Writing the Personal Essay

Thursday, October 20, 2022
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Tuition: $15

Essay, is from the French, “to try.” In this session for absolute beginners and experienced writers in need of a refresher, we’ll generate raw material for personal essays about our ourselves, or about the people and places that are important to us. We’ll draft an outline of a personal essay that opens in scene and closes with an image: a form that can open in the personal and expand into the universal. Come and give it a try!

About the Instructor: Brian Malloy is a dual national of the United States and Ireland, Minneapolis has been - more or less - his home since 1978 (with a few years here and there in D.C., Amsterdam, and Boston). He was an early employee of the Minnesota AIDS Project (now Rainbow Health) in the 1980s, a volunteer with the 1987 Minnesota March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights, and the volunteer coordinator for Minnesota's first AIDS walk in 1988.

In the 1990s, Brian founded and secured matching funds for the Minnesota Lesbian & Gay Community Funding Partnership, a three-year initiative to expand funding opportunities to Minnesota's LGBT community. The Minnesota Partnership was part of The National Lesbian and Gay Community Funding Partnership, and awarded over $400,000 for LGBT services across the state. 

In the 2000s, Brian was part of the team that founded Open Book, serving as the grant writer for the successful capital campaign.

Brian is self-employed and a proud member of the Service Employees International Union, Local 284. He has taught creative writing at a variety of settings, including the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, Emerson College, Hamline University, Metropolitan Library Service Agency, Minnesota Correctional Facility - Lino Lakes, Our Saviour's Transitional Housing, Quatrefoil Library, Rainbow Health, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, and Witness Writers.

Brian has been married (illegally and legally) to his husband for over 30 years, and they are the proud parents of rescue dogs. 

Brian supports Defenders of Wildlife, as well as the Friends of the Boundary Waters, a campaign to ban copper sulfide mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Watershed and the Lake Superior Watershed.

Brian is not on Twitter, so this is not the Brian Malloy who made you so mad.