THERESA LIN

92NY

February-April 2026

What makes for a compelling personal essay? According to literary critic and essayist Vivian Gornick, the author must know who they are at the point of telling the story. In other words, who is the speaker? The speaker is separate from who you are in the present. While you, the author, might have come to certain understandings about a moment in your life, the speaker is still searching for the answers. Gornick also distinguishes between "the situation" (the events) and "the story" (the emotional journey) that comprise the personal essay. Who is your speaker? What is their emotional journey in this specific essay? Through Gornick's lens, we will read a series of personal essays, as well as excerpts from memoirs and even reality fiction in order to better understand the relationship between these three essential components: speaker, situation, and story.

**What Makes an** **Archive**

Henry Luce Foundation, 2026

**Operation Fiction Writer**

Witness Magazine, 2025

**Artifice in Memoir, An Interview with Anelise Chen**

Hyphen Magazine, 2025

**Constance Tsang by Theresa Lin**

BOMB Magazine, 2025

**Taylor Fritz is the Final Boss**

Racquet Magazine, 2025

**Radioactive Memory: What I Didn’t Say About Fukushima**

Off Assignment, 2024
Gold Winner Environmental Writing, Solas Awards

**An Interview with Off Assignment,**

2024

**The Trash Collector: On John Waters’s Imperfect Cinema**

The Los Angeles Review of Books, 2023

**Why I Love Reading Other People’s Diaries**

*Oh Reader, 2023*

**On Vintage Magnate Albert Gonzales**

Claremont Courier, 2023

**QQinwen on the Come-Up**

*Racquet Magazine, 2022*

**What Is Beautiful**

*Random Sample Review, 2022*

**The Cult of Togetherness**

*Published by Storm Cellar Magazine, 2022; Shortlisted for the Creative Nonfiction Award by CRAFT Literary Magazine; Shortlisted for the David TK Wong Fellowship, Spring 2022*

**Capturing The Invisible**

*The Smart Set, 2021*

**The Future of Armenian Literature**

h-pem, 2019

**Velvet Revolution Ends Soviet Inertia**

Trunthout, 2018

The Center for Fiction

Summer 2024 and 2025

While the facts in nonfiction cannot change, our structural decisions dramatically inform their context and impact. In this 8-week course, we will chart the progression of various works by pioneers of the form. We will practice reverse engineering existing literary structures that participants may adapt for their own essays or memoirs.

CONTACT

For any inquiries, please email
TLIN097@GMAIL.COM