Roads to Revelation: Write 6 Essays in 6 Weeks

with Colin Corrigan

roads to revelation essay writing course

April 16, 2025
6 weeks

Original price was: $445.00.Current price is: $380.00.

Original price was: $445.00.Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now

Unlock new perspectives and develop fresh material in this generative essay-writing course. Each week, you’ll embark on a new path to discovery, guided by expert readings, tailored writing exercises, and supportive feedback. By the end of the course, you’ll have six brand-new essays—and a deeper understanding of your voice, ideas, and storytelling potential.

Through structured weekly lessons and thought-provoking prompts, we’ll explore diverse approaches to essay writing. You’ll reflect on life experiences to draw out both individual meaning and universal resonance, revisit pivotal moments in your history and broaden your perspective through focused research, and learn to convey your unique view and experience of life. With guidance and encouragement throughout, you’ll learn how to uncover and shape meaningful narratives, and generate a breadth of new material.

For inspiration, we’ll read and discuss two essays each week—one on craft and one as an example to learn from—by writers like Phillip Lopate, Brit Bennett, Annie Dillard, and Krys Malcolm Belc. Writing exercises will help you generate ideas and refine your drafts. I’ll provide detailed feedback, and you’ll exchange your writing with classmates to help strengthen your work. By the end of the course, you’ll not only have six new essays, but also a toolkit of strategies to continue developing and revising them.

Who This Course is For

This course is for anyone who would like to write six new essays! Whether you’re a beginner looking for tips on how to get started, or a seasoned writer in search of a fresh approach, this class will offer you the motivation, accountability, and guidance you need to generate lots of compelling new material.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

  • Identify and develop story material using a range of approaches
  • Reflect upon your own experiences and preoccupations to uncover compelling questions
  • Develop observational skills, invoking all the senses
  • Enliven your scene narration, to bring a memory to life
  • Improve and diversify your research skills
  • Analyze published essays by authors such as Phillip Lopate, Brit Bennett, Annie Dillard and Krys Malcolm Belc, and mine them for inspiration and craft tips

Writing Goals

  • Write six new one-thousand-word essays
  • Complete a series of custom-designed writing exercises
  • Read and respond to your classmates’ work to produce insightful, constructive feedback
  • Process feedback from your classmates and your instructor
  • Discuss strategies for developing material and revising drafts

Weekly Syllabus

Week One: Reflection

We embark down our first road to revelation by Reflecting on our experiences and preoccupations, and you will write your first new essay.

Week Two: Observation

This week we will hone our Observation skills, to better pay attention to what’s around us, and to help you vividly portray the subject of your second new essay.

Week Three: Recollection

This week we will focus on Recollection, as you excavate and dust off and examine the subject of your third essay for the class: one of your own memories.

Week Four: Research

Our fourth road to revelation is Research—we’ll discuss tips and tricks, and you’ll learn more about a subject that fascinates you in order to find a new angle for your fourth essay.

Week Five: Confusion

This week we will lean into our Confusion over a particular question in order to delve deeper and arrive at new insights in your fifth essay.

Week Six: Conviction

Our final road to revelation rises from a desire to state and support one of our Convictions. You’ll convince us of one of yours in your sixth new essay.

Original price was: $445.00.Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now

Course type:

Student Feedback for Colin Corrigan:

What I love about this class is how much it’s given me tools that I feel I can keep using. It introduces structure and process into the revision journey, which sometimes has felt more unmanageable to me in the past. Just fantastic! Zoë G.

This workshop was my favorite writing class I’ve taken to date—and I’ve taken a lot of writing classes. The atmosphere was welcoming, safe, and nurturing, while also providing room for growth and discovery. I can’t say enough how much I appreciated this class. I’m sad it’s over! Lauren Harkawik

The workshops were amazing and Colin was incredibly well organized, supportive, encouraging, a great discussion prompter and gave very helpful feedback. Ann Cami

Regardless of whether the student was inexperienced (me) or very knowledgable and on a different level, Colin pushed them a little farther making them better writers. Nice work, Colin. Sam B

I learned a lot, the instructor was awesome, so nice, welcoming, gave great feedback without making us feel discouraged. I loved the entire class, the prompts, the sharing of the essays. I finally actually did write instead of just think about it! I also discovered how much fun writing is for me once I stop over-thinking, over-judging, and over-analyzing. It was so much fun! The highlight of my week for the last 6 weeks. Stefanie Gauguet

Colin was a marvelous teacher! He was so clear about his expectations and the course was so well designed to take a close look at one of our short stories. I learned so much about how to go about revising—it is not just magical thinking! it is a careful checklist of qualities. Colin gave us an invaluable checklist! Thank you, Colin! Kate Sullivan

This class was amazing. Colin is a great teacher and the atmosphere was lively. The class gave me courage to continue on my path. I found it to be intimate and insightful. Deirdre Reddington

The class far exceeded my expectations in how much I learned about short story revision. I am walking away from this class with so much more knowledge and confidence about the revision process. Nancy S.

I must say that the class exceeded all of my expectations on every possible front! At the risk of sounding sappy, I must say this has been the best writing instruction I have ever received! The instructor, Colin Corrigan, was incredibly knowledgable and supportive and structured the class perfectly. Colin’s videotaped lessons were full of helpful information and he selected craft articles and short stories that matched his lesson content perfectly. Even students in the class who had received their MFA’s reported that they were learning new things from these articles and lessons. He established a supportive atmosphere, right off the bat, building trust within the group, and provided us with the most specific and helpful guidelines for offering and receiving writing feedback that I’ve ever seen in my life. The assignments each week were incredibly helpful and relevant and I will use them again for other pieces that I write. Colin was responsive and always participated in every discussion in a meaningful way, but he never dominated the discussion. He knew to wait, to let his students share first, and made sure to remark on the comments of all of his students over the course of the class. He had a way of making us all feel valued in the group. Our class was filled with thoughtful, talented, generous, readers and this added to my enjoyment as well. Many participants were very experienced; some were writing teachers, most were published in numerous places, several had received their MFA’s, and yet Colin was clearly the teacher of this group, adding to the discussion, elevating it, and helping us all to grow from where we started. His critiques were thoughtful and insightful. I left the class with a much more polished short story, but even more importantly, with a new understanding of the revision process and a lot of tools for improving my other work. Alison Bullock

April 16, 2025
6 weeks

Original price was: $445.00.Current price is: $380.00.

Original price was: $445.00.Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now

About

Colin Corrigan is a writer and a writing teacher from County Kildare in Ireland. He’s spent a decade working all sorts of jobs in Irish film and television, and another teaching all sorts of writing classes at American universities, including Northeastern University, the University of Michigan, and University of Massachusetts Boston. His short fiction has been published by Amazon and The Fiction Desk, and anthologised in Surge: New Writing from Ireland and Stinging Fly Stories. He has an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, and an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Michigan. He’s won a Delbanco Thesis Prize, he’s been a Zell Fellow, and he’s received generous funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Elizabeth George Foundation. You can find him writing about The Story Energies on Substack.