The Writer's Studio: Under the Fire-Snakes: Creative Nonfiction through Meditation

The Writer’s Studio is a free workshop series open to all students from all majors. Come study the art of writing in intensive, fun, hands-on workshops with dynamic faculty from the Creative Writing program, the Stanford Storytelling Project, and others. You will leave with an expanded understanding of what your writing can do.

In this workshop, you will learn and practice a number of creative and contemplative exercises to help quiet the ego, reduce distracting mental chatter, and sharpen the observer mind as you write, read, and compress short excerpts of memoir, reporting, lyric essay, or other forms of creative nonfiction. In one exercise, you will practice close, sustained, and non-judging observation of others engaged in simple tasks. In another, called the Sensory Camera, you will strive to render observable or recalled phenomena in their barest perceptible attributes, stripped to the degree possible of conscious interpretation.

Andrew Todhunter is Co-Director of Stanford’s Senior Reflection creative capstone program, a lecturer in Biology, and a Co-Founder of the Stanford LifeWorks program. He has written for the Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of three books, including the PEN USA award winning A Meal Observed. A climber, diver, and sea kayaker, he has practiced meditation for more than twenty years and incorporates meditation and wilderness training into many of his courses at Stanford.

This workshop is open to all Stanford students from all majors. Join us on Zoom (Stanford login required).