Writing the Opinion Essay: Entering the Public DiscourseMaster ClassIn-Person
Thursday, Mar 04, 2027
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Our partner, Spitzer Enterprises, is hosting this event.
The ambition of persuasive opinion writing is to craft arguments compelling enough to educate and/or persuade audiences to change their mind about an important sociopolitical issue, cultural artifact, popular trend or other aspect of the zeitgeist. In this master class, Roxane Gay, author of the New York Times bestsellers Bad Feminist and Hunger, will teach participants how to read arguments like a writer and develop a skillset for writing opinion-based arguments with intellectual rigor and a human touch.
ENGLISH, CREATIVE WRITING
3 credits
CTLE credit available
Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an author, professor, and social commentator who holds the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair at Rutgers University. She previously taught at Purdue University and Yale University. Her essay collection Bad Feminist was a New York Times bestseller, and her memoir Hunger won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. With co-writer Yona Harvey, she wrote Marvel's World of Wakanda, becoming one of the first Black women to write for Marvel Comics. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, Gay received the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community in 2025.