The narrative nonfiction course question that most often arrives in my inbox is this: I want to take a Level 1 course, but I can’t work out which one. Are they the same? Am I missing something? Which narrative nonfiction course is best for me?

You’re not missing anything. You’ve noticed something.

All three Level 1 courses — Memoir and Life Writing, Narrative Nature Writing, and The Art of Narrative Nonfiction teach the same Eight Pillars of Narrative Nonfiction. Presence. Arc. Character. Dialogue. Voice. Language. Setting. Resonance. These are the load-bearing walls of the form and an approach I designed over the decades. They are very effective and they do not change depending on your subject. However, a memoirist and a nature writer have different stances: the memoirist is looking inward and backward at a chapter of their lives whereas a nature writer is, in general, looking outward. That said, most nature writing has the presence of the writer but the writer needs to decide to what degree. I help with that.

What changes is the actual reading for each class.

Memoir and Life Writing turns inward. We read a collection of personal essays alongside Maya Angelou’s ground-breaking 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and the whole term is spent on a single hard problem: how a writer shapes lived experiences — theirs, others’ — into narrative. Not just how to remember, but how to select literary storytelling elements. How to render a self on the page who is recognisably you and yet built, deliberately, out of chosen scenes. It is the most exposing of the three, and the one students most often describe as having changed something beyond their writing. Learn more here.

Narrative Nature Writing turns outward. We read a wide range of nature essays alongside Henry Beston’s The Outermost House, a book written in a shack on a Cape Cod dune by a man who meant to stay two weeks and stayed a year. Every text we read is concerned with our relationship to the natural world, but each arrives at it differently — through science, grief, walking, ownership, loss, attention. The reading is varied in form but sets you up to be able to begin understanding and practicing the genre.

The Art of Narrative Nonfiction ranges widely. Travel writing, nature writing, food writing, memoir, cultural criticism. The reading is deliberately broad rather than specialised, and that breadth is the point. You see how the same eight pillars hold with masterful essays by John McPhee, David Sedaris, Kathryn Aalto, and others. Learn more here.

So: inward, outward, wide.

Choose your narrative nonfiction course by the reading and whether or not you are focused or want a broad education. If you already know which way you lean, take the course whose shelf looks most like the one you’re trying to write onto. If you don’t yet know — and many people genuinely don’t — take the broad one The Art of Narrative Nonfiction and let the reading show you where your attention keeps going. Attention is a reliable witness. It knows what you’re interested in before you do.

‘Which narrative nonfiction course is best for me?’ Look at it this way: the compass is the same in every course; it’s the country underfoot that differs.

If you would like to book a chat with Kathryn to discuss a potential course for autumn 2026 or winter 2027, book a course consultation with Kathryn here.