Telling true stories. Narrative writing with Mark Kramer

Plenary session and workshop

Telling true stories. Narrative writing with Mark Kramer

Prof. Mark Kramer, coming from Boston, is one of the founders and main organizers of "narrative journalism" networks in the United States and around the world. He started and directed for 20+ years, the major American conference on the subject, first at Boston University and then at Harvard. He has taught the subject for 40+ years, and was 'writer-in-residence' at Smith College and Boston University for a decade each, and was founding director of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard. He has authored non-fiction books and a methodological guidebook, Telling True Stories among his other works.

His talk will describe the narrative journalism movement in the USA since the 1960s, and the history and place of this sub-genre in news-offerings and in literature. He will also describe the methodology and rationale of the work, with many examples. He has sent us a selection of his articles about the genre that we will pass on to you. He suggests that our conversation with him will be much more interesting and can be relevant to the work of the attending faculty if you have read these.

The first day will include this presentation of the narrative nonfiction approach and our shared discussion of it. The informal session will be open to all researchers. The second day will be devoted to the master class. It will be open only to those comfortable with working in English. We are hoping for some active participants, and also welcome onlookers. It will be especially interesting if some members have sample texts of a few pages --an informal essay or description of a revealing incident. That is not necessary though, as we can also produce small in-session 'writing-prompt' texts during the session. The goal will be to demonstrate some basic principles of writing relevantly --and vividly. Kramer has offered this workshop in many universities to faculty contemplating 'crossover books' for public consumption.

Telling true stories

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