D8 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019many new writers today do not,” said Ms.
Daum, who has taught writing at the Uni-
versity of Iowa and Columbia. “There is an
anticipatory anxiety about what the inter-
net reaction might be and what pushback
they will get on Twitter. So public thinking
becomes about appealing to your tribe, and
that is defeating the purpose.”
In early 2018, she introduced the first of
her weekend-long, application-only ses-
sions. For $1,200 per person, groups of
about eight spend Saturday and Sunday at
her Manhattan apartment, in Washington
Heights — or, on one occasion, for $1,800, in
a borrowed house in Los Angeles — for a
course in first-person essays or memoir,
with a focus on idea creation, writing, edit-
ing, rewriting and pitching. (The New York
program used to cost $1,600 and included a
chef-cooked dinner. Also, smaller groups
pay slightly less because with fewer stu-
dents, more time is spent writing during the
workshop itself.)
Ms. Daum invites guest speakers and
provides a catered lunch.
“I tell my students, ‘We are going to come
to this work as if I am your editor, and as if it
was 15 years ago when an editor would ac-
tually talk to you on the phone or even take
you out to lunch,’ ” she said.
Emily J. Smith, 37, was working as a prod-
uct manager for tech companies when she
signed up. She dreamed of a career in writ-
ing but couldn’t quit her tech day jobs to en-
roll in a pricey master of fine arts program.
When she heard from a friend about Ms.
Daum’s workshop, she applied immedi-
ately. “I write essays, personal essays, that
try to emulate her style,” Ms. Smith said, “so
getting her feedback on my work was an in-
credible opportunity, and I also wanted to
meet her and get to know her.”
Her work with Ms. Daum, as well as in
workshops led by another writer, Chloe
Caldwell, helped Ms. Smith learn to write
essays about relationships, power and the
culture of online dating, like those she has
published in The Rumpus and Medium.
Ms. Smith now has a literary agent and is
including in a book proposal an essay she
worked on with Ms. Daum in the seminar.
Ms. Smith also created a dating app meant
to combat the loneliness of online dating
that her essays describe. Called Chorus, it
will allow a dater’s friends to help play
matchmaker.
“I think I was able to raise V.C. money be-
cause I have established a presence in writ-
ing about online dating,” she said.
‘Is My Story Valuable?’
A boom in first-person essays of love, heart-
break and transcendence — including, yes,
the popular Times column Modern Love,
and amplified by the ease of spilling one’s
guts online — has helped support a mini-
industry for confessional writing seminars.
For some 20 years, Joyce Maynard,
whose books include the memoir “At Home
in the World,” has hosted an eight-day semi-
nar in the volcano-surrounded Mayan vil-
lage of San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala,
where both published and aspiring writers
develop work.
The cost is about $3,000 for what, accord-
ing to the marketing copy, sounds a lot cush-
ier than the proverbial garret: “Renowned
chef Henry Lehr and a welcoming staff nur-
ture you with over-the-top amazing food
and massages, leaving you free to think
only about your story.”
Dani Shapiro, who wrote the memoirs
“Inheritance” and “Devotion,” hosts a two-
day $3,500 retreat in Salisbury, Conn., with
skill training, vocational advice and the sort
of emotional calmness that few professional
writers would describe as part of the job.
“We will write,” her website says. “We’ll
discuss the writing life. We will share our
work and learn. We will revise. We will en-
joy inspiration, camaraderie and quiet.”
Such gatherings make Jessica Ciencin
Henriquez’s Making Modern Love semi-
nars a bargain at $399. Most of her four-
week workshops, introduced in 2017 after
her own Modern Love essay was published,
are held online. (Two four-week sessions
are held in person, annually, in New York.)
She said the workshop seeks to quell the
nagging voice that asks, “Is my story valu-
able? Does anyone even care?”
Ms. Henriquez added that teaching this
way allowed her to stick with her own writ-
ing, by increasing her annual earnings
while doing meaningful work.
Writers’ seminars can be sharply focused
on results. Caroline Koster, 53, a corporate
lawyer in New York, was traveling this sum-
mer with her family in Kentucky and re-
flecting on the differences between Ap-
palachia, where she visited each summer as
a child, and Brooklyn Heights, where she
lives and raised her children.
She returned home on a Sunday night
and immediately began to write the first
draft of an essay, which she brought to Su-
san Shapiro’s Instant Gratification Takes
Too Long seminar the next day. The five-
week program, which Ms. Koster heard
about from the women’s Facebook group
What Would Virginia Woolf Do?, costs $500.
“I was concerned about America and
what was happening in the country,” Ms
Koster said. “I had a Joan Didion moment
and picked up the pen.”
Ms. Shapiro has hosted the sessions in
her Greenwich Village living room for 10
years, with the objective of writing, editing
and publishing a piece at the end.
Three weeks later, with Ms. Shapiro’s
help, Ms. Koster indeed had an essay. She
did something really old-fashioned with it:
She sent it to a general-submissions emailaddress at The Wall Street Journal. Within a
few days she heard back from an op-ed edi-
tor who wanted to publish it.
The piece, “Politics Won’t Come Between
My Appalachian Cousins and Me,” was pub-
lished by the newspaper four days after she
sent it. Ms. Koster was then invited to ap-
pear on “Fox & Friends.”
Lexie Bean, another student of Ms. Sha-
piro’s, had as an undergraduate at Oberlin
College assembled an anthology of writing
in which people wrote letters to one of their
body parts. Upon graduating, Mx. Bean
then self-published a second anthology,
with victims of abuse also writing the let-
ters. During Ms. Shapiro’s seminar, which
Mx. Bean took twice, the writer worked on
an essay about the origin of these antholo-
gies. It was published in Teen Vogue.
“It just snowballed from there,” Mx. Bean
said. A small publisher put out a third an-
thology, “Written on the Body,” with letters
from transgender and nonbinary people.
Mx. Bean now has a contract with Penguin
Random House to write “The Ship We
Built,” a book for middle-grade readers.Pitfalls and Pit Stops
Part support group, part tactical network-
ing event, writing seminars such as these
have existed formally and informally at
least since Gordon Lish at Yale in the 1970s.
“Everyone is talented, original, and has
something important to say,” wrote Brenda
Ueland in the 1938 classic “If You Want to
Write,” clearly not anticipating Twitter.
But with the new surplus of words and
images has come a new generation of edu-
cators to guide the way.
In January, Caroline Calloway, 27, known
for her long, confessional Instagram cap-
tions, hosted a creativity workshop in New
York, which was meant to be the first in a
“global tour.” She charged $165 a person for
the six-hour event. When the programming
turned out to lack much instruction for writ-
ing captivating social-media copy, the inter-
net reacted with anger and ridicule.
Ms. Calloway explained this week that
her intent was merely to create an event
that would bring together her followers and
bring to life her “brand.” She said her mis-
take was in labeling the event as she did.
“My ‘Creative Workshop,’ which went vi-
ral as a scam, was named so because the ti-
tle, ‘Come Sit in a Room and Talk About
Your Feelings While Seated on the Floor
Eating Salad and Planting Flowers in Ma-
son Jars and Taking Photos With Flowers in
Our Hair,’ doesn’t have the same ring,” she
said. (We disagree, tbqh.)
After spending the winter in actual re-
treat, and then feeling creatively revived
this spring, Ms. Calloway hosted in August
a comeback creative workshop which this
time asked people to bring a piece of writ-
ten, visual or digital art to work on. Againshe charged $165. This time she named it
the Scam.
In a different vector of the new writer
economy is Elizabeth Gilbert, the mega-
best-selling author whose book “Eat Pray
Love” helped create the genre of memoir-
as-spiritual-self-help books, and who has
become a headliner of educational, inspira-
tional and wellness events around the
world, not unlike a rock star on the road.
Last year, outside Santa Cruz, Calif., Ms.
Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed hosted Brave
Magic, a three-day retreat (“exploring the
pathways to expressing yourself and your
story in the world”). (About 600 attended,
some paying $450 a person.)
This fall she will deliver the keynote ad-
dress at Soul Tribe Live, in Nova Scotia (a
two-day pass costs about $400).
She also will speak at Attune, a wellness
event in Georgia, in Serenbe, a new “mysti-
cal, urban utopia” on the outskirts of Atlan-
ta. A four-day pass plus a king bed in a
Serenbe “townhome” costs $2,500. An
“Elizabeth Gilbert Meet and Greet” costs an
additional $125, but tickets are sold out.
She is headlining the Inevitable U work-
shop, to be held at Columbia University in
New York from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3. Standard
tickets to the event cost $1,497. V.I.P. tickets,
which grant access to an intimate Q. and A.
lunch with Ms. Gilbert and the opportunity
to take your photo with her, cost $2,500.
“I wish I could afford to have her two
days,” said Alena Chapman, a writer and
speaker who is hosting the event.
Ms. Gilbert is backpacking in France but
said, in a statement conveyed by her publi-
cist, “Sometimes I earn money by teaching
my creativity workshop at expensive re-
treats designed for the sort of people who
can afford an expensive retreat. Then I take
that money, and I use it to offer this same
workshop for free, to the kind of women who
could never afford it otherwise.”
Ms. Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff, a yoga
instructor, are hosting an invitation-only,
free “creativity and personal development”
workshop in Philadelphia on Oct. 1. (The
event is oversubscribed so spots are no
longer available.)
Ms. Chapman said that attendees will
learn “how to access their creative spirit”
and leave the seminar with a new ability to
write and make art.
There has been some blowback on social
media in response to the ticket cost of the
event, which Ms. Chapman acknowledged.
But she said it costs a lot to produce an
event of this scale, with speakers of this re-
nown, in New York City. (A representative
for Ms. Chapman said in an email that Ms.
Chapman will “offer periodic sales for a lim-
ited amount of time and tickets.”)
“People think we’re doing it to line our
pockets, and I can tell you I don’t even see
us making much on this at all,” she said.Writing teachers, or mere
sentence enablers? From the
top: Elizabeth Gilbert, Meghan
Daum, Caroline Calloway and
Dani Shapiro.CONTINUED FROM PAGE D1
On a Mountain of Words, They Are Your Sherpas
A collection of belongings left be-
hind by Anthony Bourdain, the ce-
lebrity chef and television star
who died in June 2018, will be sold
in an online auction next month.
Sixty percent of the proceeds of
the auction will go to Mr. Bour-
dain’s wife, Ottavia Busia, and
daughter, Ariane. (Mr. Bourdain
and Ms. Busia were separated at
the time of his death.)
The remainder will be donated
to a new scholarship to the Culi-
nary Institute of America created
in Mr. Bourdain’s name that will
allow recipients to spend a semes-
ter abroad or to study interna-
tional topics.
The auctioneer, Lark Mason, es-
timates that the 215 lots on the
block have a market value be-
tween $200,000 and $400,000.
Despite extensive travels in his
time hosting “No Reservations”
on the Travel Channel and, later,
“Parts Unknown,” Mr. Bourdain
did not amass an enormous col-
lection of souvenirs. His longtime
personal assistant, Laurie
Woolever, explained that while
Mr. Bourdain was offered gifts ev-
erywhere he went, he eventually
became more selective about
what he chose to keep.
The items being sold present a
coherent portrait of Mr. Bourdain.
They include art by Ralph Stead-
man (the Hunter S. Thompson
collaborator and a friend of Mr.
Bourdain’s) and the artist John
Lurie; a steel and meteorite chef’s
knife; various books, records and
several manuscripts of the chef’s
own work.
Many of them speak to the quiet
elegance favored by Mr. Bourdain,
who told Ms. Woolever that he
wanted his Manhattan apartment
to feel like the Chateau Marmont
in West Hollywood.
“He valued comfort, and he
knew what looked good,” Ms.
Woolever said. “He was definitely
aware of how to play to his assets.
When Vogue magazine ap-
proached us to do a story about
him and I presented to him, my
thought was, ‘He’s not going to
want this.’ As was the case with so
many things, I was wrong. He
said: ‘Oh, I absolutely want to do
this, out of a sense of sheer vanity.
I’m so flattered.’ ”
The auction is being sponsored
and run by Mr. Mason’s auction
house, which has locations in New
Braunfels, Tex., and New York.
Mr. Mason, who frequently ap-
pears on “Antiques Roadshow” onPBS, will also host exhibitions of
Mr. Bourdain’s belongings in New
York, Savannah, Ga., and New
Braunfels during the auction.
In an interview, Mr. Mason, who
did not know Mr. Bourdain per-
sonally, said that his possessions
showed appetite for basics: for
clothes that fit well and knives
that cut cleanly.
“Those things helped ground
him,” Mr. Mason said. “He had a
turbulent life in many respects
and an unsettled soul. As we look
at all these things, almost every-
thing was purposeful.”
Mr. Bourdain, who was 61 whenhe died, merged the rebellious
downtown cool of the 1970s and
1980s with the old-world style of
his parents, who raised him and a
younger brother, Christopher, in
the 1950s and 1960s in a bedroom
community in New Jersey. Their
father, Pierre Bourdain, was an
executive in the classical music
recording industry.
“Even though he rebelled so
hard against it, I think there was a
sense of pride that his parents
were interested in elegant things
and being culturally literate,” Ms.
Woolever said.
One item in the auction reflect-
ing that contradiction, which he
once told The Wall Street Journal
that he was particularly proud of,
is a metallic duck press that ap-
peared in a 2012 episode of “Parts
Unknown.” After being dismem-bered, the duck is placed in the
press and squeezed and its juices
run into a cup.
“It’s embracing the real natural
world in which we exist,” Mr. Ma-
son said. “We’re animals. We’re
right there with the duck and
here’s the duck.”
The knife for sale, which is ex-
pected to fetch the highest price of
any lot, is a Bob Kramer steel and
meteorite from Campo de Cielo in
South America, which Mr. Kramer
made for Mr. Bourdain and gave
to him in 2016.
“He was thrilled, and I was
thrilled,” Mr. Kramer recalled ofthe presentation. “He walked
right to the bar and he was like,
‘Oh man, I’ve been looking for-
ward to this.’ He held it, looked at
me, I don’t know, we just con-
nected there for a second. Be-
cause he got it and I’d made it for
him.”
The clothing for sale includes a
United States Navy jacket that Mr.
Bourdain received after having to
leave Beirut in a hurry in the
midst of the Israeli-Lebanese con-
flict.
Along with other Americans
trapped in the city, and his own
production crew for “No Reserva-
tions,” the chef was evacuated
through the U.S.S. Nashville. At a
ceremony in 2014, Mr. Bourdain
was presented with the jacket,
which had affixed to it a specially
made patch for him, bearing an
image of a crossed pair of knives.For Sale: A ‘Portrait’ of Bourdain
By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICHAnthony Bourdain items to be auctioned include his knife, top, a
Michelin man, above right, and a jacket given to him by the Navy.Knoll Home Design Shops PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARK MASON ASSOCIATES
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