Testimonials

Creative Nonfiction’s online writing classes have helped more than 3,000 writers tell their stories better.

Below are a few things past students have said about how our classes directly impacted their writing.

See Improvement

  • “The classes were great in helping me see where I need to improve my writing and where to go with it. The peer reviews are invaluable and I think the anonymity of being online unleashed some thoughts and ideas that would normally have been gated had I shared my writings with people I know. I got great feedback and positive criticism without the judgement!”
  • “I really appreciated the emphasis on finding our own path through our material. Pretty much everything I’ve attended before, and all the advice I’ve been given, has been about meeting external criteria for publication. I just loved the way this class was about us taking a closer look at what we’d written (and what others had written) to get to the heart of what we really wanted to write about. It seemed to me to understand the essence of the artistic process: a journey into the heart of our experience with no preconditions, no constraints, just a pure quest for meaningful self-expression.”

Pump Up Your Desire

  • “The instructor was excellent, and I loved the readings she assigned. The class gave me a thorough understanding of the subject and at the same time sparked more desire to write, which is what a great writing class (and instructor) will do, I think.”
  • “It’s an excellent program, but I would expect no less from CNF. You all are top notch. It was demanding, but I have survived two boot camps in real life (the military and the police) and that is what boot camp is for—to prove you’re tough enough to do what you’re doing; to prepare you for the rigors of the job. It was very much like that for me—those 300-500 words a day were sometimes excruciating and sometimes made my day. It was just what it promised to be.”

Great Instruction

  • “The lectures were excellent, the readings very helpful, and I learned a lot from instructor feedback.”
  • “I learn[ed] a lot from CNF classes, appreciate the deadlines and LOVE the helpful instructor feedback. The classes are also much more affordable than our local university classes. Online writing classes offer some real advantages—in particular I find it both liberating and helpful to share writing with classmates and instructors who don’t know me personally.”
  • Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. CNF instructors have helped my writing, my reading and my confidence. The readings were quite valuable, but the depth of knowledge of the instructor as evidenced by the feedback was invaluable to me.”
  • “I liked the lectures very much. The topics were new to me, and they were covered very clearly and with good examples.”

Learn from Your Peers

  • “I liked meeting writers from various backgrounds. It was an enriching and eye-opening experience to read stories about people and places I have never seen or heard about, and actually participate in the development of a story.”
  • “This was my first experience with group critiques, and it went better than I expected. I’ve of course used second readers before, but never groups. Oftentimes the classmates’ feedback was just as, or more, helpful than the instructor’s feedback, so I found that very valuable. I also liked reading what other people wrote, to see different techniques and perspectives.”
  • “I liked the peer review component. It was helpful, enlightening, and enjoyable to read others’ essays and provide feedback. It was also helpful to receive so much feedback about my work. Also, sharing experiences about our struggles to write was very helpful.”

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