Graduation Date: May 2019

Academic programs: Major: Writing   Minor: English 

Faculty mentor: Professor Katie Marks, Writing Department

The lyric essay is a sub-genre of creative nonfiction: it is an experimental, avant-garde essay that doesn't follow a straight and/or single line of narrative or logic. Despite evidence of the lyric essay being around since the origins of the essay itself, it has only been a recognized category of writing for a few decades. This has caused many writers in the literary community to be unaware that this innovative essay exists, let alone how to write or distinguish it from other creative nonfiction. 

This project was designed to not only research, analyze, define and create lyric essays, but also find a way to teach them to fellow Ithaca Writing major students. In it, I constructed a class curriculum and class syllabus for a possible lyric essay class, as well as a lyric essay collection titled "Little, Sharp, Dangerous Things."