In this creative nonfiction course, we will explore the essay as a means of interrogating ourselves and our world through learning and reading about experimental, hybrid forms. This writing style combines traditional essay writing with the craft of storytelling. Your essays will be personal, creative, and exploratory, and you will need to be open to reimagining what an essay is or can be. To do this, we will read a wide assortment of narrative braids including essays, excerpts of memoirs, and even fiction written in this innovative form, learning to understand how and why we might read prose the way a musician listens to a fugue. We will explore the work of authors who weave together multiple stories as they write, creating essays with rhythms, layers, and textures. An author might examine the color red in order to better understand the stigmas surrounding dyslexia, or they may research plasma in the universe in order to tell the story of their survival of a mass shooting. Many of the selections we read will be about the processing of trauma. We will write narrative braided essays incorporating research into interrogations of pressing issues and stories of your own life. The essays will increase in length as we write, and you will complete one formal revision and expansion for your final project. We will convene online synchronously to discuss readings and each other’s writing, and as this is a course with a heavy workshop component, we will work in small teams to workshop and critique each other’s essays.