CRWR

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.

This course explores the characteristics and features of non-democratic regimes and tyrannies as they are reflected in literature and film: how and why they come about, what sustains them, why some resist them and others do not, and how/why they fall. Analyzing films, novels, and articles left in the wake of dictatorships like those of Julius Caesar, Hitler, and Rafael Trujillo, we will investigate the effects of absolute authority, how ordinary people react to repression, and the shaky transition from despotism to freedom. We will consider a diverse range of writers including Suetonius, Shakespeare, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hannah Arendt, and George Orwell. Assignments include critical essays, creative exercises, and a presentation.

In this course, we’ll treat Africana Speculative Fiction as a critical case study, reading and analyzing novels, short stories, film, music, and visual art that posits alternative histories, surrealistic dream states, and fantastical futures in the context of the Black imaginary. We’ll navigate the many routes of the imagination—folklores, mythologies and cosmologies; histories and futures; politics, theories, and philosophies; and the material reality. You’ll be asked to read and analyze Africana speculative fiction in short papers. Then, using these works as models, Hyde Park will be our springboard for inquiry and investigation, and you will write your own speculative fiction that engages both your imagination and the material reality.

This course invites writers to reconsider the narration of Chicago’s shared and public spaces, but in a city re-imagined within the force of climate change. Borrowing from Kim Stanley Robinson’s title, how does one tell the story of “Chicago 2140?” Where does one narratively remap the boundaries between water and wetland in this redrawn city? Is there a “Chicago epic” of the city’s natural boundaries and constructed spaces? To these ends, we will examine work by writers utilizing impulses from journalistic account to the fictional energies of Africanfuturism and post-apocalyptic storytelling. These writers include Dan Egan, Eric Klinenberg, Ed Roberson, Ava Tomasula y Garcia and Fernanda Trias. Building on editing skills and critical approaches in a workshop environment, participants will develop their own creative responses to this “prairied Paris” in poem, fiction, and nonfiction.

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.