2022-2023

Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survives childhood has enough material to last a lifetime; 2020 Nobel Prize Winner Louise Glück wrote, “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” In this course we will study portrayals of childhood in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and film. We will read work from Justin Torres, Barry Lopez, Mavis Gallant, ZZ Packer, Sandra Cisneros, James Agee, Tobias Wolff, and others, seeking to explore how these artists push past common tropes and oversimplified representations to convey the actual subtlety, pain, wonder, and intelligence of childhood perception. Through this framework we will consider narrative and cultural conceptions of innocence, agency, epiphany, and perspective. We will interrogate what artists mean to say when they write about childhood, what meanings are found or created—about childhood but also about adulthood, and about what has—or has not—been left behind. Finally we will consider the enmeshed roles of memory, imagination, and experience in the creation of art. Students will be responsible for short creative and critical writing exercises, a presentation, and a final project, and will be expected to participate vigorously in class.

Tuesday 9:30am-12:20pm 

Like film, comics are a language, and there's much to be learned from studying them, even if we have no intention of 'writing' them. Comics tell two or more stories simultaneously, one via image, the other via text, and these parallel stories can not only complement but also contradict one another, creating subtexts and effects that words alone can’t. Or can they? Our goal will be to draw, both literally and metaphorically, on the structures and techniques of the form. While it’s aimed at the aspiring graphic novelist (or graphic essayist, or poet), it’s equally appropriate for those of us who work strictly with words (or with images.) What comics techniques can any artist emulate, approximate, or otherwise aspire to, and how can these lead us to a deeper understanding of the possibilities of point of view, tone, structure and style? We’ll learn the basics of the medium via Ivan Brunetti’s book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, as well as Syllabus, by Lynda Barry. Readings include the scholar David Kunzle on the origins of the form, the first avant-garde of George Herriman, Frank King, and Lyonel Feininger, finishing with contemporaries like Chris Ware, Emil Ferris, and Alison Bechdel. Assignments include weekly creative and critical assignments, culminating in a final portfolio and paper.

Monday 9:30am-12:20pm

It’s been said that in an ideal world, all writers would be translators, and all translators would be writers. In addition to the joy of enlarging the conversation of literature by bringing new voices into another language, the practice of literary translation forces us as writers to examine the materials and tools of our craft. In this workshop, we will critique each other’s translations of prose, poetry, or drama into English, as well as explore various creative strategies and approaches to translation by a variety of practitioners that touch on various aspects of the "radical recontextualization" that constitute the decision-making work of literary translation. Through these processes, you will formulate your own strategies to both literary translation and creative writing. Our readings of translations will largely come from South Asian Languages, and we'll have the opportunity to have conversations via Zoom with some of the translators we’ll be reading. Students should have at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language to take this workshop.

This course is cross-listed with SALC 10706, SALC 30706, GRMN 10606, and GRMN 30606.

Friday 12:30pm-3:20pm

What is the role of the self in our writing? Are we known or made things, even to ourselves, in our work? Beginning Poetry: Writing Identity focuses on writing and revising poems that capture the nuances of our often-intersectional identities, centering the questions: How is my work representative of me, and Who is the person represented in my work? Throughout the quarter, we will read, write, and discuss contemporary poems dealing with issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity and cultural background, etc., and develop strategies for addressing similar ideas in our own work. You will learn through practice, writing drafts that engage with craft elements like imagery, form, rhythm, and voice. We will workshop these drafts as a class, building a supportive, process-oriented community that focuses on creative and critical feedback. While fellow students’ work will be the primary texts, other possible readings include work by Joy Priest, Adrian Matejka, Su Cho, Tarfia Faizullah, Nikky Finney, Dorothy Chan, torrin a. greathouse, and others.

Thursday 2:00pm-4:50pm

This workshop will focus on the artistic possibilities of uncertainty in creative nonfiction. Writers have to tell our stories with authority. Yet many of our experiences of displacement, illness, trauma, and the slipperiness of memory remain unknown, unresolved, unhealed. While the need to render meaning from our narratives remains constant, when does certainty actually detract from that meaning? Can wisdom do more to obscure richer truths derived from form, tone, and voice? Readings and assignments will explore the ways that gaps invite creative opportunities and paradox. Workshop will explore the need for less knowing and more wondering in creative nonfiction. Course texts will include the work of Anne Carson, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Orner, and Nathasha Tretheway. Through submitting your own original work and responding to the writing of others, our workshop will to illuminate how generative doubt can be.

Friday 9:30am-12:20pm

What does it mean to study another person’s life—a real person—and craft the collected pieces into a work of nonfiction? How do we gain insight into other people? How can we write about them with authority? As students report and write profiles in this nonfiction workshop, we will explore the practice and limits of this popular genre. Through weekly writing exercises and reading assignments, we will study techniques of interviewing and observing subjects, of using secondary sources and social and historical context. We will develop the abilities to depict people through physical detail, dialogue and action. In considering the extent to which we can and can’t know the real people we portray, we will also explore how writers (along with documentary filmmakers, historians, sociologists, writers of case studies) address these limitations in their work. Students will complete a short profile each week, and they will write one longer, workshopped and revised profile.

Thursday 9:30am-12:20pm

If one account of a story is that it is, at heart, a transformation, then what is—or could be—transformed? In this beginning fiction workshop, we will consider change as an engine of fiction and explore metamorphoses that take place at the level of plot, character, narrative voice, planes of reality, place, memory, identity, language, and form, as well as transformations that perhaps fail to take place. Readings may include the work of authors such as Ovid, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Jamil Jan Kochai, Alice Munro, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Jamel Brinkley, among others. In creative exercises, we will experiment with transformations in our own fiction. Over the course of the quarter, students will collect and revise these experiments into a portfolio and transform one experiment into a complete short story, which we will workshop in class.

If one account of a story is that it is, at heart, a transformation, then what is—or could be—transformed? In this beginning fiction workshop, we will consider change as an engine of fiction and explore metamorphoses that take place at the level of plot, character, narrative voice, planes of reality, place, memory, identity, language, and form, as well as transformations that perhaps fail to take place. Readings may include the work of authors such as Ovid, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Jamil Jan Kochai, Alice Munro, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Jamel Brinkley, among others. In creative exercises, we will experiment with transformations in our own fiction. Over the course of the quarter, students will collect and revise these experiments into a portfolio and transform one experiment into a complete short story, which we will workshop in class.

Friday 12:30pm-3:20pm

The question of which point of view to use is central to any fiction writer beginning a story or a novel, but what does it mean to choose one point of view over another? Who is narrating the story and how does she present herself? Is the narrator speaking directly to the reader, as a character in the story itself? Is she hiding in the shadows, trying to be as invisible as possible? Does she have a god-like omniscience, narrating from on high? Or does she exist in a liminal state, narrating through both a character and herself simultaneously? How does a writer's choice of POV and narrative distance affect such things as voice, rate of revelation, and even worldbuilding? How does it affect the reader's experience? And how can a writer maximize their choice of POV to best serve the story they want to tell? In addition to submitting two stories or excerpts for workshop (plus a revision of one), expect to read and discuss a selection of published work.

Thursday 9:30am-12:20pm

"Every story is perfect until you write the first sentence - then it's ruined forever." So said prolific fiction writer J. Robert Lennon. This craft-focused course is geared towards those who don't quite know how to begin, who might be afraid of writing, and who feel burdened by their own inhibitions and expectations. With creative exercises, readings, and workshops, we'll find ways to warm up our writerly voices and use them as a guiding force in creating short fiction. We'll learn how to mine the readings - by an eclectic mix of authors including Miranda July, Noviolet Bulawayo, John Cheever - for specific techniques and skills to apply to our own work. We will workshop our writings throughout the term. By the end, we will have built up a modest but powerful portfolio.

Thursday 12:30pm-3:20pm