Learn to write and revise a Hermit Crab essay from the teacher who coined the term, and have fun generating new and surprising work!

For Creative Nonfiction, Personal Essay and Memoir

The “Hermit Crab” essay, Brenda Miller writes in Tell It Slant, borrows a form that already exists in the world to tell a personal story. Like the hermit crab creatures themselves, these essays need a found shell to contain their vulnerable underbellies. 

In this webinar, Brenda Miller will show how you can find your own shells and use them to coax out material that otherwise might not have found its way. She will provide powerful examples and guide you in a fun and inspiring writing practice to generate new and unexpected material. She will also describe revision approaches and submission strategies for these innovative essays.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• LEARN how to identify and use the Hermit Crab essay form in your own work. 
• DISCOVER how to select compelling “shells” for Hermit Crab essays.
• STUDY the relationship between form and content. 
• PRACTICE writing techniques that coax out new material by working within borrowed forms.
• LEARN specific revision strategies for refining Hermit Crab essays. 

This webinar is ideal for writers who…

• Need a little “spark” in their writing practice
• Want to explore and experiment with new forms
• Find themselves challenged in writing difficult material.

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Brenda Miller is the author of six essay collections, most recently A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form (University of Michigan Press, 2021). Her book of collaborative essays with Julie Marie Wade, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Award for an essay collection and was published in 2021. She co-authored Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction  (Third Edition 2019) and The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World. Her poetry chapbook, The Daughters of Elderly Women, received the 2020 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her work has received seven Pushcart Prizes. She is a Professor Emerita at Western Washington University, where she taught creative writing for 25 years.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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