The Art of the Reported Essay is a 6-week-long workshop with award-winning writer and researcher Lauren Markham. The class will take place on Zoom on Tuesdays from October 7 until November 11 from 5 to 7 p.m. PST. Each participant will be able to submit one (1) piece of writing for workshop and receive written feedback from the instructor.

The essay is a capacious form with infinite possibility. Perhaps my favorite kind of essay to write and to read is the reported essay—a category that contains multitudes in and of itself, but that generally involves a combination of looking inward and outward, of faithfully reporting the facts while also ruminating upon their meaning. Sometimes this is a journalistic pursuit, but one could just as easily write a reported essay about the town they grew up in, their family, or some sociopolitical dynamic that implicates or involves the writer. In this class, through discussion of published works, our own work in progress, and the alchemy of turning fact into art, we’ll work on becoming better readers, writers, planners, and, yes, reporters of the reported essay. Each participant will be invited to submit a piece of writing of roughly 3,000 words for workshop or, if preferred, an outline of a piece they’d like to write for feedback and planning support.

This workshop is $480. Registration closes on September 30 at 11:59 p.m. PST. For more information, please contact workshops@lareviewofbooks.org.

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Monday, June 9th - Sunday, June 15th, 2025, Moraga, California

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The Storyboard Residency is an immersive week of generative workshops, craft seminars and literary events organized to give writers new ideas, proven research methods and fresh ways of approaching their fact-based creative projects. Whether you’re an experienced writer or someone just conceptualizing their first project, Storyboard provides the time and space necessary to develop, plan, revise  and reflect upon your idea, your craft, and the path to publication.  

This residential intensive promises deeper connections with fellow writers working at the intersection of research, reporting and imagination—and editors who help those projects find an audience. 

Your days and nights at the residency will include:  Four, two-hour generative workshops geared toward revision and generating new work; Daily craft talks and presentations that shed light on new ways of approaching research, reporting, storytelling, ethics and language; A manuscript consultation (up to 3,000 words) with a leading writer or editor; Panels with writers and editors to demystify the publication and editorial processes, understand how to plan and fund our research, and build stamina for a long-haul creative endeavor; Conversations with writers, filmmakers and visual artists on their work, how it was made, and its reverberations in the world; Ample time for writing, reading, reflecting and connecting with faculty and your fellow participants 

Why Storyboard? 

Writing a creative work rooted in facts is a long-term project that requires a blend of inspiration and discipline, spontaneity and process, isolation and co-conspiracy. 

The goal is for this six-day period to catalyze the next steps in your research, writing and creation.  

This residency is for experienced journalists looking to expand their work into an artful, book-length project'; creative writers (fiction writers, memoirists, poets, etc) looking to infuse their art with reporting or research methods; academics looking to broader their writing to a more general audience ; writers knee-deep in an ambitious, long-form writing project looking for community, guidance and inspiration; writers at the early stages of a  project who need support figuring out how to chart a path forward; writers who didn’t attend an MFA or journalism program and who are looking for structure and support for their project; anyone working in isolation on an ambitious, fact-based writing project who is seeking community and connection 

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