The Story and Legacy of Ayn Rand’s Nonfiction Writing Course

In addition to her fictional works, Ayn Rand articulated her revolutionary philosophical approach in dozens of nonfiction essays, spanning nearly two decades, many of which were anthologized in six books published during her lifetime. Her articles are powerful examples of applying abstract principles to the concretes of everyday life. Yet few before 1969 had a chance to learn how to produce such articles from this master of nonfiction writing. During that year, Ayn Rand hosted a class in her apartment for a small group of students. This article is a behind-the-scenes look at Ayn Rand’s nonfiction writing class, as told through the firsthand accounts of those in attendance.

On a late winter evening in 1969, a group of nearly two dozen gathered at apartment 6G on 120 East 34th Street in New York City, just three blocks from the Empire State Building. Among the attendees that night were Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, Allan Gotthelf, Ed Locke, and Mary Ann Sures. Some sat in chairs at the dining room table and others on the living room sofa, but all were focused on the speaker behind a card table: Ayn Rand.¹

Here, in her apartment, the group would meet every other Saturday between March 8 and August 23, to learn Rand’s distinctive methodology for nonfiction writing.² She hosted a total of sixteen sessions, and delivered the material extemporaneously, relying only on brief outlines.³

Rand decided to teach the course to train new writers for The Objectivist magazine, a goal that she stated at the outset: “. . . it’s going to be the most expensive course you have ever taken, because there is a payment for it. . . . [W]hat I expect from all my students is articles — articles and more articles, of course for The Objectivist.”⁴

Rand quickly clarified, however, that she did not expect her students to assume this promise out of duty: “If at any time you feel that you don’t want to write, . . . you are entirely entitled to it, and I won’t regard that as default. . . .  I don’t want you to get a sense of unearned guilt out of this course.”  

A crucial lesson that Rand repeatedly emphasized is that the skill of writing is not an otherworldly ability, but a science that can be learned by anyone. According to Rand: “[Writing] is no more difficult a skill than any other human skill. . . .  All human activities require practice and knowledge, and so does nonfiction writing, but apart from that, there are no mysteries to it.”⁵ Nor should one treat writing as “a test of self-esteem”: if “in the face of difficulty,” you begin to feel that it’s proof of “some unknowable something being wrong with you, you’re wrong right there.” She encouraged her students: Do not “make writing a test of self-esteem.”

Because a writer has to rely on their subconscious, many think that writing is a process of receiving inspiration. But for Rand, one’s subconscious can be understood and conditioned. To this end, she tasked her students with writing outlines, the most important purpose of which was to condition one’s subconscious and “to organize your material in the way you’re going to follow, and not to write inspirationally. . . . [Y]ou have to be sold on your own outline.” It should be “clear,” she taught, so the outline is “more or less automatized in your subconscious” — not memorized, but rather that the general idea is clearly held in mind.⁶

These assignments stood out to one of the students, Anne Bussey, an upper-elementary Montessori educator who later became the founding head of the Chesapeake Montessori School in Annapolis. As she recalled over a half century later, “[Rand] was very, very particular that when you make an outline, your main points should always be written in complete sentences. Because, she said, if you don’t write them in complete sentences, what you have to say is not solidified enough. . . .  I used that with the children when they made outlines.”⁷ Although Bussey said that she wasn’t considering writing for The Objectivist, she learned things in the course that she applied to her own work in education.

For Harry Binswanger, then a 24-year-old doctoral candidate in philosophy at Columbia University, the most impressive takeaway from the course was Rand’s objectivity about her own consciousness. In oral history interviews now preserved in the Ayn Rand Archives, Binswanger recalled, “Time and time again, she would say about her own writing, ‘Now, at this point, I was stuck. So I asked myself the following questions. And I saw that I had given my subconscious a contradictory assignment, and that led me to the way out of it.’ . . . She took it diagnostically. It was a technical issue for her. It was not a self-esteem question.”⁸

Rand’s feedback on student assignments was illuminating. During the course, Binswanger drafted an article on the different philosophical approaches to art. He later recalled: “I had an evening with Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff to discuss [the article], and it was deemed, I think correctly, very confused and not usable. [It would] have to be completely reconceived. . . . Ayn Rand pointed out I was confusing two things: one was the philosophical meaning and the other was the esthetic meaning of the artworks. . . . it was instructive by negation.”⁹

Ed Locke remembers discussing his draft essay with Rand. At the time of the course, Locke had already earned his Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Cornell, and worked as an associate research scientist with the American Institutes for Research. As Locke recounted decades later: “I was trying to write things relevant to Objectivism but was pretty poor at it. . . . I had a paper conference with her — and I brought a terrible paper — and she said, ‘This paper isn’t quite right,’ and proceeded to tell me all the things wrong with it, which were all true, and also certain things she thought were good points. Sometimes she would be shocked at my ignorance. She would say, not condemningly, but incredulously, ‘Didn’t you know that?’ I’d say ‘No,’ very embarrassed. But she was always very objective about her comments. She was never moralistic.”¹⁰

At the time the class began, nine attendees had already published articles in either The Objectivist Newsletter or The Objectivist, and according to Harry Binswanger, “a few articles did result [from the course].”¹¹ Ultimately, the impact of the Rand’s tutelage would be felt farther into the future. For example, from 1980 to 1987, The Objectivist Forum, a bimonthly journal published by Harry Binswanger, featured articles from three of the course’s participants: Binswanger, Peikoff, and Ed Locke, in addition to several other writers who benefited from Rand’s teachings.

The legacy of the course has heavily influenced the Ayn Rand Institute. In the 1990s, Rand’s course material was used in Peter Schwartz’s writing class for the Objectivist Graduate Center.¹² In 2001, her presentation was edited and reorganized by Robert Mayhew and published as The Art of Nonfiction. Even today, the book remains an important text in the Ayn Rand University, and is required reading for Keith Lockitch’s writing class. Thus, Rand’s lessons on writing impacted not only the nearly two dozen students she taught in 1969, but also new generations of aspiring nonfiction writers. For those who gain value from the course, their future writings are payment on an incalculable intellectual debt to Ayn Rand.

1. Interview with Anne Bussey, February 14, 2024, interviewed by Tom Bowden and Brandon Lisi.
2. Speaking participants in some or all classes included John Allen, Allan Blumenthal, Joan Blumenthal, Harry Binswanger, Anne Bussey, Allan Gotthelf, Beatrice Hessen, Robert Hessen, Erika Holzer, Henry Holzer, Harry Kalberman, Edwin A. Locke, Susan Ludel, Frank O’Connor, Edith Packer, Leonard Peikoff, George Reisman, Kay Nolte Smith, Harvey Sugar, Rita Sugar, and Mary Ann Sures. The first thirteen classes between March and August and were later supplemented by three Q&A sessions on Friday, September 26; Saturday, September 27; and Friday, October 3.
3. Harry Binswanger, “History of the Objectivist Movement, a Personal Account, Part VIII,” Harry Binswanger Letter, January 31, 2021.
4. Ayn Rand’s Nonfiction Writing Course, transcript. Transcribed by Anne Bussey. Edited by Mike Berliner. Ayn Rand Archives, AV-110.
5. Ayn Rand’s Nonfiction Writing Course, transcript.
6. Ayn Rand’s Nonfiction Writing Course, transcript.
7. Interview with Anne Bussey, February 14, 2024.
8. Scott McConnell, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand (New York, NY: New American Library, 2014), 576–77.
9. Binswanger, “History of the Objectivist Movement, Part VIII,” January 31, 2021.
10. McConnell, 100 Voices, 350.
11. Binswanger, “History of the Objectivist Movement, Part VIII,” January 31, 2021. The participants who had already been published in one of the periodicals were Joan Blumenthal, Beatrice Hessen, Robert Hessen, Erika Holzer, Henry Holzer, George Reisman, Leonard Peikoff, Kay Nolte Smith, and Mary Ann Sures. Allan Blumenthal’s two-part article, “The Base of Objectivist Psychotherapy,” was published in the June and July 1969 editions of The Objectivist while the course was ongoing.
12. Peter Schwartz, “Introduction,” in Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, ed. Robert Mayhew (New York, NY: Plume, 2001), ix.