment with how photographs can prompt stories
- refine their prose style and techniques
- learn practical approaches to nonfiction storytelling
- have a pile of photographs to inform their memoir…but aren’t sure how to use them
Closed captioning is available. ✔
Think you might miss a class? No worries, replays will be available. ✔
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
James Polchin is a writer and cultural historian, and a clinical professor at New York University. He is the author of Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall, a finalist for an Edgar Award, and Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Slate, TIME, Huffington Post, CrimeReads, Paris Review, Rolling Stone, The New Inquiry, Brevity, and the Gay and Lesbian Review. He has been interviewed about his work by BBC4 Radio, NPR, Advocate, The American Scholar, CrimeReads, Bookforum, and Publishers Weekly, among others.
Testimonials from past students:
“He really created a transformative course. His insightful comments on everyone’s writing were really superb, encouraging revision while also providing inspiration and direction.”
“I appreciated the thoughtful feedback and helpful questions.”
“I was surprised by how much I was able to generate in a short time and in a way that felt fresh to me. The course opened up new pathways to consider.”
“Big thanks to James for a class that fed my writing and my heart.”
THE FINE PRINT
We understand that life can get in the way of your plans. We want you to be able to get the most out of your course, and our refund policy is designed to balance your need for flexibility with our deadlines and obligations to our teachers.
Before the first class, you may request a refund (less a $25 processing fee).
After class begins, you may request a refund for the remaining value of the course (less a $25 processing fee).
No credits or refunds will be available after the 1st class.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
