Anyone who takes writing classes sooner or later encounters the concept of 'emotional truth,' along with the advice to “Lie to tell the truth.” Another variation: “What matters is not what happened.”
Another variation (from Keats): “Beauty is truth… that is all ye need to know.” Still another: “The fact that something happened is the worst possible rationale for putting it in a poem.” That last statement came from a poetry mentor of mine, though I wonder if he would have given that advice in a nonfiction writing class.
The reason capital “T” emotional truth is emphasized over small “t” literal truth has to do with the mission of the artist. Artists, unlike news reporters or scientists, must move their audience emotionally from point A to point B. The mission is always the same, yet the method of accomplishing it differs (as it should) among various genres, especially when it comes to nonfiction. This will be a dynamic workshop on how emotional truth is successfully (and unsuccessfully) produced in multiple genres, with examples, exercises, discussion, and reading suggestions.
DIANA GOETSCH is a poet, essayist, and journalist, author of eight collections of poems, dozens of nonfiction features and columns, and the acclaimed memoir This Body I Wore, listed among Memoirs that Changed a Generation at Oprah Daily. She’s written for The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Times. Her work has also appeared in The Iowa Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, LitHub, Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Yaddo, and The New School, where she was the Grace Paley Teaching Fellow.
