Creative Non-Fiction & Historical Research Workshop with Dr. Linda Kinstler

This was a brown-bag lunchtime workshop on turning historical research into creative and narrative non-fiction. All members of the department were welcome, but the event was aimed at graduate students. Our guest, Linda Kinstler, is a journalist and scholar whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and many other publications. She is also the editor of the online magazine The Dial and the author of the book Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (Public Affairs/Hachette, 2022). In 2023, she received a Ph.D. from the Rhetoric Department at University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the genealogy of legal oblivion. Kinstler drew on her experience as a journalist, editor, and scholar to address how to write and publish research-based work for a general audience. This included discussion of craft and form, as well as publishing strategies and how to most effectively pitch stories to editors.