Beginning Workshops

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.

Though we live in an era glutted with data, facts don't speak for themselves. It's story that moves us. In this class, we will engage in an exploration of "creative nonfiction," investigating how to shape lived experience into memorable story. We will identify the primary challenges and opportunities inherent in the genre. Together we will read exemplary forms of creative nonfiction, including: personal essay, memoir, lyric nonfiction, science writing, nature writing, and cultural criticism. We will ask how events are shaped into stories, facts into a meaningful narrative arc. This course will be conducted as a writing workshop, and we will examine our own work and others' from a critical perspective, looking carefully at issues of style, content, and relevance. In doing so, we hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of creative nonfiction as a whole, as well our particular positions within the genre.

Readings will include:"My Demons and My Dog and This Anxiety and That Noise" by Hanif Abdurraqib; "The Glass Essay" by Anne Carson; "Rain Like Cotton" by Jennifer Kabot; "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid; "This Is Not Who We Are" by Naomi Shihab Nye;"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan;"I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness" by Claire Vaye Watkins; Heartberries by Therese Mailhot

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

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 or form and still remain an essay. In this workshop you'll write three drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates' attempts. We'll also do close readings, starting with "Why I Write," by George Orwell, and "Why I Write," by Joan Didion. Then James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son." After this taste of the present we'll go back four thousand years to the essay's beginnings in Babylon, and follow its evolution in Greece and Rome-Heraclitus, Plutarch, Seneca-and its flowering in Europe: Montaigne, Natalia Ginzburg, and others, before returning to contemporaries like Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood. 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 this class knowing the history, theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

Day/Time: Friday, 9:30-12:20

This course explores some of the most basic approaches to writing poems through careful reading and discussion of modern and contemporary poets. We'll practice 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, 10:30-1:20

Current talk of queering the lyric I shows a lack of historical perspective: the lyric 'I' was always been queer, a performance of guises and disguises, to be most mistrusted when most apparently sincere. In this course we'll become acquainted with ways of performing 'I' in English-language lyric and test our own abilities to fake, fragment, displace, cross-dress and project the I as it goes about its poetic work. You (whoever you are) can become stranger than you imagined - you will learn that in poetry it's always true that I is another, but perhaps the other you might become, or most need to disavow.
Day/Time: Wednesday, 12:30-3:20

Writers at all levels learn through the careful reading of works they admire. We will spend more than a third of our time in this class reading stories worth learning from, both classic and contemporary, by writers like James Baldwin, Clarice Lispector, Sherman Alexie, Lorrie Moore, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Discussion will be lively --passionate opinions and enthusiasm are welcome --but most of our focus will be on the choices that writers make, the nuts and bolts of craft, including: point of view, tone, direct and summary dialog, setting, and use of time. In-class exercises will further hone your understanding of specific techniques, fire your creativity and get you writing. In writing workshop, each of you will each have the opportunity to present your work to the group. Critique will be respectful and productive, with emphasis on clarity and precision. By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and completed at least one story, which will be revised and handed in as a final portfolio.
Day/Time: Monday, 1:30-4:20

This course aims to deepen your understanding of the craft of short fiction through intensive study of contemporary writers and through workshops of both your own work and that of your classmates. Together we will examine stories by Mary Gaitskill, Kevin Brockmeier, Charles Yu, and others, reading as writers, searching not for theme but for a sense of how the stories were created, what craft choices the authors made, and what their structures can teach us as we create our own narratives. In addition to these readings, you will complete several short writing exercises and one longer story, which you will workshop and substantially revise. You will also engage with the work of your peers, delivering thoughtful, encouraging, constructive critiques.

Day/Time: Thursday, 2:00-4:50

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.

Day/Time: Monday, 9:30-12:20

We'll examine creative nonfiction from all of its sides beginning with the rhetorical precision of Aristotle and moving through the rigorous interior self-mapping of Montaigne, the looping denials of DeQuincey, and then into the modern modes courtesy of Audre Lorde, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, Arundhati Roy, and others. We'll write our own personal essays, workshop, and revise them.