Jaswinder Bolina is author of the essay collection Of Color (McSweeney’s 2020). His nonfiction has been featured at The Paris Review, Shenandoah, The Believer, poetryfoundation.org, and The Washington Post, among others. He is also author of four collections of poetry, including Carrier Wave (2007), Phantom Camera (2013), The 44th of July (2019), and English as a Second Language and Other Poems (2023), which was awarded the 2025 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award from Claremont Graduate University. He teaches on the faculty of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Miami, where he also serves as chair of the Department of English & Creative Writing.
Workshop
Cutting Out the Clichés
When our work fails to attract editors, agents, and readers, we are often at a loss for how and where we went wrong. This workshop will study how familiar diction, syntax, and sentence construction can lead to greater missteps of thinking in our creative nonfiction, missteps like stating the obvious or confusing and boring our audience. We’ll expand the definition of “cliché” far beyond the simple use of stock phrases or familiar imagery in our writing. We’ll discuss what constitutes a cliché, why we’re so inclined towards using clichés, and how more innovative and singular language can lead us to more innovative and singular nonfiction that will compel, persuade, and astonish our readers.
