Beginning Workshops

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.

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.

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