About:

A Labor of Love: A Life Spent Writing and Working with Mark Hernberg

This is a 6-meeting virtual class using the Zoom platform.

Tuesdays, Sept 3, 10, 17, 24, Oct 1, 8 

7-9 pm CT

About this class:

This 6-week course is designed as a hybrid format of literary discussion/lecture and creative writing workshop. It’s aimed at students who love reading about fascinating jobs, who want to learn how to write about their own work, and who want to approach their own creative writing practice with more intention, craft, and enthusiasm.

Students will be introduced to a variety of books, poems, and articles that delve into various fascinating jobs and aspects of work in our modern world, from memoirs like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential to poems like Phillip Levine’s What Work Is. We’ll use these pieces to discuss the craft of ‘work writing’: how do successful writers investigate their own ‘work’ and make it so evocative? How can their approaches be applied to our own writing?

Instructor bio:

Mark Hernberg spent nearly 15 years working as a corrosion engineer at power plants, pipelines, and military bases across the world; he is now a writer and stay-at-home dad living in Seattle, WA. He recently completed his MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana, where he taught undergraduate composition courses and a creative writing workshop. Mark has served as a poetry reader and non-fiction editor for CutBank Literary Magazine and is currently an Editorial Assistant at Poetry Northwest.

HND Value Statement

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota. However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally. Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University. To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities