How To Revise Nonfiction Essays

The goal of this class is for you to receive a revision toolkit that will energize and motivate you onto the best path forward for your work of nonfiction.

Tyler Mills
$175

  • June 28, 2025 (one day)
  • Saturday, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm EST
  • On Zoom
  • Students: 12

    Have you ever sat with a draft of an essay or a chapter of a memoir in-progress and thought, “What now?” Or have you received feedback on a piece but can’t seem to find a way to re-enter your own story and implement your ideas? In this one-day intensive, we’ll focus on craft strategies for revising a work of nonfiction. You will bring a draft of an essay or a chapter of a memoir to work on. The goal of this class is for you to receive a revision toolkit that will energize and motivate you onto the best path forward for your work of nonfiction. We will talk about nonfiction revision tips and pitfalls, you will rework sections of your piece keeping craft elements in mind through guided prompts, and you will receive verbal feedback.

    What You Will Learn

    In this revision workshop, you'll learn about and rewrite passages of your memoir chapter or essay at the level of the sentence, the persona, and the overall arc. You'll receive craft techniques, revise sections of your writing, and receive verbal feedback on your work in small groups. Note: please bring a previously drafted memoir chapter or essay to this workshop, either printed out or on an electronic device with editing capabilities.

    Who Should Take This Class?

    Nonfiction writers interested in revision.

      Instructor

      Tyler Mills

      Writing Institute Instructor

      Tyler Mills (she/her) is a poet, essayist, and educator. Her memoir The Bomb Cloud (Unbound Edition Press 2024) earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was awarded a Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC Literature Award and has been excerpted in AGNI, Brevity, Bennington Review, River Teeth, and The Rumpus, and won the Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize in Prose. Her poetry guidebook, Poetry Studio: Prompts for Poets, was published with University of Akron Press in June 2024.She is also the author of the poetry books City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize and New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her poems have appeared widely including in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, the Kenyon Review, and Poetry; won magazine awards from Gulf Coast, the Crab Orchard Review, and Third Coast; and been featured in the Academy of American Poets “Poem-a-Day” digital series. Her visual work has been shown in the Piano Roll Project, Bates Mill Complex and published in Poetry and Tupelo Quarterly. She has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and her work has appeared in a number of anthologies internationally and nationally, most recently in the forthcoming Poems from Pandemia published by the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, Ireland, as well as the Golden Shovel Anthology.Tyler Mills holds degrees from Bucknell University (BA), the University of Maryland (MFA), and the University of Illinois-Chicago (PhD). Her creative dissertation was awarded the UIC Graduate College Outstanding Thesis Award (Arts and Humanities). The recipient of residencies from Yaddo, Ragdale, the Women’s International Study Center of Santa Fe, the Bethany Arts Center, and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Tyler Mills teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center’s 24PearlStreet and lives in Brooklyn, on part of the unceded homeland of the Lenape people.

      Register for $175
      Anything Tyler teaches, I am in—be it poetry, memoir, or lyrical essay. She provides the most engaging prompts, her lectures stimulate rich discussions, and her thoughtful feedback goes to the writing’s heart, setting the writer ready to move the poem or piece to the next level. In short, all of Tyler's workshops I have attended have been enriching beyond expectations.
      Former Student
      Tyler Mills exemplifies the best qualities in a teacher of poetry. She is a fountain of information about craft and innovation. She is an encourager, building her students confidence by highlighting their strengths. Beyond that, she is an astute editor that importantly, gives feedback that amplifies the poet’s unique voice. Her wise counsel about the business of poetry and getting published has been life changing for me.
      Former Student
      I’ve really seen myself grow in terms of ability to produce self reflective pieces; things like focusing on carnal details, allowing myself to be vulnerable, and experimenting with dialogue has helped expand my writing tool kit.
      Former Student