Beginning Workshops

In the same way that water is composed of two elements—hydrogen and oxygen—the personal essay essentially consists of anecdotes and reflections, i.e., facts and thoughts, or the objective and the subjective. What happened, and what what happened means. The artistry of the essay consists of not only balancing these two elements but combining them so that they complement but also contradict one another. In this workshop you’ll write multiple drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates’ attempts. At the same time we’ll read (and write about) foundational essays, starting with “Why I Write,” by George Orwell, and “Why I Write,” by Joan Didion. We’ll read James Baldwin in conjunction with the seminal essay he inspired in Adrienne Rich, then look at infusions of poetry into the form via Natalia Ginzburg, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Carson. We'll end by reading Didion’s essay, “Goodbye to All That,” paired with Eula Biss' cover version, also titled "Goodbye to All That." You'll leave knowing the recent history, basic theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9:40-12:40

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.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:00-4:00

This workshop focuses on writing and revising poems, and the related art of giving helpful feedback to other writers. One of the course’s goals is to help you reflect on your writing as a process. Most weeks you will write drafts that focus on the poetic concepts we are studying. At the end of the quarter you’ll revise your drafts and collect them in a portfolio, accompanied by a critical introduction that you’ll write. As a class, we’ll form a community of readers and writers that will support you in this process. You’ll receive feedback on your drafts from your classmates, and will respond both critically and creatively to theirs. Commenting regularly on the work of other writers will make you a better editor of your own work. At the same time, this course will introduce you to poetry from a variety of time periods, languages, and approaches to content and structure. You’ll learn to apply critical tools and terminology by drafting poems that experiment with elements such as form, voice, rhythm, imagery, translation, and creative response. We’ll discuss not only how poems are written, but also why they are written and what relationship they have to the worlds in which they are read.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:20-12:20

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, 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 as 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.

Day/Time: Monday, 10:20-12:20

In the introductory level workshop class we’ll interrogate what makes a compelling, memorable character and how to build one. We will read short stories and novel excerpts by a variety of authors with an eye to examining how characters reveal themselves to us as readers and what tools writers use to employ these revelations. Students will be required to write targeted reading responses, creative exercises, and one short story or novel chapter to be workshopped by the entire class, along with a revision of that story or chapter to be turned in at the end of the quarter.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 10:20-12:20

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.