Featured Courses


Master Class: Nonfiction Writing



This workshop brings students together with professional writers and editors for an intense week of collaborative discussion, revision, and writing. Students in the workshop will read and discuss the ongoing projects of fellow students, work individually with the instructors to refine and shape their own projects, and participate in readings and round-table discussions with top figures in the publishing world. Throughout the week, students will have the space and time for sustained, concentrated writing, as well as access to the world-class Duke University Libraries system. This is a workshop on craft, structure, and the art of writing great nonfiction, and a rare opportunity to be guided closely by top editors and writers. (35 hours)

Duncan Murrell is the Writer in Residence at the Center for Documentary Studies and a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and The Normal School. His work has also appeared in Guernica, The Oxford American, Southern Cultures, and many other publications. Murrell was an editor at Algonquin Books, where he acquired and edited several national bestsellers in fiction and nonfiction. He is a graduate of Cornell and Northwestern Universities and has been a resident at Yaddo.

Belle Boggs is the author of Mattaponi Queen, an award-winning collection of linked stories. As an essayist, she has written about the impact of infertility on nonhuman primates, the science of assisted reproduction, and the cultural significance of science education. Boggs has received fellowships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and is a recipient of a 2011 Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council and a 2012 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has published fiction and nonfiction in The Paris Review, Harper’s, Slate, Glimmer Train, The Oxford American, and Orion, among other publications.

Click Here To View More Details


Digging In: An Artists' Retreat with Big Shed



This retreat brings together documentary makers and storytellers of all stripes for a productive, invigorating, and rejuvenating week of digging deep and making meaningful progress on individual projects. For audio producers, writers, photographers, filmmakers, multimedia creators, et al., Big Shed designed this retreat to help you delve into the work that’s most important to you (work that’s often hard to make time for). If you have a story you’re trying to finish, a project you’re researching or developing, a proposal you need to write, or maybe you just want space to think about your creative trajectory; spend a week as part of a great group of creatives, all of whom are doing the same thing! Guiding the way will be Big Shed’s own Shea Shackelford and Jesse Dukes, along with documentary maven Kara Oehler. And in case you need more convincing, course fees include tasty lunches throughout the week… and hand-cranked ice cream on the porch. (40 hours)

Shea Shackelford is an audio documentary producer and creator of The Place + Memory Project, a public media project mapping a landscape of remembered places. His work has been heard nationally on such public radio shows as Weekend Edition, All Things Considered, and Snap Judgment. When he isn’t producing his own stories, Shea is busy training producers and helping stations and organizations to design and create their own projects. His awards include a Bronze Award for Best Radio Documentary at the 2010 Third Coast International Audio Festival. Shea has been part of the CDS summer audio institute team since 2005, and he is a founder of Big Shed, a public media shop specializing in audio and multimedia production.

Jesse Dukes is an independent writer and documentary maker. He studied radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, worked for With Good Reason at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and is a principal at Big Shed. Last year, his essay “Consider the Lobstermen” was selected as one of Byliner.com’s 101 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories. He recently produced “The Great Moonshine Conspiracy,” which aired on APM’s The Story and a number of local public radio stations. Jesse is ostensibly based in Virginia, but in the last few years has spent as much time travelling in Downeast Maine, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Guatemala.

Kara Oehler is a radio documentary producer and media artist. She is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Zeega, an award-winning web platform that makes it easy for anyone to author interactive documentaries. She also leads Zeega’s production unit, a growing series of storytelling projects that span the globe and uncover new perspectives on the human experience. Her stories and projects have received Peabody, Third Coast Festival, and other awards; aired on such shows as Radiolab, Morning Edition, Hearing Voices, and Studio 360; and been exhibited at MoMA. She is co-creator of Mapping Main Street, Yellow Arrow: Capitol of Punk, and the UnionDocs Collaborative. She is currently a Film Study Center Fellow at Harvard University and a Rockefeller Fellow with United States Artists.

Click Here To View More Details


What Students Have to Say