Continuing Education

Events

(NWI) Exploring Life Stories: The Art of the Interview

Date: April 3 2013 5:30pm - May 1 2013 8:30pm Location: J.R. Howard Hall - Room 244, Lewis & Clark Undergraduate Campus

Writers, oral historians, ethnographers, teachers, counselors, families recording their stories all rely on interviews.

In this workshop, we’ll learn the interviewer’s skills: how to listen and observe, frame questions, index and transcribe. Writing together, we’ll bring the interviews to life on the page. We’ll consider literary models, individual and social memory, and the ethical issues interviewers face. We’ll also explore the use of interviews in community projects, film, radio and other aspects of documentary studies.

This course is part of the Documentary Studies Certificate program.

Northwest Writing Institute (NWI) classes are offered to teachers, counselors, parents, veterans, and all community members interested in the power of stories to help us understand and practice human connections for the good of all.

Course Details & Registration

Dates:  Wednesdays, April 3-May 1, 2013

Time: 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Instructor:  Christina Cooke, M.F.A. 

Degree-applicable credit:  WCM/LA 545, 1 semester hour, $773

Continuing education credit:  CELA 845, 1 semester hour, $350

Register now for continuing education credit (PDF)

Noncredit/CEU: 15 hours, $250

Register now for noncredit/CEU

About the Instructor

Christina Cooke, M.F.A.  teaches news writing and nonfiction at Portland State University. A former newspaper reporter, she loves nothing more than finding and telling stories. She worked as a staff writer at the Chattanooga Times Free Press  in Tennessee, where she covered K-12 education and won the newspaper a first-place award from the state press association. Cooke also studied nonfiction writing at the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. She has published in The Oregonian, Willamette Week, the Greensboro News and Record, Salt Magazine, Clamor Magazine, Port City Life and  Patagonia Black Sheep. For more information, please visit her website, www.christinacooke.net. 

Read Christina’s profile of An Old School Book Scout in The New Yorker