Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This essay reflects on my experiences teaching a module on confessional writing (2017–2020) and student responses to studying the labour, craft, or work of non-fictional writing, particularly poetry, diaries, and letters on themes of heartbreak, sex, grief, and other heightened states. In order to highlight the labour of writing that either writers or critics call confessional, I taught the most famous writers – Sylvia Plath, Oscar Wilde, Anaïs Nin – with or through their drafts, materials which received mixed reactions from students. Thinking about confession as an already contentious framework for non-fiction, as well as the ever-present discourse of authenticity as a marker of non-fiction’s success, this essay reflects on the difficulty of valuing these texts as complex sites of labour and creativity in the classroom.
Source: TEXT
DOI: 10.52086/001c.165559
Author: Rachel Sykes
Institution: University of Birmingham
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7171040194
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