2019-2020

The essay, derived from the French term essayer meaning "to try" or "to attempt," is not only a beloved sub-genre of creative nonfiction, but a form that yields many kinds of stories, thus many kinds of structures. Araceli Arroyo writes that the essay can "reach its height in the form of a lyric, expand in digression, coil into a list, delve into memoir, or spring into the spire of the question itself all with grace and unexhausted energy." In this course, we will analyze the essay's continuum, marked by traditional, linear narratives on one end, and at the other, everything else. In our class, we will investigate the relationship between content and form. What does it mean to be scene-driven? What happens when a narrative abandons chronology and event, propelled instead by language and image? What is gained through gaps and white space? You will leave this class with a strong grasp of content's relationship to form, prepared to participate effectively in creative writing workshops. You will also create a portfolio of short writings that can be expanded into longer pieces. Readings will include: Nox by Anne Carson; A Bestiary by Lily Hoang; Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli; Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine; Essayists on the Essay edited by Ned Stuckey-French

Day/Time: Mondays, 10:30-1:20 PM

Ezra Pound once famously asserted that “poetry to be good poetry should be at least as well written as good prose.” In this course we will focus on the most basic unit of prose composition, the sentence, in order to enhance the art of our lines. We will study how sentences are deployed across a diverse range of texts, in both poetry and prose, considering variations in complexity, address, mood, and mode, and will try our hands at both minimalist and maximalist methods. We will diagram sentences, contemplate grammars of feeling, and examine how the shape of thought itself is constructed by sentences unfolding in tension with poetic lines. From Walt Whitman to Lyn Heijian, from Henry James to Lydia Davis, we will draw on a wide array of 20th and 21st century writers, with the aim of expanding and refining our literary technique. 

Day/Time: Friday, 1:30-4:20

This seminar, designed primarily for Creative Writing students, is an in-depth examination of point-of-view. We'll "reverse engineer" the work of a wide range of writers to help us understand the foundational concepts underlying first- and third-person narration. And we'll examine less common point-of-view techniques, including third-omniscient, third-objective, second-person, first-person plural, and first-person in which the word "I" never appears. We'll read works by the likes of Jeffrey Eugenides, Nikolai Gogol, Tessa Hadley, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Zadie Smith, and Rachel Cusk. The emphasis will be on critical writing, but we'll also do several creative exercises. You'll learn how to better control and employ point-of-view and perspective and strengthen and nuance your knowledge of this fundamental part of storytelling.

Day/Time: Thursday, 2-4:50 PM

In conversations on literary craft, plot and structure are often used interchangeably. Yet, while plot refers to a causal sequence of events, structure is a broader term concerned with narrative patterning. This includes thematic layering, pacing, the order of scenes, perspective shifting, and more. In this course, we will examine structural arrangements in both canonical and contemporary works of fiction by Franz Kafka, Rachel Ingalls, Jenny Zhang, and others. We’ll look at scene, repetition, listings, disruptive elements, digressive voice, seemingly shapeless storylines, and how these variables factor in creating structure. In every instance, we will look at how structure accommodates and naturally derives from the story, rather than impose itself upon it like some alien force. While this is not a workshop course, come prepared to write and casually share work in class. Students will pursue both creative work and critical papers.  

Instructor: Ling Ma
Day/Time: Monday, 12:30-3:20

Storytelling goes nearly as far back as human consciousness, while the ways in which we tell stories has been expanding ever since. This class will look at several different forms of narrative—fiction, creative non-fiction, narrative poetry, and film—and explore the “grammar” of these different genres, what they share and where they differ and how their particular strengths influence the ways in which they most effectively communicate. How does film (a visual medium) tell a story differently than does fiction (which asks us to project our own imagined version of the story), differently than creative non-fiction, (which must always rely on facts), differently than poetry (which condenses the story to its essences)? How do these different genres and mediums influence the stories they tell and the effects they achieve? Readings will include primary texts as well as critical and fundamentals texts in each genre. Students will complete weekly reading responses, as well as creative exercises. A paper focusing on a specific element derived from the class will be due at the end of the course.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 11:00-1:50
 

Beginning writers are often told to “imitate” the work of “great authors” in order to discover their own voices. One way to enliven this artistic apprenticeship is to copy masterpieces from literary history with great care, but with a comic touch, too. Imitation with a difference—think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—is the soul of parody, and in this course we’ll make mockeries of poetry, fiction, and essayistic nonfiction from the history of Western literature in order to learn how art works. Parodying Gertrude Stein’s parallax portraiture can illuminate the inner workings of literary mimesis itself. Satirizing Clarice Lispector’s proliferating points of view can teach us about the limits of perspective in narrative art. Imitating Junishiro Tanizaki’s essayistic praise of shadows, we can study the role of polemic in literary nonfiction. By the end of the quarter, you’ll have written several imitations of major literary works, and, en route, you will have hopefully learned something about your own voice as a literary artist.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:00-4:50
 

Autobiography is what happens when you're writing about something else. This course practices the art of letting the personal bleed into traditionally impersonal forms and is ideal for beginning students eager to experiment with creative possibilities. We'll read Anne Carson shaken by loss but trying to think through Emily Brontë, Joan Didion documenting her own bewilderment as a journalist in the 1960s, Michael Clune interrogating the allure of childhood videogames, and Eula Biss contemplating American racism in the context of her own Chicago neighborhood. The second half of the course will focus on autobiographies that are reframed by contact with other forms of attention—Claudia Rankine's politically disciplined anecdotes, Barry Lopez's nature writing, Virginia Woolf's rigorous exposition of her own consciousness as she reads a book. In each half of the course you will submit an original piece for peer workshopping, first a piece of criticism informed by autobiography, second an autobiographical essay informed by another discipline or pursuit. Directed prose exercises, edited by the instructor and returned for revision, will sharpen your technical self‐mastery. Polished revisions of workshop pieces will be due at the quarter's end.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Lytal
Day/Time: Thursday, 12:30-3:20

Real Characters

What does it mean to study another person’s life—a real person—and craft the collected pieces into a work of nonfiction? How can we write about them with authority? How do we turn people into nonfiction characters? 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 different techniques of gathering facts--interviewing and observing subjects, using secondary sources, providing 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.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 9:30-12:20
 

This course addresses a range of techniques for writing poetry, making use of various compelling models drawn primarily from international modernisms on which to base our own writing. (Our textbook is Poems for the Millennium, edited by Rothenberg & Joris.) In this sense, the course will constitute an apprenticeship to modern poetry. We will consider the breadth of approaches currently available to poets, as well as the value of reading as a means of developing an understanding of how to write poetry. Each week students will bring poems for discussion, developing a portfolio of revised work by the quarter’s end. Additionally, students will keep detailed notebooks, as well as developing critical skills for understanding poetry in the form of two short essays.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9:30-12:20
 

The Short Story

This class is an introduction to the writing of literary fiction. Our purpose will be to learn techniques that will help us to hone our skills as writers, observers, and thinkers. To that end, we will explore basic elements of fiction writing (plot, character, setting, point-of-view, dialogue, conflict, etc.) and read literature as writers. This means that we will be concerned foremost with how stories are crafted, and we will attempt to create a language in order to articulately describe what rivets us as readers. A strong component of this course is developing an appreciation of writing as a communal endeavor. As such, you are required to attend literary events in the community. As a member of a writing community, be prepared to respectfully read and respond to the work of others—both the work of students and published writers. Expect to invest a significant amount of time reading and writing inside and outside of class.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9:30-12:20