CRWR

In this generative advanced poetry workshop we will find inspiration for our own poetry by engaging with the visual arts. We will read poems that respond to, reflect, and refract the arts, and exercises will be based on our own encounters in museums, at the movies, in the realms of fashion, architecture, landscape, and elsewhere. We will ask ourselves about artifice and making, the materiality of the written word, the relationship between observation and expression, the emotive qualities of the image, and the sonic qualities of words. Most of our course reading will be contemporary poetry, but we will also explore a range of exciting earlier examples. Each class meeting will include workshops of student poems, discussions of assigned literature, and conversations about art practice and art community. In addition to reading deeply, looking closely, and writing wildly, students are expected to be lively participants in the arts community on campus, and will attend exhibitions, concerts, readings, screenings, and other events and experiences that bring us into contact with various modes of expression. Texts may include poems by, Harryette Mullen, James Schuyler, Brenda Shaughnessy, David Trinidad, and Virgil.

This genre-blurring workshop will explore elements of the history and practice of the prose poem. We will also read texts that are difficult to classify in terms of genre. “Flash Fiction,” “Short Shorts,” the fable, the letter, the mini-essay, and the lyric essay will be examined, among others. We will discuss the literary usefulness (or lack of it) of genre and form labels. The class will be taught as a workshop: students will try their hand at writing in their choices of hybrid forms, and will be encouraged to experiment. Writers from all genres are welcome, as what we will be studying, discussing, and writing will involve the fruitful collision of literary genres.

In some ways, writing a first-person narrator seems like the most straightforward and natural kind of storytelling in the world. But as any writer who has made the attempt knows, that simple little “I” comes with an array of pitfalls – and possibilities. In this advanced fiction workshop, we will look at the many styles and approaches to first-person point of view: central narrators who are at the heart of the plot, peripheral narrators who witness and stand a little apart, the singular “I” vs. the plural “We,” direct address (often mislabeled as second-person narration), and the spectrum of unreliability. We will read and discuss fiction by writers like Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Charles Portis, Alice Munro, Raven Leilani, Russell Banks, Evan S. Connell and others, drawing craft lessons from these writers to guide our own attempts at writing in first person. Much of our class time will be dedicated to evaluating student work and honing our skills of composition and critique. In addition to shorter writing exercises throughout the quarter, every student will complete a full-length first-person short story for workshop and compose critique letters for each of their peers. Students will be required to significantly revise their full-length story by the end of the quarter.

In this workshop-based course we'll investigate how strangeness and magic function in short fiction. We'll explore concepts like defamiliarization, versimilitude, and the uncanny. We will contemplate how magical realism and surrealism differ from sci-fi and fantasy genre writing, and ask how we, as writers, can make the quotidian seem extraordinary and the improbable seem inevitable, and to what end? Students will complete several short creative exercises and workshop one story that utilizes magic or strange effects. Students will also be expected to write thoughtful, constructive critiques of peer work. Throughout the course, we'll consider how the expectations of literary fiction might constrain such narratives, and we can engage with and transcend these archetypes.

Beginning a novel can be daunting, but this class aims to both remove some of the mystery behind the process and encourage students to break through whatever barriers may be there, and start writing. This class will examine the early stages of developing and writing a novel: choosing the POV and narrative voice, establishing the setting, developing the main characters and the dynamics between them, setting up the conflicts and seeding themes, choosing areas to research, etc. As a class we will read, break down, and discuss the openings of several published novels as you work on your own opening chapters, which will be workshopped during the latter part of the course. In addition to reading and discussing a selection of published novel openings, expect to write and submit two of your own opening chapters of a novel-in-progress, read chapters from your peers to discuss during workshop, and turn in a revision of one of your chapters at the end of the course.

This workshop is for any student with a novel in progress or an interest in starting one. Our focus will be the opening chapter, arguably the most consequential one for the writer. Throughout the quarter, we’ll read the first chapters of a diverse mix of exemplary novels and examine how they effectively introduce key aspects of the work, like the characters and their world, the premise and central conflict, the novel’s thematic concerns, its form and storytelling strategy. How do these opening pages intrigue, orient, or even challenge the reader and begin teaching them how to read the book? And if this was the author’s actual starting point, how might it give them a better picture of the rest of the book, of aspects they haven’t yet figured out? As everyone workshops the first chapter (or prologue) of their own novel, we’ll ask the same questions and discuss how the author might adjust or rethink things to better understand the project overall and build on the promise of the material they have.

T. S. Eliot once said, “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” In this class we will look at modeling as a springboard for creativity. What makes a piece of writing original? Is it possible to borrow a famous writer’s story structure, theme, or even attempt their voice, yet produce something wholly original? How specifically are writers influenced and then inspired? Readings will pair writers with the influences they’ve talked or written about, such as Yiyun Li and Anton Chekhov; Edward P. Jones and Alice Walker, and George Saunders and Nikolai Gogol.

Yearning and love are universal. But what becomes of yearning when all stops are pulled? What becomes of love when it loses sight of all else? This class will look at obsession in narrative and poetry, both as a driving force and as a lens through which to examine the human condition. We will also explore how might we channel our own obsessions to fuel our own work. Through reading and analyzing the techniques behind various works of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, we’ll explore how obsession can intersect with such elements of craft as point of view, narrative distance, setting, plot, voice, detail, irony, perspective, rhyme, meter, and figurative language, and how these elements might be employed to effectively write about, into, and from obsession. Writers and poets we might read include Julio Cortazar, Ha Seong-Nan, Thom Gunn, Tom McCarthy, Sylvia Plath, JG Ballard, Patricia Highsmith, George Saunders, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others. Expect to turn in weekly reading responses and/or writing exercises, do a short presentation, and write a final hybrid creative and analytical project based on work you’ve done throughout the quarter.

In fiction, it is often said that an effective character must have a clear desire. Kurt Vonnegut famously advised, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” The idea is that desire is an animating, energizing, and focusing force in storytelling. In this course, we’ll attempt to apply the animation, energy, and focus of desire to personal essays, poems, and fiction, and explore how writers depict desire and longing in a wide range of work. We’ll also attempt to catalog different kinds of desire: crushes, obsessions, nostalgia, and farsickness, to name a few. We'll pay special attention to how we can write about strong emotional experiences without resorting to cliches or sentimentality.

Gossip, rumor, scandal, hearsay: from Heian period Japan to contemporary gossip columns, marginal channels of information have been an essential vehicle for storytelling, information transmission, and entertainment. In this class, we will explore the role of marginal, subversive, and communal forms of communication as both a tool and a topic in literature. From pushing plot forward to challenging power dynamics, we will examine the practical and ethical potential of gossip in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Students will read broadly across genres and styles then apply what they've learned in two creative pieces culminating in a final reflective paper that details the writer’s choices in revision and their creative pieces’s connection to the class topic.