Spring

Like film, comics are a language, and there's much to be learned from studying them, even if we have no intention of 'writing' them. Comics tell two or more stories simultaneously, one via image, the other via text, and these parallel stories can not only complement but also contradict one another, creating subtexts and effects that words alone can’t. Or can they? Our goal will be to draw, both literally and metaphorically, on the structures and techniques of the form. While it’s aimed at the aspiring graphic novelist (or graphic essayist, or poet), it’s equally appropriate for those of us who work strictly with words. What comics techniques can any artist emulate, approximate, or otherwise aspire to, and how can these lead us to a deeper understanding of the possibilities of point of view, tone, structure and style? We’ll learn the basics of the medium via Ivan Brunetti’s book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, as well as Syllabus, by Lynda Barry. Readings include the scholar David Kunzle on the origins of the form, the first avant-garde of George Herriman, Frank King, and Lyonel Feininger, finishing with contemporaries like Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, and Alison Bechdel. Assignments include weekly creative and critical assignments, culminating in a final portfolio and paper.

Day/Time: Thursday, 1:00-4:00 PM

This course explores basic approaches to writing poems through careful reading and discussion of modern and contemporary poets. We’ll practice poetic elements, such as rhythm, diction, syntax, and metaphor, at the same time that we explore the movements of mind and the moods that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, our discussions will focus primarily on readings. As we move forward, we will spend the majority of time workshopping student work.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:20-12:20 PM

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, dialogue, 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 dialogue-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, 10:20-1:30 PM

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

The short and the long of it. In this course, we'll be focusing on writing about visual arts by using shorter and longer forms, and while thinking about short and long durations of time. The time of encounter with a work of art, the time of its making, kinds of time the artists wanted to invoke, the endurance and ephemerality of the work, and of the experience of the work. We'll work short: wall text, compressed review, lyric fragment, and long: involved and layered sentences and elaborations. We'll work with and against different kinds of syntax, white space, and the unspoken, and read authors including John Yau, Lori Waxman, Zbigniew Herbert, Mark Strand, John Berger, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Dore Ashton, and ekphrastic poetry by Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.

The course hopes to support students both in developing useful practices and experimenting boldly. Every class session will begin with a student-led two-work tour at the Smart Museum, and we will spend one session on close looking at works on paper at the Smart. Students will also visit five collections, exhibitions and/or galleries and keep a looking diary. Students will write a number of exercises in different forms (wall text, review, interview / portrait), and will also write two essays (which may follow one extended line or be a mosaic composite) to be workshopped in class.

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, and the arts. We'll read pieces by the likes of Katherine Boo, Eula Biss, George Orwell, Ryzard Kapuchinski, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Ted Conover, Maggie Nelson, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The emphasis of the course will be on narrative journalism, but other approaches will be considered and welcomed. Ideally, students will come into the course with projects already in mind, but we will also work on developing stories and pitches.

The importance of sound to poetry, lyric poetry especially, is universally acknowledged, yet neither technical analysis of meter nor meticulous maps of vowel and consonant patterns satisfactorily describe how sound-making and listening shape poetic process and even, more controversially, poetic thinking. We will work with sounds luscious and austere, narcotic and precise, in a training of the ear as an organ of poesis.

Multiple short poems gathered into a single yet open-ended structure-this way of working has been remarkably productive for 20th- and 21st-century poets. In this workshop, you will experiment with ways of writing, accruing, counting, dispersing, shuffling, stacking, and otherwise arranging your own "little boxes." We will read and discuss a range of modern and contemporary poetic sequences as models, paying particular attention to matters of craft: How are syllables, words, lines, and stanzas effectively arranged within a short poem? How are short poems effectively arranged in relation to one another? What's the relation of parts to wholes in a poem or a sequence? What roles might repetition, variation, and echo play? We'll also think about ways the sequence can serve as an instrument of attention: How might writing "in pieces" help us notice and name things, events, feelings, and ideas that otherwise remain unnoticed or inarticulate? How might sequential composition open our writing to improvisation, unpredictability, and generative bewilderment? Poets studied may include: Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, George Oppen, Robert Creeley, Rae Armantrout, Fanny Howe, Ed Roberson, Michael O'Brien, Nathaniel Mackey, Joseph Donahue, and others. Over the course of the quarter you will write and revise an extended poetic sequence of your own, and our class meetings will mix writing activities, seminar discussion of our readings, and ongoing workshop discussion of your sequences-in-progress.

As consumers of mass entertainments, we have all been indoctrinated with the traditional Freytag's pyramid model of storytelling, predicated on the linearity of rising action, climax, falling action. In this workshop course, we will read and examine fiction with (seemingly) other shapes, misshapes, or perhaps no shapes. Through an eclectic mix of readings - by writers such as Lucia Berlin, Anton Chekhov, Miranda July - we will investigate alternatives to and departures from the conventional plotlines that dominate our culture, ultimately with an eye towards creating unconventional narratives of our own.

The books and stories we read as teenagers are often some of the most influential in developing our tastes as adult readers and writers of fiction. In this advanced workshop course, we'll discuss the genre of young adult literature through evaluation of your own writing: what are its defining characteristics, and what's the difference between writing for a young adult audience versus writing books and stories about teenagers but designed for adult readers? Students should be working on book-length projects involving teenaged protagonists, no matter the intended audience; please come to the first session with either work to submit or a sense of when you'd be able to sign up for a slot. We'll spend most of our time evaluating student work, learning how to become both generous and rigorous critics, and we'll also talk about the books that influenced us the most as young adult readers and the books we're reading today, from contemporary writers like John Green and Rainbow Rowell to classic authors like S. E. Hinton and Madeleine L'Engle. Students will read at least one or two novels during the quarter as well.