CRWR

This class invites students to explore various relationships between science and poetry, two domains that, perhaps counter-intuitively, often draw from each other to revitalize themselves. As poets, we’ll use, misuse, and borrow from science in our poems. We’ll approach poems like science experiments and aim to enter an “experimental attitude.” From a practical point of view, we’ll try to write poems that incorporate the language of science to freshen their own language or to expand the realm of poetic diction. Furthermore, we’ll work with tropes and procedural experiments that may result in revelation, discovery, and surprise. Readings may include work by Aimé Césaire, Kimiko Hahn, Ed Roberson, Dean Young, Joyelle Mcsweeney, and Will Alexander. Students can expect to write several poems, participate in discussion forums with both initial response papers and follow-up comments, critique peers’ work, and submit a final portfolio. A substantial amount of class time will be spent workshopping student work.

This technical seminar examines the dialogue between poets and other artists by focusing on working conversations and contexts set up within Black Mountain College in the mid-twentieth century. How do poets and painters conceive distinct possibilities for “images?” How do musicians and dancers frame poets’ grasp of sound/silence in writing? Our discussion will be initiated within possibilities established by Black Mountain writers and artists, including Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Merce Cunningham, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Hilda Morley, Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, and Robert Rauschenberg.

This poetry workshop introduces students to poetry writing through two different analogies: the poem as machine and the poem as animal. From a “machinist” point of view, we’ll take apart poems to get a sense of how they work as linguistic constructions. From an “animal” point of view, we’ll practice tapping into our instincts—our spontaneity, irrationality, and imaginative vitality. Students can expect to read modern and contemporary poems, write roughly a poem a week, respond to peer work, and turn in a final portfolio of the quarter’s work. 

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in nonfiction, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. Student work can be an extended essay, memoir, travelogue, literary journalism, or an interrelated collection thereof. It’s a workshop, so come to the first day of class with your work underway and ready to submit. You’ll edit your classmates' writing as diligently as you edit your own. I focus on editing because writing is, in essence, rewriting. Only by learning to edit other people’s work will you gradually acquire the objectivity you need to skillfully edit your own. You’ll profit not only from the advice you receive, but from the advice you learn to give. I will teach you to teach each other and thus yourselves, preparing you for the real life of the writer outside the academy.

Fiction writers say “If there’s no trouble, there’s no story”—an easier adage without the presumption of truth. This class will consider techniques for rendering “trouble” in narrative nonfiction. How can we write about the wrongs of others—and the wrongs we ourselves have committed—in a way that makes for a compelling story and an ultimately likable narrator? What makes a rendering of hate, abuse, indifference, ingratitude, or jealously compelling or empathetic in the end? What techniques—of persona, characterization, humor, pacing, or form—might help us write honestly and generously at the same time? And when generosity is not our aim, what other vehicles of connection are available to us?

How do we convincingly recreate important episodes from our life? How do we help our readers inhabit those moments that continue to live so urgently within our memory? How much invention are we allowed to employ, and how do we ensure that such accounts remain “truthful”? In this technical seminar in nonfiction, we will explore the craft of dramatization in personal essay and memoir. We will discuss many tools that are familiar to the fiction writer, including scene-building, characterization, and dialogue, as well as aspects unique to the art of nonfiction, such as the incorporation of testimonials, research, and letters, all in the service of dramatizing significant moments from our lived experience. Students will produce reading responses, craft analyses, and short creative exercises putting learned skills into practice.

In "Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Travelogues," we'll explore how travel writing uses place as a lens for understanding ourselves and the wider world. We'll read authors like Rebecca Solnit, Annie Dillard, and Sabrina Imbler and analyze how their travelogues blend personal experience with exploration. We'll consider the ethics and complexities of writing about travel and tourism and challenge our own definitions of what place can mean. In the first half of the term, students will have the opportunity to apply techniques from our readings to their own travelogues, focusing on their experiences as travelers here in Chicago. The second half of the term will be devoted to workshops of each student's original work, which will allow us to practice giving and receiving feedback and incorporating that feedback into our own creative processes.

This workshop is for BA, MA, and Minor students writing a creative thesis or portfolio, or any advanced student working on a book-length project. Everyone will workshop two different excerpts from their project, which can be a story collection, novel, novella, or hybrid work involving fiction. These workshops will be the focus of our quarter, and along with the specific needs of each excerpt, we’ll look in particular at aspects of its form (like its point of view, narrative style, or genre) that are most consequential to the larger work and to the longer form the author has chosen. Everyone will also give two brief presentations: one on the writer who has most influenced their fiction, and one on a literary magazine of their choice. And depending on time and interest, we can have conversations on topics that come out of these presentations—like cultivating your voice, writing after graduation, working towards publication, etc.

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in fiction, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. It is primarily a workshop, so please come to our first class with your project in progress (a story collection, a novel, or a novella), ready for you to discuss and to submit some part of for critique. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. And as a supplement to our workshops, we will have brief student presentations on the writing life: our literary influences, potential avenues towards publication, etc.

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in fiction, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. It is primarily a workshop, so please come to our first class with your project in progress (a story collection, a novel, or a novella), ready for you to discuss and to submit some part of for critique. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. As a supplement to our workshops, we will continue to read fiction and learn about authors' writing practices.