Beginning Workshops

Some of our most potent impressions and anecdotes are the ones made in childhood and adolescence. Even blurry memories can be rich material when woven into a larger personal history. In this fiction and nonfiction course, we’ll explore how writers tell universal and often quite common stories of childhood and coming of age in new, inventive and surprising ways, and try out their strategies and techniques in our essays. This class may be especially beneficial for aspiring fiction writers of even semi-autobiographical stories. We’ll also spend a good amount of time working through techniques of remembering; don’t let having a so-called “bad” memory turn you away.

"Beginning Fiction Workshop: Am I Alone Here?" focuses on writing the introspective character. How can we keep our stories engaging and eventful even while our characters remain largely in their own thoughts? How can we transform loneliness and contemplation into luminous and transformative writing? 

This workshop-centered course introduces writers to foundational concepts and tools in the craft of poetry, including form, diction, voice, line, and meter.  Regular assignments include both prompts and imitations in poetry writing, and will culminate in a final portfolio developed in working consultation with the instructor. In particular, we will explore the construction and sounding of image within poems, including the Imagists’ legacies, concrete poems, and ekphrastic impulses in writing. Poets and writers whose work will be discussed include H.D., Jamaal May, William Carlos Williams, C.D. Wright, James Wright, Pedro Xisto, and poets visiting the UChicago campus.

This course introduces students to poetry writing by guiding students through generative exercises focused on imagery and diction, then revising the material with an eye toward formal shaping choices. We read diverse contemporary and classic poets, write several poems, and workshop peer work weekly, culminating in a portfolio of new poems as a final project. 

Popular notions of “the fairytale” are often synonymous with childhood: bedtime stories, adventuring children, and cautionary tales warning young people away from wayward behaviors (“Never go into the woods at night”; “You must be wary of strangers”). In many ways, however, fairytales serve as a vital link between historic and contemporary storytelling traditions: In the words of Angela Carter, “[…] the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labour created our world.” In this course, we will explore how authors such as Kathryn Davis, Sabrina Orah Mark, Ha Seong-nan, and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, have used fairytales as foundations for their own stories, gleaning inspiration from—and finding creative freedom within—pre-existing narratives, tropes, and characters. Each student will also write their own fairytale revision and receive critical oral and written workshop feedback. 

Beginning Poetry Workshop: Imaginary Music

The poet Aimé Césaire suggests that “The only acceptable music comes from somewhere deeper than sound. The search for music is a crime against the music of poetry which can only be the beating of the mind’s wave against the rock of the world.” What is this music “deeper than sound”? How is it related to the more obvious “audible” sounds of poetry? This course guides students in exercises that work with both the actual sounds of poetry, like alliteration and rhythm, and the inaudible, “imagined” music of the mind, to write and workshop poems. We read diverse contemporary and classic poets, write several poems, and workshop peer work weekly, culminating in a portfolio of new poems as a final project.

The concept of “voice” comes up often in writing. How does a narrator’s personality, their way of seeing the world, imbue the writing in an unforgettable way? How we are drawn in, charmed, confounded, and driven to epiphany? In this course, we will consider this nebulous yet essential aspect of writing by examining our own original stories in workshop and by reading published works from Grace Paley, Bette Howland, Lucia Berlin, Kathleen Collins, and others. Ideally, you will develop and embrace your own authorial voice over the course of the quarter.

Choices about form and shape are not unique to nonfiction writing, but nonfiction presents unique challenges. Unlike fiction we cannot simply invent information or insert details in order to maintain traditional narrative forms. Instead, we are tasked with finding or creating forms that meets the needs of our content. In this beginning workshop we will explore a range of possible forms that fit the needs of various genres of nonfiction. From traditional narrative nonfiction and memoir that follow the kinds of story arcs or hero's journeys familiar to fiction and theatre on the one hand, to more associative and fractured structures that make space for uncertainty and missing information on the other, we will explore the role form plays in shaping the content of nonfiction. We will read more traditional essays from classic and contemporary writers like James Baldwin, Joan Didion, John Jeremiah Sullivan and Hanif Abdduraquib and compare these works to formally experimental work from writers such as Renee Gladman, Aisha Sbatini Sloan, Eula Biss, and Maggie Nelson. Students will be asked to produce their own work that explores the potentials and limitations of both traditional and experimental forms, engage in respectful and constructive workshop, and reflect on the role of form as it relates to the works we have read in one critical essay.

What makes a portrait come to life? Whether through a camera’s lens or the written word, portraits expose truths, reveal choices, and capture the complexity of a person or moment. In this course, we’ll explore how the creative process of nonfiction writing parallels photography, using the tools of framing, perspective, and composition to capture the essence of a subject. We’ll dive into this intersection between writing and visual art through activities like ekphrastic writing prompts and a field trip to the Smart Museum of Art, discovering along the way how these experiences can inform our writing and deepen our understanding of truth and representation. We’ll study photographs by Ansel Adams and Lewis Hine, read Maggie Nelson, and analyze films like I, Tonya to explore how to tell stories with multiple truths. The first half of the term will focus on testing and broadening your skills with photography-inspired assignments. By midterm, you’ll pitch your own written portrait of a local Chicago resident using the techniques we’ve studied. The second half will be dedicated to workshopping these portraits, allowing for collaboration and feedback to refine your work. By the end of the course, you’ll submit a final portfolio that includes a fully realized written portrait and that reflects the evolution of your creative voice, showcasing your ability to authentically capture the complexity and humanity of real individuals.

What do a diagnosis and a narrative essay have in common? How can research be made accessible and jargon lyrical? And what can the structure of the circulatory system teach us about the structure of an essay? In this beginning workshop, we will practice writing from medicine, illness, and the body, focusing on ways we can turn knowledge and information into compelling and deeply felt essays. We will consider medical writing from the perspectives of doctors, nurses, interpreters, researchers, and patients, and examine ways of approaching medical topics and stories that may not fit neatly into linear narratives. Our course will look at contemporary texts in the field of medical writing like Eula Biss' "The Pain Scale," Andrea Long Chu’s, “China Brain” and Leslie Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait” for models of how to make the scientific personal and the personal impactful in a broader political or cultural conversation. Participants will either share or discuss obstacles, successes and questions stemming from their work in supportive, process-oriented small group workshops that focus on the goals of the writer. This course is an opportunity to think about medicine from a new perspective, to create messy first and second drafts, and to explore what might be familiar subjects from a place of uncertainty and exploration.