What do MIA, Adam Yauch, Jay Electronica, Christian Hosoi, Rondo, and the Kardashians all have in common? Grantland staff writer and Atlantic magazine regular Hua Hsu has written incisive criticism about all of them. Want to learn to write about your favorite (or most hated) cultural icons? This three-session course will help you grapple with the most pressing questions facing cultural journalists today — from the philosophical (the changing meaning of “taste” and criticism, the rules for reviewing, the personal essay in a confessional age) to the practical (voice and clarity; strategies for pitching magazines and websites; the editing process; writing for an ever-changing digital medium).

You’re invited to bring up to ten pages of writing–excerpts from a longer piece, an assortment of clips, whatever–to the first meeting.

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at Grantland. He has written about popular culture and politics for Artforum, the Atlantic (for whom he blogged from 2009-2011), the Believer, Bookforum, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Times, the Paris Review, Slate and the Village Voice. His 2009 cover story for the Atlantic, “The End of White America?” was widely anthologized. He was on the editorial board of the New Literary History of America and he teaches in the English Department at Vassar College.

Three Tuesdays from August 14 to August 28, 2012, 7PM-9PM

Fee: $150 General/$100 Members
Deposit: $60 General/$45 Members