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A Nonfiction Writing Course  ·  Taught in Person

UnderOneRoof

Writing Nonfiction  ·  Essay  ·  Memoir

Every door on every floor opens on a true story.

At 2601 Pennsylvania Avenue  ·  Philadelphia

Notices & Announcements

Posted Saturday, September 26, 2026 Residents who would like to join Under One Roof are invited to email Professor Mulhern at authorjamesmulhern@gmail.com. All sessions are taught in person at 2601. No one is ever asked to share writing they would rather keep private.
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Course Document

Syllabus

The full course at a glance — its shape, its genres, its readings, and what is asked of you.

To Save Your Own Copy Download the printable Course Syllabus & Textbook Guide (PDF), or select the text below and paste it into a Word document.

The Shape of the Course

Under One Roof is built like the building it studies. We enter through the lobby with the place essay, settle into our own rooms with the personal essay and memoir, step into the hallway to write our neighbors, descend into the archive to research the building itself, cross the Parkway to write about art, and climb at last to the roof garden to revise and assemble a collective memoir. Each session pairs one nonfiction genre with short, free readings, a chapter of our textbook, handwritten practice in class, and a contribution to the anthology.

Unit One
The Threshold — Writing Place and Self
Sessions 1 – 3
We begin where every resident begins: at the door. Three sessions on the place essay, the personal essay, and memoir teach the fundamentals of all nonfiction — the observing eye, the essayist’s “I,” and the double voice of the person who lived it and the person who remembers it.
1. The Lobby  ·  2. Moving Day  ·  3. Memory’s Floor Plan
Unit Two
The Neighbors — Writing Other Lives
Sessions 4 – 6
From our own rooms we step into the hallway. The lyric essay compresses a life into fragments; the profile renders another person truly; oral history lets residents speak in their own words. Consent, accuracy, and generosity become craft questions, not only ethical ones.
4. The Elevator  ·  5. Across the Hall  ·  6. Voices of 2601
Unit Three
The Building and the City — Research, Art, and Form
Sessions 7 – 9
The building itself becomes a subject: its architects, its New Deal lobby mural, its neighbors across the Parkway. We practice the researched and braided essay, writing about art, and the “hermit crab” essay that borrows its shell from leases, notices, and maintenance requests.
7. The Building’s Biography  ·  8. Across the Parkway  ·  9. Notices on the Bulletin Board
Unit Four
The Roof Garden — Revision and the Collective Memoir
Session 10
We climb to the top. Revision as re-seeing, the ethics of publication, and the assembly of our shared anthology, Under One Roof: Lives at 2601, closing with a reading for residents.
10. The Roof Garden

Session by Session

  1. Session 1 — The Lobby — Writing Place. The Place Essay. Textbook: Chapter 3, “‘Taking Place’: Writing the Physical World”. Readings: Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting: A London Adventure; 2601 Parkway Condominium Association, History of 2601 Parkway.
  2. Session 2 — Moving Day — The Personal Essay. The Personal Essay. Textbook: Chapter 8, “The Tradition of the Personal Essay”; Chapter 5, “The Body of Identity”. Readings: Christopher Morley, “Moving,” from Pipefuls (1920); Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928).
  3. Session 3 — Memory’s Floor Plan — Memoir and Scene. Memoir. Textbook: Chapter 1, “The Body of Memory”; Chapter 2, “Writing the Family”. Readings: Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — opening through the arrival in Philadelphia.
  4. Session 4 — The Elevator — Flash Nonfiction and the Lyric Essay. Flash Nonfiction & the Lyric Essay. Textbook: Chapter 9, “Innovative Forms: The Wide Variety of Creative Nonfiction”. Readings: Brian Doyle, “Joyas Voladoras” (The American Scholar, 2004); Brevity, “Consider the Platypus: Four Forms—Maybe—of the Lyric Essay”.
  5. Session 5 — Across the Hall — The Profile and the Portrait. The Profile & Literary Journalism. Textbook: Chapter 11, “The Particular Challenges of Creative Nonfiction”. Readings: Gay Talese, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Esquire, April 1966).
  6. Session 6 — Voices of 2601 — Oral History and the Interview. Oral History & the Interview. Textbook: Chapter 4, “Gathering the Threads of History”. Readings: Library of Congress, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940; WFMT, The Studs Terkel Radio Archive.
  7. Session 7 — The Building’s Biography — The Researched and Braided Essay. The Researched & Braided Essay. Textbook: Chapter 7, “Glorious Facts: Research and the Research Essay”. Readings: University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives, Aaron Colish Finding Aid — including the 2601 Parkway Apartments; 2601 Parkway Condominium Association, History of 2601 Parkway; The Brevity Blog, “Braids: A Braided Essay About Braids & Braided Essays”.
  8. Session 8 — Across the Parkway — Writing the Arts. Ekphrasis & the Critical Essay. Textbook: Chapter 6, “Writing the Arts”. Readings: Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, trans. Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil; Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rodin Museum.
  9. Session 9 — Notices on the Bulletin Board — The Hermit Crab Essay. The Hermit Crab & Found-Form Essay. Textbook: Chapter 9, “Innovative Forms”; Chapter 10, “Mixed-Media, Cross-Genre, Hybrid, and Digital Works”. Readings: Nicole Cyrus, “Hairy Credentials” (Brevity); Brevity, “The Shared Space Between Reader and Writer”.
  10. Session 10 — The Roof Garden — Revision and the Collective Memoir. Revision & the Anthology. Textbook: Chapter 13, “The Writing Process and Revision”; Chapter 14, “The Power of Writing Communities”; Chapter 15, “Publishing Your Creative Nonfiction”. Readings: Michel de Montaigne, “Of Repentance,” trans. Charles Cotton, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt.

The Textbook

Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, 3rd ed. (McGraw Hill, 2019). See The Textbook for why this book and how we use it. Every session reading is also linked free online.

What Is Asked of You

  • Read the short pieces before each session and bring a notebook and pen.
  • Write by hand in class; write at home as time allows. Suggested lengths are guides, not rules.
  • Treat classmates’ stories and neighbors’ lives with care. Read Writing Our Neighbors.
  • If you wish, revise one piece for the 2601 anthology.

A Few Promises to You

  • No grades, no quizzes, no required publication.
  • No one is asked to read aloud who does not wish to.
  • Nothing enters the anthology without its writer’s and its subjects’ consent.
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