Spring

Writing fiction is in large part a matter of convincing world-building, no matter what genre you write in. And convincing world-building is about creating a seamless reality within the elements of that world: from character dynamics, to setting, to social systems, and even the story or novel’s conceptual conceit. And whether it be within a genre of realism, historical fiction, or science fiction, building a convincing world takes a good deal of research. So while we look closely at the tools and methods of successful world-building, we will also dig into the process of research. From how and where to mine the right details, to what to look for. We will also focus on how research can make a fertile ground for harvesting ideas and even story. Students will read various works of long and short fiction with an eye to its world-building, as well as critical and craft texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 11 AM–1:50 PM

To give testimony is to bear witness and to provide evidence. To give testimony is also to draw the reader or listener into an individual point of view. In this course, we will study the first-person voice in various forms of personal testimony. Drawing from a mix of memoirs, personal essays, letters, fiction, and other first-person narratives, we will analyze the techniques and rhetorical devices used by writers, standup comedians, memoirists in transporting the listener or reader into unknowable, unfamiliar experiences. Expect to engage with texts by authors such as Franz Kafka, Patricia Lockwood, Richard Pryor, and William Maxwell. We will compose our own personal writings through creative exercises. A critical paper is also due.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 12:30-3:20 PM

The world is made up of stories, and stories about stories. Telling our stories, honoring those stories, listening actively and empathetically to the stories of others—this is all part of the propulsive work of democracy. Of course writing our stories is not a skill separate from thinking, and there's nothing more interesting, engaging, and, yes, precarious than an intelligent mind thinking out loud. The practice of writing is a journey, not by a tourist, but by a pilgrim struggling to make sense—and the reader must actually see the struggle. We will be concerned in this workshop with writing creative nonfiction: memoirs, polemics, personal essays. We’ll consider fundamental issues in writing nonfiction—creating a credible narrator and becoming a compelling story-teller; describing a scene in sufficient detail; diving into (and not running away from) contradictions; knowing when to “show, don’t tell” and (just as important) when to “tell—synthesize, generalize, sum up—don't show.” We will read a few pieces on the art of writing creative nonfiction, and we will focus on engaging and responding to primary texts by several authors. The heart of our work together will be ongoing workshops of original student writing.

Day/Time: Mondays, 10:30-1:20

Fiction author James Joyce believed that by writing toward the heart of Dublin, he could get to the heart of every city. His idea set a difficult literary standard for writers of contemporary creative nonfiction: no longer could they write about a particular subject without the expectation that it should resonate on a universal level. In this course, we will cross-examine the values behind the countless mantras that circulate creative writing communities in order to trace how they influence the creative process of nonfiction writing, a genre that has only begun to gain independence on bookshelves. As we read authors who specialize in exploring particularities such as childhood and identity, we will focus on crafting and discussing stories which are uniquely ours. Students will workshop and revise one personal essay and several micro-essays for a final portfolio that demonstrates originality and versatility. Potential guides for our reading include: Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Kiese Laymon, Yiyun Li, and Lucy Grealy.  

Day/Time: Mondays, 1:30-4:20

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. Additionally, students will keep detailed notebooks, as well as developing critical skills for understanding poetry in the form of two short essays.

Day/Time: Tuesdays, 2-4:50 PM

Style, it might be said, is a truce the writer makes between her material and what she can do with it. This course will focus on the latter—especially the things that beginning writers can do to take control of their writing. Directed prose exercises, edited by the instructor and returned for revision, will sharpen your technical self‐mastery. For larger issues of craft we'll examine two or three stories each by a succession of vivid stylists. In written assignments, you will be asked to experiment with the picaresque elaborations of Nikolai Gogol, the ruthless dreams of Jamaica Kincaid, the limited point of view of a Katherine Mansfield character, and the supple empathy of David Foster Wallace's indirect discourse. In the second half of the course, you will twice submit an original story for peer workshopping, and will turn in polished revisions at the semester's end.

Day/Time: Fridays, 12:30-3:20

In this beginning-level fiction workshop, we will focus on the relationship between writer, reader, and story -- in other words, point of view. Who is telling a story?  To whom?  For what purpose and at what distance?  As we read fiction by writers like Lorrie Moore, Jose Saramago, Breece D’J Pancake, George Saunders, Kazuo Ishiguro, and others, we'll consider how point-of-view choices affect storytelling at all levels: character, voice, plot, structure, and significant detail. Most important, through weekly writing exercises and peer critique, we’ll experiment with a wide range of storytelling personae and points of view, from the intimate unreliability of the first-person narrator to the judicial distance of the magisterial voice. You will also be required to produce a full-length story for workshop, letters of critique for each of your peers, and a substantial revision of your short story.

Mondays, 9:30-12:20

Basics of Narrative Design | This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic techniques and 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 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.

Thursdays, 9:30-12:20 

We often say of film adaptations: it’s not as good as the book. But what can we, as readers and writers, learn from that unsuccessful transition to the screen? And more intriguingly, what can we learn from the successful ones, the films that are just as good if not better than the original written work—or so vastly different that they become their own entity? In this class, we will be reading works of short fiction and also “reading” their film adaptations, focusing on this relationship between storytelling on the page and storytelling on the screen and what is both lost and gained in that transition. If filmmaking requires a different language than fiction writing, a different approach to things like character, plot, atmosphere, even thematic development, what can we learn from that approach that we can apply to our own fiction, even if we have no interest in making films? We’ll investigate this question in the work of writers like James Joyce, Andre Dubus, and Stephen King, and filmmakers like Hitchcock, Huston, and Wilder.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:00-4:50 

To write in any genre is a gesture that puts one in a relationship with predecessors and precursors. While this relationship if often constructed as a dialogue, it can also be a conflict, full of clatter, disagreement and intentional offensiveness. In this sense, the writer’s mark crosses out the predecessors’ work, and functions as an act of desecration. Writing becomes an intertextual act of rebellion that calls into question the conventional, the canonical, and the sacred. Readings may include avant garde manifestos, erasure poetry, and poetry and fiction by Shakespeare, William Blake, Joyce Mansour, Sylvia Plath, Bernadette Mayer, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Federico García Lorca, Haruki Murakami and Georges Bataille. Students will be expected to write creative works in response to prompts, and write an academic essay. The prompts will form the basis of a final portfolio, which will be accompanied by an original essay.

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