The Muse & the Marketplace 2017

One of the more intriguing nonfiction forms to have developed in recent decades is the “microhistory”: research-based writing that takes as its subject a single cultural expression, phenomenon, or thing. Well-known work of this type includes The Story of Sushi by Trevor Corson and A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom. Microhistories offer an innovative way of documenting and exploring our world, one that manages to be both fragmentary and unexpectedly expansive at the same time. In this session, we’ll discuss the special demands and constraints of this appealing subgenre. You’ll walk away with new insights into how to think about, research and write engaging microhistorical nonfiction that has the potential to offer a surprisingly wide view of the world through what might seem, at first glance, a very small window.