As part of the new Art of Writing curriculum in 2017, English professor Scott Saul and PhD candidate Ismail Muhammad taught a creative nonfiction workshop on the theme of Covering Culture. From this workshop, an online home for creative nonfiction was created.
For every assignment, the class hosted a visitor whose work provided a source of inspiration; the visitors were Lili Loofbourow (The Week), film historian David Thomson, Hua Hsu (The New Yorker), art journalist Sarah Thornton, and Sarah Burke (then managing editor and writer for the East Bay Express).
Due to the ongoing renovation of Wheeler Hall, the English Department’s customary home, the seminar met in a room surrounded by cubicle-like offices in the somewhat faceless, low-slung Building C of Hearst Field Annex — thus the name of the site: www.medium.com/the-annex.