Undergraduate

In the same way that water is composed of two elements—hydrogen and oxygen—the personal essay essentially consists of anecdotes and reflections, i.e., facts and thoughts, or the objective and the subjective. What happened, and what what happened means. The artistry of the essay consists of not only balancing these two elements but combining them so that they complement but also contradict one another. In this workshop you’ll write multiple drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates’ attempts. At the same time we’ll read (and write about) foundational essays, starting with “Why I Write,” by George Orwell, and “Why I Write,” by Joan Didion. We’ll read James Baldwin in conjunction with the seminal essay he inspired in Adrienne Rich, then look at infusions of poetry into the form via Natalia Ginzburg, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Carson. We'll end by reading Didion’s essay, “Goodbye to All That,” paired with Eula Biss' cover version, also titled "Goodbye to All That." You'll leave knowing the recent history, basic theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9:40-12:40

This course addresses a range of techniques for writing poetry, making use of various compelling models drawn primarily from international modernisms on which to base our own writing. (Our textbook is Poems for the Millennium, edited by Rothenberg & Joris.) In this sense, the course will constitute an apprenticeship to modern poetry. We will consider the breadth of approaches currently available to poets, as well as the value of reading as a means of developing an understanding of how to write poetry. Each week students will bring poems for discussion, developing a portfolio of revised work by the quarter’s end.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:00-4:00

This advanced fiction workshop is for Creative Writing majors, minors, and MAPH students and other advanced students working on a substantial fiction project. It is primarily a workshop, so please come to our first class with your project in progress (a story collection, a novel, or a novella), ready for you to discuss and to submit some part of for critique. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. And as a supplement to our workshops, we will have brief student presentations on the writing life: our literary influences, potential avenues towards publication, etc.

Day/Time: Thursday, 2:40-5:40

Fiction writers say “If there’s no trouble, there’s no story”—an easier adage without the presumption of truth. This class will consider techniques for rendering “trouble” in narrative nonfiction. How can we write about the wrongs of others—and the wrongs we ourselves have committed—in a way that makes for a compelling story and an ultimately likable narrator? What makes a rendering of hate, abuse, indifference, ingratitude, or jealously compelling or empathetic in the end? What techniques—of persona, characterization, humor, pacing, or form—might help us write honestly and generously at the same time? And when generosity is not our aim, what other vehicles of connection are available to us? Readings may include essays by Jo Ann Beard, Richard Rodriguez, Shalom Auslander, Jesmyn Ward, Bret Lott, Albert Goldbarth, and Ocean Vuong.

Day/Time: Tuesday/Thursday: 11:20-12:40

This workshop-based nonfiction course is suitable for any student who wants to work on long-form (1500 words and up) journalistic projects. To supplement our workshop submissions, we’ll look at a variety of texts touching on (and often combining) reporting on political, cultural, and environmental subjects. We’ll consider interviewing techniques and profile writing, as well works concerned with travel (of the non-touristic kind), sports, crime, politics, and the arts. We’ll read pieces by the likes of Katherine Boo, Eula Biss, Matthew Power, Ryzard Kapuchinski, Rivka Galchen, Jia Tolentino, Ted Conover, Alex Mar, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The emphasis of the course will be on written narrative journalism, but other approaches and mediums will be welcomed. Ideally, students will come into the course with projects already in mind, but we will also work on developing stories and pitches and talk about navigating the print, online, and new media landscapes.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:50-3:50

Is there a place for poetry in a society in which reading has been declared dead—where at the very least, reading threatens to be eclipsed by scanning? In this workshop/laboratory, we will explore material whose response is a delirious “yes”—poetry that revels in charging the confines of the page and book. Exposure to an archive of modernist and contemporary visual and sound poetry, artists' books, contemporary installation and performance works, and relevant theories of media dislodgment will help us compose our own answers to the (old) question: what forms are poems obliged or inspired to take as language goes viral, in the face of total information, digitization, and post-literary culture? Readings and viewings in 20th- and 21st-century poetry and poetics, visits to local writing-arts collections, and class visits by local artists will help us generate our own works, which will be workshopped together.  Students will complete weekly assignments across media, and engage with the writing of their peers formally, while working toward a culminating piece in a medium of their choice: this final piece can take the form of a chapbook, performance, installation, or other pertinent channel.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 12:40-2:40

This workshop focuses on writing and revising poems, and the related art of giving helpful feedback to other writers. One of the course’s goals is to help you reflect on your writing as a process. Most weeks you will write drafts that focus on the poetic concepts we are studying. At the end of the quarter you’ll revise your drafts and collect them in a portfolio, accompanied by a critical introduction that you’ll write. As a class, we’ll form a community of readers and writers that will support you in this process. You’ll receive feedback on your drafts from your classmates, and will respond both critically and creatively to theirs. Commenting regularly on the work of other writers will make you a better editor of your own work. At the same time, this course will introduce you to poetry from a variety of time periods, languages, and approaches to content and structure. You’ll learn to apply critical tools and terminology by drafting poems that experiment with elements such as form, voice, rhythm, imagery, translation, and creative response. We’ll discuss not only how poems are written, but also why they are written and what relationship they have to the worlds in which they are read.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:20-12:20

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or like woodworking, or gardening. It’s like raising a half-formed, misbehaved child and then trying to reason with it. The metaphors abound. But the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

Day/Time: Monday, 10:20-12:20

In the introductory level workshop class we’ll interrogate what makes a compelling, memorable character and how to build one. We will read short stories and novel excerpts by a variety of authors with an eye to examining how characters reveal themselves to us as readers and what tools writers use to employ these revelations. Students will be required to write targeted reading responses, creative exercises, and one short story or novel chapter to be workshopped by the entire class, along with a revision of that story or chapter to be turned in at the end of the quarter.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 10:20-12:20

In this advanced fiction workshop, students will work on original short stories or chapters of longer works, with a focus on creating characters who are nuanced and three-dimensional. We will discard the word “likable” from our vocabularies, and render characters who are compelling regardless of whether their actions are “good” or “bad.” Close readings of published work and student work will help us consider what sorts of desires and conflicts force characters to make choices that fuel dramatic tension. We will discuss bad behavior by some of literature's favorite criminals, toward shaping work that is complex and full of the real contradictions human beings exhibit. Readings include Go Tell it on the Mountain, Lolita, House of Mirth, and This is How You Lose Her, as well as short stories from Ocean of Words and The Beggar Maid.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30-4:20 PM