Courses

21:200:201 Introduction to Creative Writing (3)
A multigenre course divided among poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students will be reading works in each of these genres, followed by at least one creative writing assignment for each genre. Experience in this course will ground students in techniques useful for communication in many fields, including law, medicine, business, science, technology, and criminal justice. The range of writing will also enable students to judge whether they want to proceed with a minor in creative writing. Course requirements include class discussion, in-class writing, group work, reading aloud, and submission of a portfolio of the semester's work.

21:200:311 Modernists, Beats, and Beyond (3)
This workshop is a reading and writing intensive course, studying the work of American modernists, Beats, confessionals, and formalists from 1910 to 1970. The Penguin Anthology will be the primary text for the readings and the inspiration for the writing assignments. The close study of great poems will enable students not to imitate but to utilize techniques applicable to their own writing. Students will write one poem per week toward a final portfolio of 14 poems, the completion of which will constitute the final exam. Course requirements include discussion of the readings, group work, in-class writing, and take-home writing assignments.

21:200:312 Poetry of the People (3)
This workshop is a reading and writing intensive course, studying the work of contemporary American poets. In the post-Vietnam War era, reflecting the cultural shifts brought on by the civil rights movement, feminism and the gay/lesbian rights movement, new generations of poets appeared with new styles, new politics, and new perspectives. Postmodern poetry, language poetry, and neoformalism share the literary stage with contemporary issues of gender and sexual freedoms, globalization, and technology. The Penguin Anthology will be the primary text for the close reading of contemporary poems and the inspiration for writing assignments. Students will write one poem per week toward a final portfolio of 14 poems, the completion of which will count as the final exam. Course requirements include discussion of the readings, group-work, in-class writing, and take home writing assignments.

21:200:313 World Forms: Haiku, Ghazal, Sonnet, and Beyond (3)

This workshop is a reading and writing intensive course, studying poetic forms from around the globe. Students will study the Japanese forms haiku and tanka, including the translated work of Issa and Basho, as well as contemporary haiku practitioners. The ghrazal, a celebrated Persian form, will be studied through the translated poems of Hafiz and Agha Shahid Ali's work in English. Other forms, such as the pantoum (originally Malayan) and terza rima (originally Italian), have been absorbed by 19th and 20th century poets within the English language tradition.Students will write one poem per week toward a final portfolio of 14 poems, the completion of which will count as the final exam. Course requirements include discussion of the readings, group work, in-class writing, and take home writing assignments.

21:200:314 Hybrid Forms
This workshop is a reading and writing intensive course, studying the hybrid art forms in poetry and prose that blur genres. The prose poem and flash fiction are so closely aligned that there is a debate about the technical differences defining one against the other. The lyric essay has been described as a literary form on the border between poetry and creative nonfiction. Readings from the anthologies Great American Prose Poems and The Next American Essay will provide starting points for students' own experiments with hybrid forms. Students will write one piece per week toward a final portfolio of 14 pieces, the completion of which will count as the final exam. Course requirements include discussion of the readings, group work, in-class writing, and take home writing assignments.

21:200:321 Basics of Craft: A Writer's Toolbox (3)
This is a reading and writing intensive course covering the major elements in crafting narrative fiction: structure, plot, character, description, setting, point of view, theme, voice, and more. Students will be asked to read about these elements while also reading stories that exemplify them. Students will practice giving each other feedback, developing a common language and mutual understanding for critiquing each other's fiction. Requirements include class discussion, a writer's notebook, and stories worked through multiple drafts.

21:200:322 Point of View in Fiction
This is a reading and writing intensive course that looks at fiction writers' use of point of view along a spectrum ranging from the most interior and subjective to the most exterior and objective. As the varying points of view are encountered in the course readings, students will employ them in attempting stories of their own. Course requirements include participation in workshops, reading aloud, critiquing with partners in small groups, and the completion of a portfolio of fiction.

21:200:323 Sentences and Scenes: Style in Fiction (3)
This course will examine fiction by major writers at a sentence-by-sentence level. We will look at when writers choose to follow certain rules and when they choose to break them, examining their specific techniques. The first half of the course examines the uses of short sentences, and the second the uses of long ones. In the short sentence section, we will look at effects achieved by Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka, and Nathaniel West. In the second, we will look at Henry James and William Faulkner, interested primarily in the use of the long sentence to mimic interiority or to create exterior scenes from which the reader cannot escape. We will also examine sentences of Virginia Woolf to see how she balances interiority and exteriority and creates sentences that seem to gallop. Students will maintain a writer's notebook and produce a portfolio of their writing.

21:200:324 Beginnings, Middles, Ends: Scenes in Fiction (3)
Writers are taught that stories require a beginning, a middle, and an end, and are written in dramatic scenes. What does this mean, though? What belongs in the beginning or the middle or the end? Where does a story start? When should it finish? What is a scene as a dramatic unit, and what are the types of scenes? This course will approach these questions through readings and exercises. Students will study different narrative styles for opening, closing, and sustaining stories, and they will practice working on these as separate entities, each requiring its own techniques. In addition to in-class writing, discussion, and group work, students will produce of a portfolio of their writing.

Creative Writing 200 (SASN)

Creative Writing 200