Spring

If prostitution is the earliest profession, then crime is probably the earliest narrative engine. Crime has forever been a driving force behind story, a vehicle not only of plot but of human psychology, social exploration, philosophical investigation, and just plain old suspense. There's something about the darker side of human nature that_invites explorations of characters pushed to their extremes. Through analyzing the writing techniques and processes-such as point of view, scene, setting, voice, detail, irony, perspective, narrative structure and research methodologies-of such writers and poets as Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oats, Denis Johnson, Carolyn Forche, CK Williams, Ai, Jo Ann Beard, Joan Didion, and Richard Price among others, students will examine how elements of crime in story can be transformed beyond simple genre. By examining writers' choices, students will explore how they may use these techniques to develop such mechanics of writing as point of view, poetics,_dramatic movement_and narrative structure in their own work. Students will turn in weekly reading responses and a final paper.

This workshop will expose beginning translators to the fundamental issues and challenges of literary translation. Over the course of ten weeks, we will explore the various categories of decisions that translators routinely encounter when assigning an English to a literary text originally written in another language, including social register, dialect, and dialogue; cultural and historical contextual cues; sound patterns, meter and rhythm; humor and word play; stylistic constraints and genre conventions. Moreover, we will examine the range of strategies available to translators, including theoretical approaches to domesticating and foreignizing works of literature. Readings will combine literary texts (both written in and translated into English), craft essays, as well as a few foundational texts in the field of translation studies. Students will complete weekly writing exercises, building to the translation of either a short piece of fiction or selection of poems. To participate in this class, students should have intermediate proficiency in a foreign language.

A personal essay can employ a chain of events, but it's essentially a train of thought. Like thought, it's protean, able to take any shape and yet remain an essay. In this workshop you'll write two drafts of your own essai, or attempt, at the form, while line editing and critiquing your classmates' attempts. You'll also do close readings, starting with "Why I Write," by George Orwell, and "Why I Write," by Joan Didion. Then James Baldwin's "Autobiographical Notes." Once we've had a taste of the present we'll go back four thousand years to the essay's beginnings in Babylon, following its evolution in Greece and Rome-Heraclitus, Plutarch, Seneca-then Europe: Montaigne, Max Beerbohm, Walter Benjamin, and Natalia Ginzburg, returning to contemporary English-language writers, including Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood, ending with Didion's "Goodbye to All That," paired with Eula Biss's contemporary cover version, also titled "Goodbye to All That."

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of poetry in a creative writing workshop context. We will focus on a different topic each week-image, prosody, form, and so on-by reading extensively in the work of contemporary American poets and by composing our own literary exercises as well. We will also attend poetry readings and talks on poetry by visitors to our campus. The course will follow a workshop format, with peer critiques of student work and intensive readings across a spectrum of literary aesthetics.

Fiction writing is part magic and part mechanics. This course will pay homage to the magic but concentrate on how a story is built: the architecture of structure, the mechanisms of character development, the fluid dynamics of dialogue. We'll take a close look at some of the building blocks that make up fiction writing: character, dialogue, plot, point of view, and setting. We'll also read and discuss a variety of short stories, always with an eye to craft and to what you, as writers, can steal for your own work. That's right, steal. Much of this course is devoted to learning how to steal the tools of great fiction writing, then to using those tools to realize your own vision. You'll write extensively in and out of class, from weekly reading responses to writing exercises that build toward a polished piece of work. Finally, you will write a complete draft and one extensive revision of a short story or novel chapter. The last third of the course will be devoted to student workshops, where each student will turn in a draft of a story or chapter to be read and critiqued by the whole class.

Fiction writing is part magic and part mechanics. This course will pay homage to the magic but concentrate on how a story is built: the architecture of structure, the mechanisms of character development, the fluid dynamics of dialogue. We'll take a close look at some of the building blocks that make up fiction writing: character, dialogue, plot, point of view, and setting. We'll also read and discuss a variety of short stories, always with an eye to craft and to what you, as writers, can steal for your own work. That's right, steal. Much of this course is devoted to learning how to steal the tools of great fiction writing, then to using those tools to realize your own vision. You'll write extensively in and out of class, from weekly reading responses to writing exercises that build toward a polished piece of work. Finally, you will write a complete draft and one extensive revision of a short story or novel chapter. The last third of the course will be devoted to student workshops, where each student will turn in a draft of a story or chapter to be read and critiqued by the whole class.

Fiction writing is part magic and part mechanics. This course will pay homage to the magic but concentrate on how a story is built: the architecture of structure, the mechanisms of character development, the fluid dynamics of dialogue. We'll take a close look at some of the building blocks that make up fiction writing: character, dialogue, plot, point of view, and setting. We'll also read and discuss a variety of short stories, always with an eye to craft and to what you, as writers, can steal for your own work. That's right, steal. Much of this course is devoted to learning how to steal the tools of great fiction writing, then to using those tools to realize your own vision. You'll write extensively in and out of class, from weekly reading responses to writing exercises that build toward a polished piece of work. Finally, you will write a complete draft and one extensive revision of a short story or novel chapter. The last third of the course will be devoted to student workshops, where each student will turn in a draft of a story or chapter to be read and critiqued by the whole 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.

This is a course for students interested in developing their ability to write about the visual arts, as critics, appreciators, theorists, or memoirists, and, practically, for work in galleries, museums, journals, and magazines. A theme of the course will be to explore ways that art and life may interact, both in the work made by a visual artist, and in the nonfiction that arises in response to a visual artist or their work. Some students may be interested to write biographically about artists and their work, and we'll talk about how to make biography illuminating and not reductive; other students may be interested to draw on their own life experiences as they try to shed light on works of art; still others may be curious to see how certain artists themselves have viewed the questions and practices of drawing from life. We'll use ideas about drawing, and especially drawing repeatedly, as a model and a metaphor for thinking about writing. We'll have some occasions to look at works on paper held at the Smart Museum, and we'll visit some exhibitions and galleries, together and independently. Readings will include works such as James Lord's book A Giacometti Portrait, on being drawn by Giacometti, Maggie Nelson on the color blue in life and art from Bluets, John Berger on drawing, Rebecca Solnit on photographer Edweard Muybridge, Geoff Dyer on street photography from The Ongoing Moment, John Yau on Jasper Johns's practice and on those of contemporary artists, Zbigniew Herbert on the way 17th century Dutch artists used the material of their own life, and Lori Waxman, art critic of the Chicago Tribune, on walking as a radical art form, from Keep Walking Intently. Students will write a number of exercises in different forms (wall text, lyric meditation, portrait, interview) and will also write a more extended essay to be workshopped in class.

This workshop is for students who want to leave the ivory tower with a realistic view of their strengths and limitations. A forewarning: I can't get you an editor or an agent. The only way to do that is to have a forceful, beautiful manuscript. This class is about how to begin that manuscript._It's a workshop, meaning that you're responsible for generating the majority of our text and our discussions._You can write a personal essay, argument, memoir, character study or travelogue, as well as reportorial, researched, and investigative pieces. No matter what rubric your piece falls under, we'll help you to distinguish between what Vivian Gornick has called The Situation-the plot or facts at hand-and The Story, which is the larger, more universal meaning that arises naturally from these facts. By developing these two strands and tying them more artfully together you'll make your piece as appealing as it can be to editors and a discerning audience._We'll also read and discuss successful published work every week that I've chosen to illustrate specific solutions to the problems we found in last week's student work. That's because the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader. If you learn nothing else in this class, you'll learn that._