Program Information
Immerse yourself in the world of nonfiction and narrative storytelling with the Yale Summer Session Program in Journalism! From investigative reporting to multimedia storytelling, you’ll sharpen your writing, critical thinking, and communication skills while gaining the confidence to tell impactful stories that matter.
This is a five-week summer program for students to explore the art of compelling journalism writing through a two-credit course, English S2461, Stories that Matter: The Craft of Writing Nonfiction. This course is designed to be immersive and experiential where students will live like writers. This means going out and talking to people, working on stories, learning about a variety of subjects all through the lens of a writer. Students will visit Yale's galleries and museums such as the Center for British Art, Peabody Museum Living Lab, and Marsh Botanical Garden, as well as possible off-campus excursions. Students will enjoy film screenings, attend ope-mic cafe events, and will listen to podcasts, all of which masterfully demonstrate how to create suspense and engage an audience so students can employ such techniques in their own writing projects.
[exclamation] English S2461 is a two-credit course so interested students will enroll only in this course during Session B and will be considered full-time.
Course Description
ENGL S2461, Stories that Matter: The Craft of Writing Nonfiction, is a two-credit course teaches the craft of writing nonfiction. Students learn how to produce features, essays, and profiles, and develop skills in critical thinking. Through close readings of exemplary reportage, students acquire a deeper understanding of narrative structure. Above all, this class shows students how to see the world as a writer. It is an exhilarating experience, one that will expand students' horizons, and it comes in part from being out and about—visiting places, talking to people, and taking notes. By the end of the course, students will have a new language for understanding the world, a richer, more literary one, and will be able to tell stories with verve and confidence. Students will tackle contemporary works of journalism and earlier pieces, including nineteenth-century dispatches and investigative articles. Stduents will look at ways that news organizations have served to fortify democratic principles such as freedom of expression and the rule of law, then and today. Students will grapple with real-life ethical questions, and you will leave the class with a better understanding of the role of the media in a liberal democracy.
Course Structure
This program will capture the spirit of the writing life—the exiting, dynamic, social and artistic world that a journalist inhabits—through an immersive program, one that is made up of the five separate steps in the writing process. Reflecting the writing journey, the five weeks of this course is structured as followed:
Week One: Researching Your Project
Students will generate story ideas and will begin researching their summer projects through documents, artwork, and other primary sources. Students will work with an archivest to explore these sources and will keep a journal about their research methods and process.
Week Two: The Art of the Interview
Students will learn how to find sources and will conduct interviews for their project. Students will learn techniques for securing interviews and can practice interviewing skills with their classmates.
Week Three: The Telling Detail
Students will follow a Yale method of learning how to be a better writer—by becoming a better observer first. Students will visit various campus resources to become observers in the field to capture details about a subject and the atmospheric elements used to create memorable scenes and build a narrative.
Week Four: The Edit Desk
Students will engage with the writing process by writing quickly and revising slowly, a guiding light for writers. Students will fine-tune methods for shaping and improving their nonfiction through the editing and peer feedback processes.
Week Five: Presentations
Students will showcase ther work they have chosen, designed, written, and produced. Students' projects can be added to their growing portfolios of written work. By this time, students will have a solid foundation in the skills of writing and a better understanding of what it means to be a professional writer.
Faculty Bio
Tara McKelvey was the White House correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), traveling around the world on Air Force One with Presidents Trump and Biden for a decade. Along with teaching at Yale, Tara has taught journalism and writing classes at Princeton University and Georgetown University. She is a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and her writing about the CIA has received a Guggenheim Fellowship grant. She is also the author of an acclaimed book, Monstering: Inside American's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror World, about the CIA, military, and intelligence gathering.
Student Testimonials
While the Yale Summer Session Journalism Program is new for Summer 2026, it is built upon the success of a previously taught course, ENGL S410 Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, taught by Tara McKelvey. Here's what students in that class had to say:
- "I definitely became a better writer after taking this course.... for students pursuing higher education and exploring the professional world, this course was helpful.”
- “This class taught me valuable skills in socializing with others and understanding their stories. It taught me what questions to ask, how to interview, and how to research. Most importantly, it helped me become a better writer.”
- “I took this class because Professor McKelvey was a guest speaker in another one of my classes & she blew me away. I definitely made the right decision because I LOVED this class.”
- “Absolutely phenomenal. Professor McKelvey is the best professor. She is knowledgeable, she cares so much about her students, and she always keeps class interesting & fun.”
- “McKelvey has demonstrated, with her tenure and expertise, the way to approach non-fiction writing. I knew I would gain something out of this class that can't be possibly replicated elsewhere: real-life application, and I am glad I took this class over all others. I would absolutely recommend this class to another student. The teacher is great, and you learn how to successfully tell a story. The small class size helps create a safe, comfortable environment for everyone to participate as well.”
- “I appreciated the variety of the assignments, and it was rewarding to come away from the class with a single project that we had worked on from a variety of angles—a pitch memo, feature piece, script, and final podcast. Professor Tara gave the most detailed feedback on my work of any professor I've ever had, and she was willing to meet numerous times as I worked through multiple drafts of a single project.”
