Class Day(s):
TR
Class Time: 2:00 pm
Course Description
This class will explore three genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Class periods will focus on the building blocks of all creative work—images, voice, character, setting, conflict, structure, and perspective. We’ll learn about these topics from reading, discussing, and critiquing professionally published work.
Over the semester, you’ll submit drafts in our three different genres. Everyone will have an audience for these drafts in our class workshops: students will read and spend time discussing what you’ve done well and how to make your draft even better than it already is, building up the work rather than knocking it down. Reading and responding to the work of other students will help you practice your writing vocabulary while thinking through all the possibilities for a draft. In addition, you’ll be part of a supportive writing community.
Based on these workshops, you will revise all of your drafts and submit the revisions in a portfolio at the end of the semester, a point at which you should have developed an understanding of the basic elements of craft.
Requirements
- Participation in workshops and class discussions
- Short written responses to assigned reading
- Short craft-building exercises
- Three original poems
- One piece of original creative non-fiction (7-15 pages)
- One original short story (7-15 pages)
- A portfolio of revised work to include three poems and one piece of prose
Readings
We will read online poetry selections by Maya Angelou, James Arthur, Margaret Atwood, Linda Bierds, Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, David Lee, Li-Young Lee, Naomi Shihab Nye, George Santos, Arthur Sze, Natasha Tretheway, and Kevin Young.
We will read short stories by Denis Johnson, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tim O’Brien, Daniel Orozco, and Leslie Marmon Silko. These will come from The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction.
And we’ll read Creative Non-fiction by Kelly Grey Carlisle, Annie Dillard, Dinty Moore, Ira Sukrungraung, and Ryan van Meter. These will come from The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Non-Fiction.