Creative Non-Fiction

This seminar will focus on journalism as an art form, especially as it regards social issues. Literary, investigative non-fiction came to flourish in the 1960s and continued; this course will explore that tradition with essays and articles. The class will operate like a magazine newsroom in which student writers will produce a high-quality story that goes through a deep editorial process. Narrative arc, storytelling, and thorough reporting will be emphasized, and themes might include race, class, and culture. Students will work on a single, long-form project throughout the semester. Enrollment is limited to 16 sophomores by application only.

Sample reading list:
Joan Didion,
Tom Wolfe
Janet Malcolm
Norman Mailer
Truman Capote
Katherine Boo

Reading/Writing assignments:
6-8 hours of preparation per week, consisting of reading, reporting, and writing. Throughout the semester students will work on a single, long-form project due at end of term. Drafts will be due on staggered deadlines every two to three weeks. Bi-weekly individual meetings with professor required.

Prerequisites and Restrictions:
Enrollment is not open to freshmen. Application instructions at journalism.princeton.edu/courses.

Other information:
Suki Kim is an investigative journalist, a novelist, and the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea. She is the author of the New York Times best seller Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite and the novel The Interpreter, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. Kim is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and her investigative reporting and non-fiction have appeared in Harper’s, the NYTimes, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Faculty

Headshot of Suki Kim

Suki Kim

Sections

S01

Mondays, 1:30-4:20 pm

Instructor(s)

Suki Kim