Undergraduate

Third-person narration is a valuable tool in the writer's toolbox, handy--and in some cases practically crucial--for a variety of tasks. Yet its use and various possibilities can seem intimidating to some writers who may be far more comfortable with the "I". In this studio, we'll examine third-person point-of-view, seeking to understand its capabilities more fully. We'll learn about free indirect discourse, psychic distance, artifice, tone, and omniscience. We'll carefully dissect a variety of texts from authors like James Agee, Tony Tulathimutte, Danielle Evans, Charles Yu, Mary Gaitskill, and others. Students will be responsible for reading responses, short craft analyses, vigorous class participation, and several creative exercises putting what they learn into practice.

It’s long been said that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling old ones, but how do writers reengage familiar genres, plots, and themes without being redundant? This course will confront the literary cliché at all levels, from the trappings of genre to predictable turns of plot to the subtly undermining forces of mundane language. We will consider not only how stories can fall victim to cliché but also how they may benefit from calling on recognizable content for the sake of efficiency, familiarity, or homage. Through an array of readings that represent unique concepts and styles as well as more conventional narratives we will examine how published writers embrace or subvert cliché through story craft. Meanwhile, student fiction will be discussed throughout the term in a supportive workshop atmosphere that will aim not to expose clichés in peer work, but to consider how an author can find balance—between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the predictable and the unpredictable—in order to maximize a story’s effect. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work.

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading fiction, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore characterization, point of view, plot, scene work, and worldbuilding. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of a Fiction Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Fiction Workshop II.

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading fiction, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore characterization, point of view, plot, scene work, and worldbuilding. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of a Fiction Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Fiction Workshop II.

“It’s very boring to talk about winners,” Umberto Ecco once said. “The real literature always talks about losers.” In this class, we shall embrace all manner of failures, no-accounts, and deadbeats, those unlikely ‘heroes’ around which good fiction often rotates, considering how they intrigue us with their flaws and failings, but also how they can present pitfalls at the levels of plot (lack of agency), tone (reward vs. punishment), and reader sympathy. Through an array of short fiction, as well as films and a hybrid novel, this course aims to uncover the ways narrative craft can infuse stories about shiftless and inept protagonists with a sense of curation, poignancy, and meaning. Students will also attempt their own short story versions of “loser lit,” to be workshopped by the class. Expectations will, of course, be very low.

This course explores short form screenwriting, as distinct from feature-length or episodic screenwriting. In addition to studying the essential elements of a screenplay, we will read, view, and discuss approaches to scripting brief documentary, poetic, and fictional time-based works. This work will prepare us for in- and out-of-class writing exercises in these modes, which students will often discuss in a workshop environment. Students will respond in creative and critical ways to the screenings and readings; present on a specific time-based work or creator; and write in the short screenwriting formats under study, culminating in a final creative project.

This studio course will focus on literary texts, visual art, and time-based works that revel in the intersection of image + text. Students will explore a range of examples with the aim of discussing the historical context of the intersection of image and text, considering the works of contemporary practitioners, and creating several creative works that students will discuss in workshop. Some questions: What is the difference between conceptual text-informed visual art and, say, poetry, if any? How do we think of protest via the intersection of text + image? How do cartoons and graphic novels enter the discussion? Think of this course as a recent history of your current visual culture. 

This workshop approaches “the love story” as both a narrative genre and a foundational subject for all kinds of stories. As we read a selection of unique and provocative love stories, we’ll ask: What distinguishes a good from a bad one—and, for that matter, a great from a good one? As writers, how might we deepen the genre’s most potent tropes while avoiding its devitalizing clichés? How does exploring romantic love uniquely enable us to write not only about other kinds of love but about the most elusive subjects in life? Underlying all these questions is one that each student should ask for themself throughout the quarter: What am I truly writing about when I write about love? Through focused writing exercises and workshops of their own love stories, students will work toward answering these questions and writing as honestly and convincingly as possible about this most examined of human experiences. 

Like the monsters it so often portrays, Gothic fiction is at once a transgressive, seductive, and mutable genre—blending horror, mystery, and romance and using supernatural elements to blur the line between realism and fantasy. It’s amid this ambiguity that the Gothic is at its most evocative and visceral, powerfully dramatizing our encounters with the irrational and inexplicable in nature, in others, and in ourselves. This Arts Core course will focus on these psychologically provocative aspects of the genre. As we read Gothic works from different eras and cultures, we’ll examine what these stories of extraordinary conflict might reveal about the horrors and mysteries of ordinary life—of our hidden desires, anxieties, and pathologies. Crucially, we’ll approach them from the writer’s perspective and consider what the Gothic enables a writer to explore and express that other genres may not. With this in mind, students will write their “Gothic Scenes” throughout the quarter, applying their own intimate Gothic lens to elusive encounters from their past. 

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading fiction, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore characterization, point of view, plot, scene work, and worldbuilding. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of a Fiction Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Fiction Workshop II.