creative writing course descriptions

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Creative Writing Major and Minor, Course Descriptions

Creative writing major and minor, course descriptions.

ENG 209. Introduction to Creative Writing. 3 Credit Hours.   This is an introductory course in writing fiction and poetry.  A basic premise of this course is that powerful stories and poems often emerge from attentive reading, fearless writing, and rigorous revision.  Some writers may be born, but all writers are made (as are athletes, doctors, painters, lawyers, and musicians) through the deliberate and persistent practice of discipline.  In English 209, readings, class discussions and in-class writing exercises will focus on the elements of craft.  We will pay special attention to reading as models and jumping off places into our own work.  We will, in effect, “imitate toward originality.” 

Learning Outcomes

Develop a working knowledge of the differences between poetry, fiction and the third genre.

Understand how to talk about these genres as writers.

Become familiar with the workshop as a form of receiving and giving feedback.

Understand the writing process, from idea to draft, workshop to revision, and the importance of all steps.

Gain a familiarity with reading and writing work that is multilingual.

Attend literary events and write reflections about them.

Produce a final portfolio of writing samples, including first drafts, intermediate drafts, and final revisions (three samples—one in each genre).

ENG 290/219. Introduction to Fiction Workshop .   3 Credit Hours.    This course is an introduction to the writing of contemporary short fiction where you will develop critical as well as creative thinking and writing skills.  We will focus on building your understanding of the elements of fiction and how you might use these elements to design your stories.  We are also concerned with developing your sense of what it means to be part of a writing community. The workshop environment requires extensive peer collaboration as we practice various writing strategies and examine the stages of the writing process: mining, collecting, shaping, drafting, and revising. This course meets requirements for creative writing majors and minors.

Prerequisite:  ENG 209 or   Requisite:   Creative Writing Majors or Creative Writing Minors. May not be taken in the same term with another Creative Writing course

Define and know the difference between a short story, vignette, flash fiction, novel, and the novella.

Develop and implement a vocabulary for talking about the craft of fiction. Terms should include tension, conflict, character, setting, plot, structure, pacing, voice, point of view, tone, revision, epiphany, resolution, scene, exposition, summary, narrative, sensory details, concrete details.

Recognize scenes as the building blocks of stories.

Write from the ground up, i.e. begin with the writing of scenes that develop character and conflict, that can move a story forward.

Write complete short stories, built upon the work done at the scene level.

Become comfortable with the workshop, with the giving and receiving of feedback.

Become aware of their personal writing process, and be able to describe it in reflection.

Continue to become familiar with work that is multilingual.

Produce at least one assignment that is multilingual.

Write work that fall under the literary tradition.

Produce a final portfolio of writing samples, including first drafts, intermediate drafts, and final revisions.

ENG 292/219.  Introduction to Poetry Workshop. 3 Credit Hours.   Our aim is to help each of you develop your interests and abilities as poets. This means we’ll be doing a lot of reading, writing, and revising during this semester. We’ll spend much of our time in the detailed discussion of your own creative work. We’ll also read the work of a diverse array of contemporary writers to gain an understanding of contemporary American poetry. You will learn the state of the art and you will contribute to its continuing evolution as engaged and active artists.

Actively participate in the workshop by receiving and providing critical feedback

Define key terms including diction, syntax, line break, stanza, image, metaphor, simile, and cliché.

Define the term ‘free verse’ and write free verse poems that feature tactile imagery and original phrasing/description free of clichéd language.

Understand the difference between concrete and abstract language.

Understand the poetic line as a unit of sound and meaning.

Generate evocative titles for their poetry.

Understand how punctuation shapes rhythm, cadence, and meaning in a poem.

Produce at least one poem that is multilingual.

Produce a final portfolio of free verse poetry that includes first drafts and final revisions.

ENG 390/391. Intermediate Fiction Workshop. 3 Credit Hours.   This workshop will look at the construction of effective contemporary stories. Its intention is to build a community of writers with a commitment to craft, to risk taking, and to building each other’s own sense of story. Students are expected to generate 20-30 pages of new writing and to complete one revision of a full-length story. In addition, each student may be expected to discuss writing from a reflective and critical perspective in the form of an annotated bibliography, close reading, essay, presentation, response paper, review, or some other form determined by the instructor. Topics may include an element of craft (i.e. balancing story with flashback), a narrative strategy (such as the unreliable narrator) or an exploration of a particular writer, group of writers, or writing school. This course meets requirements for creative writing majors and minors.

Prer equisite:  ENG 219 Or ENG 290 Or Permission of Creative Writing Director.  May not be taken in the same term with another Creative Writing course.

Write and revise 20-30 pages of new writing.

Develop and refine the use of literary elements in their short stories.

Develop their sense of what it means to be part of a writing community via workshop, attendance of literary events.

Read contemporary writers, including work from multilingual and/or multicultural writers.

Discuss writing from a reflective or critical perspective in the form of an annotated bibliography, close reading, essay, presentation, response paper, review or some other form determined by the instructor.

ENG 392/391. Intermediate Poetry Workshop .   3 Credit Hours.   This course will continue your development as writers and critical readers of poetry. While you may be familiar with workshop practices from prior courses, this intermediate workshop will challenge you into offering increasingly sophisticated feedback to your peers. We’ll be seeking similarly sophisticated turns of thought and language in the poems you write. Our course reading will complicate your notions of what’s possible in poetry and inspire you to write poems unlike any you have written before. 

Prerequisite:   ENG 219 Or ENG 292.  Or Permission of Creative Writing Director. May not be taken in the same term with another Creative Writing course.

Learning outcomes

Receive and offer critical feedback in workshop with an eye towards submitting their work to undergraduate literary journals like   Mangrove .

Display a deeper understanding of the terminology and elements of craft introduced in ENG 292/219.

Experiment with more figurative language, unconventional forms, and cross-genre work.

Be able to distinguish between free verse and formal poetry with an increased knowledge of terms like metered verse, blank verse, rhyme scheme, and fixed form.

Develop a stronger sense of his/her revision process with an emphasis on independent self-direction.

Produce a final portfolio of free verse poetry that includes first drafts and final revisions with an eye towards submitting their work to undergraduate literary journals at UM or elsewhere.

Read and offer original analysis of poetry by contemporary writers, including work from multilingual and/or multicultural poets.

ENG 404. Creative Writing (Fiction Prose). 3 Credit Hours.   This workshop will look at the construction of effective contemporary short stories. Its intention is to build a community of serious writers with a commitment to craft, to risk taking, and to building each other’s own sense of story. It is my hope that you find the material deep inside you and that you use your craft, your ability to risk and your community to develop your works. In addition to workshopping student narratives, we will ground our discussions in published contemporary short stories to give your own stories context in form and inspiration to grow. In the end, I intend for you to be strong storytellers and readers, able to write, critique and revise your works in a confident manner. This course meets requirements for creative writing majors with a concentration in fiction.

Prer equisite : ENG 390 Or Permission of Creative Writing Director.  May not be taken in the same term with another Creative Writing course.

Students should produce 20-30 pages of writing.

Construct effective short stories and write outside the short story form as well. This may include flash fiction, novellas, chapters from novels-in-progress, digital expressions, etc.

Read at an advanced and challenging level.

Take risks in their writing in order to develop the content of their work.

Be introduced to basic ideas about publishing for emerging writers.

Create a portfolio that is future-minded. In other words, the portfolios should include samples of work and the revision process, as well as proposals regarding either longer work to be written post-graduation, or postgrad plans, a process letter that serves as self-assessment, or an annotated list of goals for continuing the life of the writer after the undergraduate degree is completed.

ENG 406. Creative Writing (Poetry Workshop). 3 Credit Hours.   Students in this advanced poetry workshop will have the opportunity for hands-on experimentation with poetic crafts—structure, language, musicality—as well as for research, collaboration, and critique.  We’ll mine memory, mix genres, and explore culture and linguistic inventions, while enjoying the work of a diverse array of contemporary and canonical poets.  Through annotations and lively discussions of both contemporary poems and student work, as well as through exercises and assignments, students will create poetry of increasing risk and quality and develop the skills necessary to advance their craft.  A final portfolio of creative and critical work is due at the semester’s end.

Prerequisite:   ENG 392 Or ENG 391 Or Permission of Creative Writing Director. May not be taken in the same term with another Creative Writing course.

Receive and offer highly informed and eloquent critical feedback in workshop with an eye towards submitting their work to undergraduate literary journals like   Mangrove   and/or towards the compilation of an MFA application portfolio.

Write original work that reveals their unique aesthetic interests and displays a strong sense of individual voice.

Discuss their specific literary models and influences by speaking and writing knowledgably about the work of published poets they either admire or find difficult.

Experiment with more figurative language, unconventional forms, and cross-genre work

Effectively experiment in multiple languages, including writing in vernacular, dialects, and even invented language.

Be able to dramatically transform their poems from one draft to another with an emphasis on linguistic originality, descriptive sophistication, and thematic complication.

Produce a final portfolio of poetry that includes final revisions with an eye towards submitting their work to undergraduate literary journals at UM or elsewhere or towards the compilation of an MFA application portfolio.

Course Description for 407

Special Topics Advanced Workshop in Creative Writing

This course explores special topics in Creative Writing. Students will be taken step by step through the process of writing compelling fiction, poetry or nonfiction in the genre and specific form of the professor’s choice. Students will learn the basic skills and attitudes needed to research, produce and write in that specific form. Readings in the form will be broad and challenging. By the end of the course, students will have developed a portfolio of work that reflects the form under study.

Prerequisite:  ENG 390 or Permission of Creative Writing Director. This course may not be taken concurrently with another creative writing workshop.

Produce a significant amount of written work, equivalent to what is asked of them in ENG 404, but tailored to the needs and standards of the form being studied.

Recognize the major elements of the topic under study, and be able to talk about them in formal terms related to that topic.

Model the readings in their work via writing assignments, reflecting an understanding of the topic.

Complete a final portfolio or project that reflects their best work, their understanding of the topic, and their process.

Course Description for 408

Writing Autobiography

This course explores the writing of prose or poetry as autobiography. Students will be taken step by step through the process of writing compelling memoir, the essay, blogging or creative nonfiction as a way of exploring the Self. Students will learn the basic skills and attitudes needed to research, produce and write autobiography. Readings in the form will be broad and challenging. By the end of the course, students will have developed a portfolio of work that reflects the form under study.

Recognize the major elements of autobiography, creative nonfiction and the essay; and be able to talk about them in formal terms.

Model the readings in their work via writing assignments, reflecting an understanding of form.

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Course Catalog

Cw - creative writing.

CW Class Schedule

CW 100   Intro to Creative Writing   credit: 3 Hours.

Acquaints students with the technical choices a writer makes in creating a story or a poem. Classes will consist of lectures on specific elements of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students will also have the opportunity to talk with visiting writers and work in small groups to apply the course techniques and skills to a close reading of stories and poems. This course satisfies the General Education Criteria for: Humanities - Lit & Arts

CW 104   Fiction Workshop I   credit: 3 Hours.

An introductory workshop in fiction, with a primary emphasis on short stories. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement.

CW 106   Poetry Workshop I   credit: 3 Hours.

Practice in the writing of poetry; experimentation with a number of fixed forms and free verse, but emphasis mainly on the student's freedom to develop a personal style. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement.

CW 199   Undergraduate Open Seminar   credit: 1 to 5 Hours.

Topics course that varies each semester and by section. The topics offered each semester will be listed in the Class Schedule. Approved for Letter and S/U grading. May be repeated.

CW 200   Reading for Writers   credit: 3 Hours.

Emphasizes the craft of short stories and poems through the study of formal elements central to the production of creative writing (e.g., plot, character, setting, point of view in short fiction and rhythm, meter, line break, imagery, simile, metaphor, formal patterns in poetry). Prerequisite: CW 104 or CW 106 . For majors only.

CW 202   Topics in Creative Writing   credit: 3 Hours.

Independent writing projects and examination of literature as the cultural basis of the student's specialized fields. May be repeated as topics vary.

CW 204   Fiction Workshop II   credit: 3 Hours.

An intermediate workshop in fiction, with a primary emphasis on short stories. Prerequisite: CW 104 or equivalent.

CW 206   Poetry Workshop II   credit: 3 Hours.

Builds upon the workshop format of CW 106 , with an emphasis on prosody and poetic technique. Students will deepen their sense of craft by putting into practice their study and understanding of a variety of poetic forms (e.g., syllabic poetry, dramatic monologue, sonnet, bound/free verse) and technical concerns (e.g., voice, tone, line, line break, image). The workshop component of the course typically includes 8-12 completed poems and their revisions. Prerequisite: CW 106 .

CW 208   Creative Nonfiction Workshop   credit: 3 Hours.

Types of nonfiction prose, including the personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, and historical writing.

CW 243   The Craft Essay: Creative Reading, Reflection, and Revision   credit: 3 Hours.

In this writing- and reading-intensive composition class, students will look at how creative writers—fiction writers, poets, and essayists—write about creative writing outside of the standard literary analysis model. Realizing that there are other methods of discussing, analyzing, and considering literature is a major goal of this class. As a complement to the production of creative work, students will focus on how we analyze, consider, and place that work within the greater context of creative writing. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement. This course satisfies the General Education Criteria for: Advanced Composition

CW 404   Fiction Workshop III   credit: 3 or 4 Hours.

An advanced workshop in fiction, with a primary emphasis on short stories. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours or 8 graduate hours. Prerequisite: CW 204 or equivalent.

CW 406   Poetry Workshop III   credit: 3 or 4 Hours.

Practice of the writing of poetry aided by intensive study of examples. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours or 8 graduate hours. Prerequisite: CW 206 or equivalent.

CW 455   Creative Writing Tutorial   credit: 3 or 4 Hours.

Personal direction in a writing project: fiction (novel or short stories), poetry or creative nonfiction. Frequency of conference to be determined by the type of project. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours or 8 graduate hours. Prerequisite: CW 208 , CW 404 or CW 406 , and consent of the Director of Creative Writing.

CW 460   Intro to Literary Editing   credit: 3 Hours.

Practicum in which students learn all the stages of developing and editing a literary publication. Students will solicit, read, and select poems and stories for an online supplement to the Ninth Letter literary journal. At the end of the semester, the supplement will be published on the Ninth Letter website (www.ninthletter.com). Students will gain experience in professional communications, copyediting, and marketing. 3 undergraduate hours. No graduate credit. May be repeated in separate semesters to a maximum of 6 hours. Prerequisite: CW 104 or CW 106 .

CW 463   Adv Topics in Creative Writing   credit: 3 or 4 Hours.

Advanced topics course in Creative Writing. Students study selected topic through a workshop model, pursuing advanced development in one or more approaches to writing in a specialized field or genre. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated, if topics vary. Prerequisite: Junior standing required.

CW 500   The Craft of Fiction   credit: 4 Hours.

Examination of the creative process of fiction from the perspectives of aesthetics and techniques, illustrated from the work of selected authors. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in English.

CW 502   Problems in Poetry Writing   credit: 4 Hours.

Examination of the creative process of poetry from the perspective of aesthetics and techniques, illustrated from the work of selected authors. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in English.

CW 504   Writing Workshop in Fiction   credit: 4 Hours.

Directed individual projects, with group discussion in fiction. May be repeated to a maximum of 16 hours. Prerequisite: Admission to the MFA program, or graduate standing in English with advanced submission of creative work and consent of instructor.

CW 506   Writing Workshop in Poetry   credit: 4 Hours.

Directed individual projects, with group discussion in poetry. May be repeated to a maximum of 16 hours. Prerequisite: Admission to the MFA program, or graduate standing in English with advanced submission of creative work and consent of instructor.

CW 560   Literary Publishing &Promotion   credit: 0 to 4 Hours.

A working practicum designed to teach graduate students the basics of literary journal publishing and to introduce them to career and entrepreneurial opportunities in other types of literary arts organizations. Students will attend weekly editorial meetings, complete weekly reading assignments, and will work 2 hours per week in the 'Ninth Letter' office, reading manuscript submissions and completing various clerical tasks for the journal. Approved for both letter and S/U grading. May be repeated to a maximum of 8 hours. Prerequisite: MFA candidate standing.

CW 563   Special Topics   credit: 0 to 4 Hours.

Approved for both letter and S/U grading. May be repeated up to a maximum of 12 hours. Prerequisite: MFA candidate standing or consent of instructor.

CW 591   Independent Study   credit: 0 to 4 Hours.

Approved for both letter and S/U grading. May be repeated up to a maximum of 12 hours. Prerequisite: MFA candidate standing.

CW 595   Final Project   credit: 0 to 12 Hours.

Guidance in writing final projects. Approved for S/U grading only. May be repeated in separate terms to a maximum of 12 hours. Prerequisite: MFA candidate standing.

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2024-2025 Catalog (PDF)

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ENG 231. Intro to Creative Writing

Spring 2014.

Course Catalog

All Creative Writing courses are now open bid. Pre-registration for all course types is available through  my.uchicago.edu . 

Pre-registration for Fundamentals in Creative Writing, Technical Seminars, and Advanced Workshops prioritizes students who have officially declared the Creative Writing major, minor, or MAPH Creative Writing Option.

Contact instructors to be added to a waitlist. Additional details, including course times and locations, are listed on  my.uchicago.edu . 

Beginning Autumn Quarter 2023, students are no longer required to submit a separate application or writing sample for Creative Writing courses.

Autumn Quarter begins Tuesday, September 26. Creative Writing courses are offered once per week for two hours and 50 minutes. The current canonical hours policy is here ; view the academic calendar here .

Please sign up for the program's listserv for additional information and course application updates. 

CRWR Course Archive

For classes offered before the 2017-18 academic year, browse our Course Archive . 

CRWR 20412/40412 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: The Writer as Researcher

Research is an essential and imaginative process for the nonfiction story, but in what ways are the writer’s methods unique to literary practice? This course will explore the role of research in writing creative nonfiction. Students will develop methods that play a role in writing essays, memoir, and literary journalism. The seminar will be conducted in four sequential parts: immersion research; interview techniques; library research; translating technical jargon for a public readership. Assignments will equip students with the practical steps for completing each style of research. We will also discuss how to integrate research into the descriptions, narrative, and subtext of the writing. Students will experiment with: dramatizing research through scene-building; using reflection to respond to their findings; and inviting research to become part of the plot. Research, we will find, generates some of the most dramatic and surprising moments in the writing process. We will read texts that correspond to the areas of focus, including works by Eula Biss, Daisy Hernandez, and Sarah Viren. Students will leave the course equipped to include research into their writing process for advanced writing workshops and thesis projects.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 20224/40224 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Tempo

"At certain moments," writes Italo Calvino of his early literary efforts, "I felt that the entire world was turning into stone."  Slowness and speed govern not just the experience of writing but also the texture of our fictional worlds.  And this is something we can control.  Sublimely slow writers like Sebald or Duras can make time melt; spritely magicians like Aira and Rushdie seem to shuffle planes of reality with a snap of their fingers.  This seminar gathers fictions that pulse on eclectic wavelengths, asking in each case how narrative tempo embodies a fiction's character.  Our exercises will play with the dial of compositional speed, testing writing quick and slow; alternately, we'll try to recreate the effects of signature texts.  Weekly creative and critical responses will culminate in a final project.

CRWR 20221/40221 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Detail

John Gardner said that the writer’s task is to create “a vivid and continuous fictional dream.” This technical seminar will focus on the role of detail in maintaining this  dream. In this course we will deconstruct and rebuild our understanding of concepts like simile, showing vs. telling, and symbolism, asking what these tools do and what purpose they serve. Drawing from fiction and essays from Ottessa Moshfegh, Barbara Comyns, Zadie Smith, and others, students will practice noticing, seeing anew, and finding fresh and unexpected ways of describing. We will also examine what is worthy of detail in the first place, how detail functions outside of traditional scene, and the merits and limits of specificity, mimesis, and verisimilitude. Finally we will consider what it means to travel across a landscape of vagueness and euphemism as we search for the quality of “thisness” that James Wood claims all great details possess. In addition to assigned readings, students will be responsible for reading responses, short craft analyses, vigorous class participation, and several creative exercises and peer critiques applying these lessons.

CRWR 12159 Reading as a Writer: The Bad Girls Club

Jezebels, witches, femme fatales, nasty women, sirens, madwomen, and murderesses: the world over, these women of many names—whom we’ll collectively refer to as the Bad Girls Club—have alternately inspired the disdain and delight of multitudes. Whether jailed, expelled, excommunicated, or burned at the stake, their (anti)heroic antics have challenged, critiqued, or, some might say, corrupted the laws, mores, and sensibilities of societies. If it is true that polite, well-behaved women rarely make history, then what do impolite, badly-behaved women teach us about the construction of (his) story? In this course, we’ll examine literature from around the world featuring members of the Bad Girls Club, who in opposing complimentary constructions of femininity, femaleness, and power invite introspection on the gendered nature of story and storytelling. In short critical papers, we’ll analyze the tropes, features, and conventions of literature featuring these bad characters, and in short exercises, you’ll write stories, poems, and essays inspired by them.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. 

CRWR 12145 Reading as a Writer: Re-vision

To revise a piece of writing isn’t merely to polish it. Revision is transformation and yields an alternate reality. A new view, a re-vision. This course will start by tracking compositional process, looking at brilliant and disastrous drafts to compare the aesthetic and political consequences of different choices on the page. We’ll then study poems, essays, and stories that refute themselves and self-revise as they unfold, dramatizing mixed feelings and changing minds. We’ll end by considering erasure poetry as a form of critical revision. Our conversations will inspire weekly writing exercises and invite you to experiment with various creative revision strategies. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to share their writing for group discussion.

CRWR 12160 Reading as a Writer: Exploring the Weird

In 1917 the Russian critic Viktor Shklovsky coined the word 'ostranenie,'—translating roughly as 'defamiliarization'—to illustrate a concept that asks the writer or artist to see the everyday in new and unfamiliar ways. In fiction writing this means avoiding cliché while cultivating elements of surprise, the unexpected, the strange. It means the author offering a new perspective on something familiar, something surprising and, often, yes, a little weird. So what does it mean to follow the weird as a fiction or creative non-fiction writer? As a poet? How can we indulge that strange, uncanny, often suppressed side of ourselves in a way that not only serves a work of literary art but opens it up to new possibilities? This class will look at ways writers use defamiliarization and other techniques to create unexpected and sometimes jarring effects and will encourage students to take similar risks in their own writing. Students will view read various works of fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, view films, and read critical and craft- oriented texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list.

CRWR 12154 Reading as a Writer: Brevity

This course will consider brevity as an artistic mode curiously capable of articulating the unspeakable, the abyssal, the endless. Reading very brief works from a long list of writers, we will ask: when is less more? When is less less? What is minimalism? What is the impact of the fragment? Can a sentence be a narrative? Can a word comprise a poem? Our readings will include short poems, short essays, and short short stories by Yannis Ritsos, francine j. harris, Aram Saroyan, Richard Wright, Cecilia Vicuña, Kobayashi Issa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton, Lydia Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Franz Kafka, Joy Williams, Jenny Xie, Venita Blackburn, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Valentine, Samuel Beckett, and others. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to write critical and creative responses for group discussion.

CRWR 12147 Intro to Genres: The River's Running Course

Rivers move--over land, through history, among peoples--and they make: landscapes and civilizations. They are the boundaries on our maps, the dividers of nations, of families, of the living and the dead, but they are also the arteries that connect us. They are meditative, meandering journeys and implacable, surging power. They are metaphors but also so plainly, corporeally themselves. In this course, we will encounter creative work about rivers, real and imaginary, from the Styx to the Amazon. Through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama, we will consider what rivers are, what they mean to us, and how they are represented in art and literature. Rivers will be the topic and inspiration for our own creative writing, too. The goal for this course is to further your understanding of creative writing genres and the techniques that creative writers employ to produce meaningful work in each of those genres. You will also practice those techniques yourselves as write your own creative work in each genre.  Our weekly sessions will involve a mixture of discussions, brief lectures, student presentations, mini-workshops and in-class exercises. Most weeks, you will be responsible for a creative and/or critical response (300-500 words) to the reading, and the quarter will culminate in a final project (7-10 pages) in the genre of your choice, inspired by the Chicago River. 

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17003 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Truth

In this class we'll study how writers define and make use of truth--whatever that is. In some cases it's the truth, singular; in others a truth, only one among many. Some writers tell it straight, others slant. Some, like Tim O'Brien, advocate story-truth, the idea that fiction tells deeper truths than facts. To get at the heart of these and other unanswerable questions we'll read writers who've written about one event in two or more modes. Nick Flynn's poems about his father, for example, which he's also set down as comic strips as well as in prose. Jeanette Winterson's first novel as well as her memoir, sixteen years later, about what she'd been too afraid to say in it. Karl Marlantes' novel about the Vietnam war, then his essays about the events he'd fictionalized. Through weekly responses, creative exercises, and longer analytic essays you'll begin to figure out your own writerly truths, as well as the differences-and intersections-between them.

This is class is restricted to students who have declared a major in Creative Writing or a minor in English and Creative Writing. Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 17015 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Sincerity (and Irony)

What does it mean for a piece of writing to be “sincere”? How do we know a (character, poem, “I,” essay) is “sincere”? What does it mean to make that judgment, and what does it commit us to? How does that judgment change a reader’s orientation to the object? We will approach these questions obliquely first, by thinking about how irony works. Are irony and sincerity opposites? We’ll look at a range of contemporary and historical objects in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This will include essays by Kierkegaard, Oscar Wilde, Wayne Booth, Jonathan Swift, and R. Magill Jr., fiction by Vladimir Nabokov, Joanna Ruocco, and Kathy Acker, and poetry by Chelsey Minnis, Jenny Zhang, Amiri Baraka, and others. We’ll also consider certain internet objects and think about their relationship to sincerity (and irony). This course will give students a more nuanced and historically grounded handle on these questions, and will help them develop a style of writing that’s able to more intentionally (and interestingly) choose its tonal legibilities.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Shaping Poems

This course introduces students to poetry writing first by exploring various ways of generating material, then by shaping that material into poems. We’ll refine devices such as image, rhythm, and metaphor while we also explore the musical movements of mind that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, we will focus primarily on readings and in class writing. As we move forward, we will spend most of class time workshopping student poems. Students can expect to turn in several drafts of poems, serve as discussion leaders, provide written comments to their peers, and assemble a final portfolio.

CRWR 10306 Section 2/30306 Section 2 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Making and Breaking Form

In this course we will investigate the many forms poets have invented, remixed, and remade across time to sing their songs and express the news of the day. We will read poems ancient and contemporary, and also turn to song, video, dance, architecture, and other modes of expression to find inspiration to create our own new forms. We will study the components of a poem—syntax, music, imagery, sense, line—as we study larger structures a poem can take, and we will constantly be mindful of the historical dimension of our practice. We will become familiar with the campus arts calendar, as attendance at a minimum of two events (at least one literary) is required. Emphasis will be on writing exercises, student presentations on course readings, and student-led workshops of each other’s poems generated during the course. These writing efforts will be discussed by the class in workshops and revised for a final portfolio comprised of drafts of poems accompanied by a critical consideration and a clippings journal featuring other people’s poems, articles, and images gathered during the quarter.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: The Meditative Essay

It has been said that good questions outrank easy answers. The meditative essay gives us a tool to refine our curiosities again and again: Who are we? How did we get here? What keeps us going? What holds us back? Where are we headed, really? Students in this class will tackle some of life’s biggest questions in a “field notebook” with the goal of developing— and helping each other develop— true, bold, idea-driven essays that render us a little more lucid and in love with the act of wondering. We’ll read essayists and narrators who specialize in the art of reverie, such as Fernando Pessoa, Sei Shōnagon, and Lia Purpura. Half of class-time will be dedicated to student-led discussions of original works in progress with the goal of exchanging constructive feedback and practicing revision as a form of inquiry. Students will direct their own learning with self-evaluations and a conference with the instructor about their developing goals, culminating in a final portfolio that is something to write home about.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Oral History

We will study the theory and practice of Oral History, and we will create original oral accounts from a wide range of Chicago communities. We will work to understand the method and politics of Oral History, and to gain facility in practice and written presentation. Oral History, the poetry of the everyday, the literature of the street, is perfectly poised to open a narrative space where an interviewer, listening with empathy and identification, and a story-teller, seizing an occasion to perform an account of events and experiences, co-create and reveal a universe of meaning-making. Each student will create an original oral account, and each will have the opportunity to introduce a narrator (or a group of narrators) while making a presentation to the Class/Workshop, employing any of the many approaches that we will have studied—theater, poetry, narrative, documentary, comix, film, podcasting. Our goal is to understand the method and politics of Oral History, and to gain facility in practice and presentation.

CRWR 10206 Section 3/30206 Section 3 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Writing From Life

“Write what you know” is common and clichéd creative writing advice, but also happens to be quite helpful to those of us new to fiction. In this Beginning Fiction workshop, we’ll use memories as the raw material for our fiction, concerning ourselves with telling stories effectively rather than telling the truth and leveraging our deep impressions of real people, places and time to create convincing imagined worlds. Along the way, we’ll read the work of writers who have used their own experiences and impressions in fiction, such as Jayne Anne Phillips, Edward P. Jones, Annie Ernaux, and James Baldwin, among others, and discuss the benefits, limitations and ethical questions of writing fiction from lived experience. Many of our in-class activities and exercises will focus on training ourselves to remember more effectively in an effort to understand more deeply the relationship between memory and imagination. To be successful, students will read and write actively and share their well-informed opinions with enthusiasm, especially in our workshop discussions.

CRWR 10206 Section 1/30206 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Finding a Narrative Home

All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey toward a lost land.” So wrote Janet Frame, a singularly talented author who was institutionalized at the age of 21, then saved from a lobotomy only because she won a literary prize. In keeping with Frame’s reflection, this craft-based course will focus on strategies for saving our lives through fiction writing: how to cultivate a convincing voice; how to extract strength from our writerly weaknesses; and, ultimately, how to forge a home for ourselves in our own words. Through a combination of creative exercises, we will explore and examine the craft components of strong, original fictions, including character development, descriptive detail, compelling dialogue, and rich sentences. We’ll also learn how to read the works of published writers for creative inspiration, mining texts by masters such as Janet Frame, Alice Munro, Julio Cortazar, Sofia Samatar, and Yasunari Kawabata. Primarily, we will workshop original student writing throughout the term, developing a portfolio of stories that reflect our individual interests, desires, and needs as writers.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Crafting Complex Characters

In life and in fiction writing, character development is often synonymous with major challenges: obstacles that demand deep investigation, adaptation, and change. Using the character-driven models of Tove Ditlevsen, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lucia Berlin, Edwidge Danticat, Eileen Chang, and other writers, this Beginning Fiction Workshop will explore strategies for crafting complex characters: illustrating their motives, perspectives, and arcs of evolution. Through a combination of generative writing exercises and writing workshops (wherein students will share original work and receive critical feedback from the class), each student will produce at least one complete short story.

CRWR 10206 Section 4/30206 Section 4 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Basics of Narrative Design

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or woodworking, or gardening. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

CRWR 23132/43132 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poets' Prose

“Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose," wrote Charles Baudelaire in Paris Spleen,"... supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?” This genre-blurring workshop will explore elements of the history and practice of the prose poem, and other poems and texts that combine strategies, forms and gestures of prose (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) with those of poetry. We will also read texts that are difficult to classify in terms of genre. “Flash Fiction,” “Short Shorts,” the fable, the letter, the mini-essay, and the lyric essay will be examined, among others. We will discuss the literary usefulness (or lack of it) of genre and form labels. The class will be taught as a workshop: students will try their hand at writing in their choices of hybrid forms, and will be encouraged to experiment. Writers from all genres are welcome, as what we will be studying, discussing, and writing will involve the fruitful collision of literary genres.

Students must have taken both Fundamentals in Creative Writing and a Beginning Workshop in the same genre. 

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 23137/43137 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry, Archives, and History

This course introduces fundamental ideas about poetic form and approaches to poetic writing through close reading and discussion of poetry (modern and contemporary but not exclusively). We will consider poetic elements from the ground-up—reading closely for sound, image, syntax, and meaning—in order to enliven those elements in student writing. Likewise, we will consider how poems appear at a crossroads between history and experience (the past and present) in order to inspire students to write not only about themselves but about real and imagined social, cultural, historical, and intellectual locations and horizons (considering such aspects of poetry writing as geography, history, mythology, anthropology, kinship, science, visual media, audio media, etc). We will do so in conversation with our peers by way of regular presentations and workshops, in which students will give feedback to one another’s works, learning thus how to read critically while generously, and how to respond collegially while also constructively. At the end of the quarter students will revise drafts based on class writing exercises and workshop conversations, to produce a portfolio prefaced by a critical reflection. The arc of the class also involves the making of a collaborative syllabus (with a wide range of texts offered and guided by the instructor but available to the creative configuration of the students themselves), to strengthen our grasp of archival and curatorial aspects of poetry writing.

CRWR 24021/44021 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: The Trouble with Trauma

In “The Body Keeps the Score” Bessel van der Kolk writes, “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” Many trauma survivors begin writing reluctantly, even repulsed by the impulse to query their woundedness. The process is inhibited by stigma surrounding the notion of victimhood, entities that would prefer a survivor's silence, plus our tendency to dismiss and devalue one's suffering in relation to others. Students in this class will shed some of these constricting patterns of thinking about trauma so they may freely explore their stories with confidence, compassion, curiosity, and intention. We'll read authors who have found surprise, nuance, and yes, healing through art, honoring the heart-work that happens behind the scenes. Half of class-time will include student-led workshops of original works in progress. Paramount to our success will be an atmosphere of safety, supportiveness, respect, and confidentiality. By the quarter's end each student will leave with a piece of writing that feels both true to their experience and imbued with possibility. 

CRWR 24027/44027 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Environmental Writing, Editing, and Publication

Environmental writing is a quickly-expanding field in the literary and publishing community. It encompasses nonfiction sub-genres of traditional journalism, personal essay, and hybrid forms. This course is designed for students in creative writing with an interest in environmental reportage; it is also intended for students in environmental sciences (broadly speaking) with some writing experience who wish to practice presenting complex information to a non-expert audience. Reading contemporary environmental and science writing, students will develop nonfiction techniques relevant to writing environmental stories, like how to find and contact field experts, how to engage readers in complex topics, how to integrate research into narrative, how to use dialogue from interviews, how to weave the personal together with research material, and how to pitch environmental stories. The course will also cover the practical aspects* of the field by including a workshop with the Careers in Creative Writing Journalism program, guest lectures from editors and journalists in the field, and assignments that familiarize students with current environmental literary magazines. Readings will include Kerri Arsenault’s Mill Town and selections from The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

CRWR 22132/42132 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Strange Magic in Short Fiction

In this workshop based course we'll investigate how strangeness and magic function in short fiction. We'll read stories by authors like Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and Alice Sola Kim, examining how these writers portray the fantastical and impossible. We'll explore concepts like defamiliarization, versimilitude, and the uncanny. We will contemplate how magical realism and surrealism differ from sci-fi and fantasy genre writing, and ask how we, as writers, can make the quotidian seem extraordinary and the improbable seem inevitable, and to what end? Students will complete several short creative exercises and workshop one story that utilizes magic or strange effects. Students will also be expected to write thoughtful, constructive critiques of peer work. Throughout the course, we'll consider how the expectations of literary fiction might constrain such narratives, and we can engage with and transcend these archetypes. 

CRWR 22156/42156 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrator as Personality

While aspiring writers usually grasp quickly how to write direct dialog—we hear it all around us, in public and private spaces—narration is a trickier enterprise. In this writing workshop, we will look at the narrator as personality, a voice that exists to tell the story, but not always to enter it. The narrator can be a constant, like an elbow in the side, or effaced, touching down to only give us the basics of time and place. They can be all knowing, summarizing scenes, people and events from a distant, God-like vantage, or reportorial, speaking in present tense as events unfurl. Some narrators make us laugh but are conning us with their charm; others explain the psychology of events like a great therapist or moralize like a member of the clergy. We will read a wide range of examples from writers like Edward P. Jones, Anton Chekhov, Salman Rushdie, Amy Hempel, Yiyun Li, and Louise Erdrich. Students will be encouraged to experiment in both writing exercises and story revisions. By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and workshopped one story, which you will revise for the final.

CRWR 22140/42140 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Killing Cliché

It’s long been said that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling old ones, but how do writers reengage familiar genres, plots, and themes without being redundant? This course will confront the literary cliché at all levels, from the trappings of genre to predictable turns of plot to the subtly undermining forces of mundane language. We will consider not only how stories can fall victim to cliché but also how they may benefit from calling on recognizable content for the sake of efficiency, familiarity, or homage. Through an array of readings that represent unique concepts and styles as well as more conventional narratives we will examine how published writers embrace or subvert cliché through story craft. Meanwhile, student fiction will be discussed throughout the term in a supportive workshop atmosphere that will aim not to expose clichés in peer work, but to consider how an author can find balance—between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the predictable and the unpredictable—in order to maximize a story’s effect. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work.

CRWR 22117/42117 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Beginning a Novel

This workshop is for any student with a novel in progress or an interest in starting one. Our focus will be the opening chapter, arguably the most consequential one—for the reader naturally, but most importantly for us the writer. How might it introduce the people and world of the story, its premise or central conflict, its narrative tone and style? How might it intrigue, orient, or even challenge the reader and begin teaching them how to read the book? And if the opening chapter is our very starting point as the writer, how might it help us figure out the dramatic shape of our novel, its thematic concerns, its conceptual design? We’ll apply such questions to the opening chapters of an exemplary mix of novels— The Great Gatsby , The Age of Innocence, Invisible Man , Beloved , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , The Vegetarian , Normal People, etc.—and examine what they are expected to do as well as what they can unexpectedly do. And as everyone workshops the first chapter (or prologue) of their own novel, we’ll consider ways of adjusting or rethinking them so that the author can better understand their project overall and build on all the promise of the material they have.

CRWR 29300/49300 Thesis/Major Projects in Poetry (2)

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in poetry, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. Because it is a thesis workshop, the course will focus on various ways of organizing larger poetic “projects.” We will consider the poetic sequence, the chapbook, and the poetry collection as ways of extending the practice of poetry beyond the individual lyric text. We will also problematize the notion of broad poetic “projects,” considering the consequences of imposing a predetermined conceptual framework on the elusive, spontaneous, and subversive act of lyric writing. Because this class is designed as a poetry workshop, your fellow students’ work will be the primary text over the course of the quarter.

CRWR 29300/49300 Thesis/Major Projects in Poetry (1)

Crwr 29400/49400 thesis/major projects in nonfiction (2).

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.

CRWR 29400/49400 Thesis/Major Projects in Nonfiction (1)

Crwr 29200/49200 thesis/major projects in fiction (5).

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.

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (4)

Crwr 29200/49200 thesis/major projects in fiction (3).

This advanced fiction course is for BA, MA, and Minor students writing a creative thesis or portfolio, as well as for any advanced student on campus working on a major fiction project. It is primarily a workshop, so we will spend the majority of the quarter reading excerpts from your projects in progress and offering ways of improving and moving them forward. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft (like language, point of view, plot and character development), with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. To supplement our workshops, everyone will give presentations on the authors and works of fiction that have informed their writing and on publishing, literary magazines, and the first steps of getting one’s work out into the world. If the schedule allows, we can also spend class-time in conversation on a topic of particular interest or urgency to the writers in the class, whether student-recommended or stemming from previous classes. 

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (2)

This Thesis/Major Projects Workshop is designed for students working on creative writing thesis projects in fiction. Together, we will use the workshop to create new material and to revise, exploring how fiction writers make readable structures out of the chaos of experience and imagination. Our guiding questions include: what stories can a work of fiction tell, and how? What is "true" in fiction, and what is the relationship between journalistic truth and artistic truth? You are already familiar with the fundamentals of plot and character; we will continue to hone the skills you've learned, toward writing characters who are multidimensional, plots that move, and contexts that matter. Narrative voice is an essential tool for creating coherence as well as raising (fictional) stakes. In every scene we read and write, we will consider the impact of the use of inside or outside perspective, declarative scenes and actions, and interiority. The perspectives and situations students write should be original, inimitable, and fresh; the prose should aim to keep lively even topics that are timeless: coming of age, culture, identity, death, and family. As students create and polish their capstone projects, their work will serve as an occasion on which to consider authorial perspective, structure, and craft. We will look carefully at the shapes of projects, exploring why some works organically belong to fiction and others to dramatic writing, poetry, or creative non-fiction. Sometimes students will adapt pages into other forms, in an effort to test their elasticity and allow them their fullest range of expression.

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (1)

Crwr technical seminar in poetry: prosody.

This course will be a deep dive into prosody. What is prosody? Merriam-Webster describes it as “the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language” — we might also describe it as the way poems move, and how they move their reader. Arguably one of the most important (and least visible) aspects of poetic composition, prosody can teach you to see and write differently. We’ll begin with an introduction to historical metrics (the boring but necessary part), and then move on to studying more contemporary models. Readings will include a bit of scholarly work on prosody by Rosemary Gates and Boris Maslov, but mostly we’ll read poems, from the 12th century to the 21st, that foreground prosody and rhythmic structure. This will be a practice-intensive class—you will be asked to produce several exercises a week, in addition to a final paper or project.

CRWR 20410/40410 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Epistolary Form

When does a body of writing become “literary”? What stories might be found inside the hastily scrawled lines of a postcard buried in the attic or an incomplete to-do list drifting down the sidewalk? Beginning with the modern epistle and epistolary novel, this cross-genre seminar orbits the space where non- literary documents give way to artistic compositions that a given set of experts would otherwise neatly categorize and deposit somewhere literature is supposed to belong. As we practice the interplay of research and imagination toward the realization of a final project, we’ll examine how writers of nonfiction and documentary poetics have used everything from blueprints of a prison cell to vaudeville ephemera to frame, develop, and heighten true stories. We’ll consider ethics of authority such as information access, authentication, and journalistic objectivity alongside rhetorical matters of credibility, emotional truth, and the serviceability of facts. Come play in the archives and observe the power of repurposed material.

CRWR 20233/40233 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Who Sees and Who Speaks?

What is the nature of the encounter between a narrator and a character, and how do elements of character and plot play out in narrative points of view? Drawing on the narratological work of theorists such as Gérard Genette and Monika Fludernik and of critics such as James Wood, this technical seminar considers what point of view, perspective, and focalization can do or make possible. Readings may include stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Jenny Zhang, William Faulkner, Lorrie Moore, Jamil Jan Kochai, Italo Calvino, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Wharton, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Edwidge Danticat, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Virginia Woolf, among others, and will introduce instances of first-person-plural and second-person narrative, as well as modes of representing speech and thought such as free indirect discourse. Over the course of the quarter, students will write short analyses and creative exercises, culminating in a final project.

CRWR 20203/40203 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Research and World Building

Writing fiction is in large part a matter of convincing worldbuilding, no matter what genre you write in. And convincing worldbuilding is about creating a seamless reality within the elements of that world: from setting, to social systems, to character dynamics, to the story or novel’s conceptual conceit. And whether it be within a genre of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, or even contemporary realism, building a convincing world takes a good deal of research. So while we look closely at the tools and methods of successful worldbuilding, we will also dig into the process of research. From how and where to mine the right details, to what to look for. We will also focus on how research can make a fertile ground for harvesting ideas and even story. Students will read various works of long and short fiction with an eye to its worldbuilding, as well as critical and craft texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class.

CRWR 20217/40217 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Elements of Style

What we call style is more than literary flourish. Control of a story begins with a writer’s characteristic approach to the line. Style dictates and shapes immersive and impactful worlds of our creation. It’s also indicative of a work’s larger themes, philosophies, and aesthetic sensibility. In this class, we’ll examine fiction by wordsmiths such as James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, and Marguerite Duras in order to explore the influence that elements such as diction, syntax, rhythm, and punctuation have on a writer’s style.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins. 

CRWR 12143 Reading as a Writer: Embodied Language

This course studies how writers engage the senses to shape language into something actually felt and not just comprehended. We’ll track the sensual life of words—what they do to the mouth, to the ear, their musical kinships with one another—and learn how these qualities combine to generate mood and atmosphere. Alongside writing that renders embodiment and the physical world, we’ll read writing that makes abstraction feel concrete. Our weekly readings will guide our ongoing inquiry into questions such as: what constitutes an image? How does writing enact feeling? How do the sensory elements of a piece intensify or erode or expand its subject, and to what end? Texts will include poetry and prose by Sei Shōnagon, Francis Ponge, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wanda Coleman, Vasko Popa, Lorine Niedecker, Ai, Durga Chew-Bose, Shane McCrae, Jenny Zhang, Justin Torres, James Baldwin, Deborah Eisenberg, and many others. Each member of the class will be asked to write weekly critical and creative responses, to give one presentation, and to produce a final project at the end of the quarter.

Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12124 Reading as a Writer: Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

In this core course, students will investigate the complicated relationship between truth and art, by reading, watching, and writing works adapted from an historical record or “based on a true story.” Weekly reading assignments will include fiction, poetry, memoir, and film, and students will write both critical essays and creative exercises that explore the overlaps and divergences between journalistic and artistic truth. Readings: Aristotle, Baldwin, Bechdel, Carson, Northup, and Rankine.

CRWR 12151 Intro to Genres: The Gothic Lens

The Gothic is arguably the most evocative of all storytelling genres. As haunting as it is seductive in its ambiguities and luridly symbolic tropes, no form more powerfully captures our encounters with the irrational and the inexplicable, whether in nature, in others, or in ourselves. In this Arts Core course, we will approach the genre through all its forbidding yet intimate qualities. As we read Gothic fiction from different eras and cultures, from both a reader’s perspective and a writer’s perspective (the  why/how/who  of the author’s decisions), we’ll cover concepts like the sublime, the uncanny, and abjection, examining the work’s sociopolitical layers but aiming our brightest light on its psychological underpinnings. We’ll ask ourselves: in what ways does the Gothic mirror the most vulnerable and obscure aspects of the self? What might these extraordinary stories of transgression, violence, or supernatural conflict reveal about the horrors of ordinary life, the vagaries of our hidden desires, anxieties, and pathologies? Our focus on the psychological and evocative nature of the genre, especially from a writer’s point of view, will also help us write our Gothic Scenes, where everyone will apply their own intimate “gothic lens” to memorable encounters from their recent past. 

CRWR Intro to Genres: Speculative Women

Intro to Genres: Speculative Women Despite common misconceptions, women have been at the forefront of the speculative genre from its earliest inceptions. They have not merely defied the limitations and restraints of literature as defined by their contemporary society, but invented whole worlds and genres which continue to influence writers and writing as a whole today—from Mary Shelley’s 1818 publication of "Frankenstein" to Virginia Woolf’s 1928 publication of "Orlando," and even Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 novel, “The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World." This course will be a brief foray into the strange and yet familiar worlds of various women across the history of speculative writing, ranging from Mary Shelley to Ursula K. Leguin, from Lady Cavendish to Margaret Atwood, from Alice Walker to Octavia E. Butler.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins; contact the instructor for a spot in the class or on the waiting list.

CRWR 12165 Intro to Genres: Short Form Screenwriting

This course explores short form screenwriting, as distinct from feature-length or episodic screenwriting. In addition to studying the essential elements of a screenplay, we will read, view, and discuss approaches to scripting brief documentary, poetic, and fictional time-based works. This work will prepare us for in- and out-of-class writing exercises in these modes, which students will often discuss in a workshop environment. Students will respond in creative and critical ways to the screenings and readings; present on a specific time-based work or creator; and write in the short screenwriting formats under study, culminating in a final creative project.

CRWR 17012 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Creative Research/The Numinous Particulars

According to Philip Gerard, “Creative research is both a process and a habit of mind, an alertness to the human story as it lurks in unlikely places.” Creative writers may lean on research to sharpen the authenticity of their work; to liberate themselves from the confines of their personal experience; to mine existing stories and histories for details, plot, settings, characters; to generate new ideas and approaches to language, theme and story. The creative writer/researcher is on the hunt for the numinous particulars, the mysteries and human stories lurking in the finest grains of detail. In this course, we will explore the research methods used by creative writers and consider questions that range from the logistical (eg. How do I find what I need in an archive?) to the ethical (eg. How do I conscientiously write from a point of view outside my own experience?) to the aesthetic (eg. How do I incorporate all these researched details without waterlogging the poem/story/essay?). We will read poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that relies heavily on research and hear from established writers about the challenges of conducting and writing from research. Assignments will include reading responses, creative writing and research exercises, short essays and presentations.

Students must be a declared Creative Writing major or Minor in English and Creative Writing to enroll. Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. 

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop (1): Poetic Line in the Americas

This workshop-centered course introduces writers to foundational concepts and tools in the craft of poetry, including form, diction, voice, line, and meter. Regular assignments include both prompts and imitations in poetry writing, and will culminate in a final portfolio developed in working consultation with the instructor. In particular, we will explore formal adaptations of “the line” as “measure” within American poets' work. A short unit within the course will also be dedicated to the translation of poets writing outside of English. Poets whose work will be discussed include Emily Dickinson, Nate Marshall, Bernadette Mayer, Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Sappho, César Vallejo, Walt Whitman, and poets visiting the UChicago campus.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Art of the Fact

Though we live in an era glutted with data, facts don’t speak for themselves. It’s story that moves us. In this class, we will engage in an exploration of creative nonfiction, investigating how to repurpose lived experience and researched material for a memorable story. Together we will read exemplary forms of creative nonfiction—personal essay, memoir, lyric nonfiction, science writing, nature writing, and cultural criticism—to ask how events are shaped into stories, facts into truths. This course will be conducted as a writing workshop, and we will examine the readings and workshop submissions from a critical perspective, looking carefully at issues of style, content, and relevance. In doing so, we hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of creative nonfiction as a whole, as well our particular positions within the genre. Readings will include: James Baldwin, Eula Biss, Derga Chew-Bose, John D'Agata, Jenny Zhang, and others.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Anecdotes and Reflections

In the same way that water is composed of two elements—hydrogen and oxygen—the personal essay essentially consists of anecdotes and reflections, i.e., facts and thoughts, or the objective and the subjective. What happened, and what what happened *means*. The artistry of the essay consists of not only balancing these two elements but combining them so that they complement but also contradict one another. In this workshop you’ll write multiple drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates’ attempts. At the same time we’ll read (and write about) foundational essays that are in overt dialogue with one another, starting with “Why I Write,” by George Orwell, and “Why I Write,” by Joan Didion. We’ll read James Baldwin in conjunction with the seminal essay he inspired Adrienne Rich to write, then look at infusions of poetry into the form via Natalia Ginzburg and Margaret Atwood. We'll end by reading Didion’s essay, “Goodbye to All That,” paired with Eula Biss' cover version, also titled "Goodbye to All That." You'll leave knowing the recent history, basic theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Short Story

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or woodworking, or gardening. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

CRWR 10206 Section 1/30206 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Love & Loss

From “The Little Mermaid” to The Giving Tree, many of us are first introduced to storytelling through tales of love, loss, and self-sacrifice. In this class, we will hone our craft as writers via stories of love and loss, exploring the models of Silvina Ocampo, Christine Schutt, Carmen Maria Machado, Izumi Suzuki, Kelly Link, Camille Roy, and other writers. This course will use “the love story” as a foundation for character development, communication on the page, descriptive language, and the cultivation of unique emotional atmospheres. The class will feature in-class generative writing and a formal workshop (wherein students will share original work and receive critical feedback).

CRWR 21505/41505 Advanced Translation Workshop: Prose Style

Purple, lean, evocative, muscular, literary, exuberant, lucid, stilted, elliptical. These are all labels that critics and reviewers have used to characterize prose styles that call attention to themselves in distinct ways. Of course, what constitutes style not only changes over time, but also means different things in different literary traditions. How, then, do translators carry style over from one language and cultural milieu to another? And to what extent does style structure storytelling? We will explore these questions by reading a variety of modern and contemporary stylists who either write in English or translate into English, paying special attention to what stylistic devices are at work and what their implications are for narration, characterization, and world building. Further, we’ll examine the range of choices that each writer and translator makes when constituting and reconstituting style, on a lexical, tonal, and syntactic scale. By pairing readings with generative exercises in stylistics and constrained writing, we will build toward the translation of a short work of contemporary fiction into English. To participate in this workshop, students should be able to comfortably read a literary text in a foreign language.

CRWR 23136/43136 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry as Parasite

Might there be a kind of poem that acts like a parasite latched on to a host body? A poem whose very life is the fusion of various sources, voices, discourses? This poetry workshop invites students to read and write poetry that, either overtly or subtly, engages with other texts. We’ll examine ways that poems create intertextual relationships (e.g. quoting, voicing, alluding, echoing, stealing, sampling, imitating, translating…) and test out these methods in our own writing. Students should expect to engage with the basic question of how their work relates to other poets and poems. Expect to read a substantial amount of work by modern and contemporary poets, submit new original poems for workshop, complete intertextual writing exercises, 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.

CRWR 23140/43140 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry and Crisis

Since Homer’s narratives of war and exile, and Hesiod’s accounts of cyclical degeneration and the uncertain future of humankind, poetry has dealt with crisis and liminality. Our own present moment is defined by a convergence of climate and ecological crises, refugee crisis, food crisis, war, and epidemic. In this workshop, we will examine poetic writing arising out of crises, whether political, artistic, or existential, and craft poems that attempt to deal with crisis – both in the form of a concrete Event, and as a literary trope – through critical creative engagement, experimentation, and intertextual dialogue. Readings may include work by Peter Balakian, Jericho Brown, Don Mee Choi, Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Valzhyna Mort, Claudia Rankine, Ocean Vuong, as well as classical sources. Students can expect to workshop their poems in class; to engage, critically and supportively, with peers’ work; and to develop a final portfolio.

Pre-requisite: must have taken Fundamentals + a Beginning Workshop in the same genre prior to registering for an Advanced Workshop

CRWR 24029/44029 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Sports

As live performance, public ritual, and sheer melodrama, sports give lavish expression to some of our most deeply held cultural attitudes. As sports-related industries have grown exponentially in the past decades, and as the material and political fortunes at stake in these games has also grown, so too has the need for serious writing about sports. The world’s stadiums and arenas have become theaters of very real battles over race and gender, class and religion, colonialism and social justice. At the same time, the games themselves have also changed in fascinating and telling ways. This workshop invites writers who are curious about sports as a subject for literary exploration. We examine the subject through various genres of nonfiction, from longform journalism to personal essay to audio storytelling. Our readings will include both canonical and contemporary voices in sports writing. Workshop writers can choose to build a portfolio of three pieces of original nonfiction, or one long piece in three parts. No previous knowledge of sports is required.

CRWR 24028/44028 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: World-Building in Longform Nonfiction

A writer setting out to write a long piece of nonfiction prose may assume that the world of the piece is given, but in fact the nonfiction writer has significant work to do to create a space where a reader can live. In writing creative biography, history, memoir, literary criticism, art writing, and narrative journalism, there are wonderful possibilities for archival research, visiting places and spaces, making first hand observations, interviewing, finding settings and characters, and atmospheric research, whether reading old magazines, listening to radio shows, or studying weather patterns. In this course, advanced writers will immerse themselves in one longer project, developing it in notebooks and weekly postings and exercises. The first half of the course will focus more on practicing and reading (writers including Elizabeth Rush, Zbigniew Herbert, Valeria Luiselli, and James Baldwin), the second half will focus on workshopping as the longer pieces develop. Students will finish the course with a sustained piece of prose.

CRWR 22135/42135 Advanced Fiction Workshop: The Long and Short of It: Narrative Time

A story's end point determines its meaning. The history of a life can be covered in a sentence, a few pages or seven volumes. How do writers decide? In this advanced workshop, we'll look at different ways to handle narrative time, paying special attention to building blocks like direct and summary scene, flashback, compression, slowed time and fabulist time. We'll examine work by writers whose long stories feel like novels, like Alice Munro and Edward P. Jones, alongside those who say everything in a short single scene of a page or two, like Grace Paley and Justin Torres. Students will be encouraged to experiment with time in both writing exercises and their own drafts as they work toward a polished final story. Strong emphasis on focused and productive peer critique and in-class commentary.

CRWR 22149/42149 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Long Stories

"The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist," writes Henry James, "is that there is no limit to what he may attempt." Writers interested in these torments and luxuries can begin to experiment with long form in this workshop. Each student will compose a single long story of about forty pages. We'll attend to the freshness of beginnings, the satisfactions (and compromises) of endings and, most acutely, to the crises of middles. A scaffolding of workshops, outlines, and conferences will support and structure your efforts. Along the way we'll explore the opportunities of long-form structure with examples from the likes of David Foster Wallace, Alice Munro, Ted Chiang, and Toni Morrison.  Most of our class time will be devoted to workshopping long stories by students.

CRWR 22146/42146 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Disruption & Disorder

This workshop-based course proceeds from the premise that disorder and disruption are fruitful aesthetics that might be applied to numerous elements of fiction to unlock new possibilities in our work. Students will seek to identify typical narrative conventions and lyrical patterns and then write away from them—or write over them, toward subversion, surprise, and perhaps even a productive anarchy. Students will search for hidden structures in work by Taeko Kono, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Diane Williams, Garielle Lutz, and others, examining the methods these writers use to lead readers to unexpected, original, and transgressive places. Students will complete several short creative exercises in which they practice disruption and disorder in plot, pace, dialogue, and syntax. In the second half of the course, students will workshop one story or excerpt and write thoughtful, constructive critiques of peer work. Revision is also a crucial component of this class, as it is an opportunity to radically warp and deviate from our prior visions. Throughout the quarter, we will attempt to interrupt and shake up our own inclinations as artists.

CRWR 20309/40309 Technical Seminar in Poetry: Generative Genres

Why does it feel so good to write a curse? What is an ode and how is it different from an aubade? From ancient Sumerian temple hymns to 7th-century Japanese death poems to avant-garde ekphrasis in the 21st century, the history of poetry is as rich in genres as it is in forms. In this technical seminar we will study the origins, transcultural functions, and evolving conventions of some of the oldest-living genres of lyric poetry – the ode, the elegy, the love poem, the curse, to name a few. We will read living writers such as Alice Oswald, Danez Smith, Kim Hyesoon, and Natalie Diaz alongside historical forerunners including Sei Shonagon, John Keats, Federico Garcia Lorca, Sylvia Plath, and Paul Celan. Students will write weekly experiments of their own in response to our readings, and for a final project they will edit a mini- anthology of a lyric sub-genre of their choice, including a short critical introduction.

CRWR 20404/40404 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Forms of the Essay

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

CRWR 20209/40209 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Scenes & Seeing

At the core of literary storytelling is dramatization, which enables a reader to "see" the world, characters, and incidents at play and to vicariously experience their emotional and psychological consequences in the story. The primary vehicle for dramatization in a story is the scene, which consists of many crucial parts: characterization, setting and imagery, dialogue and action, tone and atmosphere, subtext and thematic development. In this course we’ll break down all these parts and examine how they can function on their own as well as interact to bring a moment or event to life. Where and how should a particular scene begin and end? How should information be organized? How might we determine a scene’s goals in isolation and in support of the larger narrative of a short story, novella, or novel? And ultimately, beyond characters talking, acting, and reacting, how might we expand our traditional notions of what a scene is and what it can do? We’ll consider such questions as we discuss exceptionally crafted scenes from short stories, novels, plays, and even film, TV, and podcasts, with an eye also on the differences in scene craft from genre to genre and what that can teach us specifically as fiction writers. Course assignments will include reading responses, writing exercises, short essays, and student presentations. 

CRWR 20232/40232 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Influence

T. S. Eliot once said that “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” In this class we will look at modeling as a springboard for original creativity. What makes a piece of writing original? Is it possible to borrow a famous writer’s story structure, theme, or even attempt their voice, yet produce something wholly original? How specifically are writers influenced and then inspired? Readings will pair writers with the influences they’ve talked or written about, such as Yiyun Li and Anton Chekhov; Edward P. Jones and Alice Walker; Sigrid Nunez and Elizabeth Hardwick, and George Saunders and Nikolai Gogol. Writing exercises will experiment with aspects of voice, narrative structure, point of view, tone, and use of dialog. While this is not a workshop course, come prepared to write and share work in class. Students will pursue both creative work and critical papers.

CRWR 20236/40236 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Alternative Points of View

Point of view is one of our most powerful narrative tools, controlling voice, perspective, and level of access to every bit of information a reader receives. When writers are first finding their way into new fiction projects, however, it is easy to default to the two points of view we are most commonly exposed to: a traditional first person or third person that behaves predictably. In this Technical Seminar, we will mine the work of Julie Otsuka, Carmen Maria Machado, Robert Coover, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and other writers for strategic usage of alternative points of view, including second person, first person plural, free indirect discourse, and deliberate shifts from one point of view into another. Assignments will include short critical and creative responses, a final fiction assignment, and a final presentation.

CRWR CRWR 12163 Reading as a Writer: Obscenities

“Obscenity” is a term for what is repulsive, abhorrent, excessive, or taboo in a society; and yet many artworks once considered to be obscene are now celebrated as landmarks of world literature, from the ancient poetry of Sappho to modern novels like Ulysses. In this course, we will study literary works that have been banned or censored as “obscene” to examine our own perspectives, attitudes, and assumptions as literary artists. How does obscenity shape our understanding of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, or public and private speech? What are the uses of obscenity in constructing new possibilities for literary expression? Authors studied will include Toni Morrison, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Vladimir Nabokov, Hilda Hilst, and Allen Ginsburg; and we will supplement these readings with works of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and case law. Students will produce their own original poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to reimagine what is permissible—and possible—in language and society for contemporary literary artists.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins; contact the instructor for a spot in the class or on the waiting list. Satisfies the College Arts Core requirement.

CRWR 12164 Reading as a Writer: Good Translation

The past few years have seen a proliferation of major awards for works of contemporary world literature that have been translated into English (among them the International Booker Prize, the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle Book in Translation Prize). While such awards certainly elevate translation as a mode of writing comparable to that of other literary arts, they also raise important questions about the production, circulation, and reception of translated literature in the Anglosphere. In this course, we will read a number of recent award-winning books in English translation (both poetry and prose), considering how these books traveled from origin to translation, and how we as readers engage with them – as translations and as literary texts. How are translations made? How do we evaluate books that have two writers: author and translator? What larger forces (social, aesthetic, commercial, political) are at work when deciding which translated books will hold value for Anglophone readers? We’ll explore these questions through weekly readings and discussions, student presentations, critical analyses and creative responses. As a final project, students will develop their own evaluative rubrics from which to award a prize to one of the translations we’ve read.

This course will consider brevity as an artistic mode curiously capable of articulating the unspeakable, the abyssal, the endless. Reading very brief works from a long list of writers, we will ask: when is less more? When is less less? What is minimalism? What is the impact of the fragment? Can a sentence be a narrative? Can a word comprise a poem? Our readings will include short poems, short essays, and short short stories by Yannis Ritsos, francine j. harris, Aram Saroyan, Richard Wright, Cecilia Vicuña, Kobayashi Issa, Renee Gladman, Robert Creeley, Alejandra Pizarnik, Lucille Clifton, Lydia Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Yi Sang, Anne Carson, Franz Kafka, Prageeta Sharma, Venita Blackburn, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, and others. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to write critical and creative responses for group discussion.

CRWR 12141 Intro to Genres: Drawing on Graphic Novels

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.

CRWR 17007 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: The Grammar of Narrative

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.

CRWR 17017 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Haunted Craft, the Art of the Spectral Metaphor

This course will be a close examination of the use of spectral imagery as a craft element in narratives across genre and time. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to Emily Carrol’s  A Guest in the House,  to Shirley Jackson’s  The Haunting of Hill House  and Octavia Butler’s  Fledgling , the supernatural metaphor presents a unique stage upon which to play out questions of gender autonomy, mental health, repressed sexuality, racism and more. Students in this course will be expected to put the fantastical metaphor under a microscope and explore its potential through both creative and critical work of their own.

During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing

CRWR 10606/30606 Beginning Translation Workshop (1)

Beginning Translation Workshop: 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. We will also 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.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. To participate in this class, students should have intermediate proficiency in a foreign language.

CRWR 10306 Section 2/30306 Section 2 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Imaginary Music

The poet Aimé Césaire once wrote that “The only acceptable music comes from somewhere deeper than sound. The search for music is a crime against the music of poetry which can only be the beating of the mind’s wave against the rock of the world.” What is this music “deeper than sound”? How is it related to the more obvious “audible” sounds of poetry? This course invites students to experiment with both the audible and inaudible elements of poetry. We’ll practice traditional music-making devices, such as rhythm and rhyme, at the same time that we explore the musical movements of mind and the moods that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, our discussions will focus primarily on readings. As we move forward, we will spend the majority of time workshopping student work.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Disproving the Pastoral

In Disproving the Pastoral, we’ll explore our own ties to rural landscapes as a means of interrogating and updating the pastoral tradition, just as we’ll investigate and write toward a more holistic landscape—one that integrates the literal and the political, the critical, and the sociocultural. Throughout the quarter, we will read, write, and discuss contemporary poems that are dedicated to the careful observation of—and commentary on—rural spaces. As we study works by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Nikky Finney, Joy Priest, Nikki Wallschlaeger, Matthew Wimberly, C.D. Wright and others, we will develop a keen eye for the multi- faceted utility of the landscape in our own work. We 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 collective vocabulary for creative and critical feedback. And, in the end, we will craft work that seeks to subvert the expected narratives of these far-off, rural places we take up as subjects.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Ecotone

This course explores creative nonfiction that responds to the places where boundaries blur, culture encounters nature, the self meets the collective. Scottish writer Ali Smith once said, “The place where the natural world meets the arts is a fruitful, fertile place for both.” Robert Macfarlane suggests that we consider such places as an “ecotone” – a biological term for the liminal space between biomes “where two communities met and integrate.” Our exploration of writing about ecotones will take us outside of the classroom on tours, urban hikes, and neighborhood explorations that engage with Chicago's history, ecology, and architecture*. Writing creative nonfiction, we shall see, requires all of the sense; as we explore the city, students will the learn fundamentals of recording their observations and shaping them into story. Students will develop foundational creative nonfiction tenets, including scene-building, character development, point of view, voice, artful word choice, and structure. Inside the classroom, our workshop will foment a supportive, knowledgeable, and critical community in which to exchange and discuss original work. Course readings will include the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Elizabeth Kolbert, Brian Macfarlane and Lauret Savoy.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Flash Essay

If you’ve ever been sucked inside a rabbit-hole of threaded replies to your own objectively perfect Tweet or winced under the pressure of a scribble in So-and-So’s yearbook, you’ll know the art of extreme brevity is not for everyone. The kaleidoscopic nature of the human mind resists compression. Like a reflex away from an odor, your sentences want to run. I’ll try to keep this brief: some stories can only carry so much, and well, our breath is short. Containment is a source of drama, so let’s study the art of concision together. Students in this workshop will churn out 750-word essays each week, exchanging feedback on what sticks, and revising toward distillation. We’ll spend most of class honing what Bernard Cooper has called “an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens... until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

CRWR 10206 Section 3/30206 Section 3 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Understanding Narrative Points of View

Writers at all levels learn through the careful reading of works they admire. We will spend more than a third of our time in this class reading stories worth learning from, both classic and contemporary, by writers like James Baldwin, Sherman Alexie, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Discussion will be lively—passionate opinions and enthusiasm are welcome—but most of our focus will be on the choices that writers make, the nuts and bolts of craft, with special emphasis on point of view (who speaks and why?) while also covering tone, direct and summary dialog, setting, conflict, causality, and use of time. In-class exercises will further hone your understanding of specific techniques, fire your creativity and get you writing. In writing workshop, which will occupy a significant part of class most weeks, each of you will have the opportunity to present your work to the group. Critique will be respectful and productive, with emphasis on clarity and precision. By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and completed at least one story, which will be revised and handed in as a final portfolio.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Scene

Scenes are often considered the building blocks of narrative story-telling. In this course, we’ll examine short fiction through the lens of scene, starting from the basics: What are scenes, how do they work, and what should they accomplish in a story? We’ll consider the scene’s relationship with context, tension, subtext, narrative arc, and other story elements. Together we’ll examine how authors like Bret Anthony Johnston, Rebecca Lee, and Jhumpa Lahiri use scenes to great effect, with a particular focus on setting, dialogue, action, and detail. In addition to readings, students will complete several short writing exercises and one longer story, which you will workshop and substantially revise. You will also engage with the work of your peers, delivering thoughtful, encouraging, constructive critiques.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Metamorphoses

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, 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, Jamaica Kincaid, Carmen Maria Machado, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Jenny Zhang, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Julio Cortázar, Jamil Jan Kochai, Gabriel García Márquez, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edwidge Danticat, 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.

CRWR 10206 Section 5/30306 Section 5 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Exhaustion and Renewal: The Short Story in Contemporary Fiction

This workshop-centered course introduces writers to foundational concepts and tools in the craft of fiction writing, including character development, point of view, and plotting.  Regular assignments include the submission and editing of shared short/extended fictions, as well as critical reflection on the artistic contexts of the short story itself.  A focus within this course reflects on the short story’s “exhaustion” as a form. How has short fiction been reinvented or found new shapes in contemporary writing?  How has the line between fiction and nonfiction been renegotiated there? Writers for discussion include Jeffery Renard Allen, Elif Batuman, Jorge Luis Borges, Lydia Davis, Lauren Groff, Yu Hua, and writers visiting the UChicago campus.

CRWR 10206 Section 4/30206 Section 4 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Contemporary Practice

This beginning fiction workshop approaches long-standing issues of craft through engagement with stories that have been published by emerging writers in the last several years. We will find classic narrative techniques (like scenic method, plot reversal, and closure) operating in newly published work, but we’ll also look for promising experiments, novelties of form, and blurred boundaries. Authors read may include Vanessa Onwuemezi, Bora Chung, or Isabel Waidner. After several weeks devoted to reading and the trial of basic techniques, students will compose stories to be workshopped in class. A spirit of discovery and experiment will be encouraged.

CRWR 23135/43135 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Weird Science

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.

CRWR 23135/43135 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Ekphrastic Poetry

In this generative advanced poetry workshop we will find inspiration for our own poetry by engaging with the visual arts. We will read poems that respond to, reflect, and refract the arts, and exercises will be based on our own encounters in museums, at the movies, in the realms of fashion, architecture, landscape, and elsewhere. We will ask ourselves about artifice and making, the materiality of the written word, the relationship between observation and expression, the emotive qualities of the image, and the sonic qualities of words. Most of our course reading will be contemporary poetry, but we will also explore a range of exciting earlier examples. Each class meeting will include workshops of student poems, discussions of assigned literature, and conversations about art practice and art community. In addition to reading deeply, looking closely, and writing wildly, students are expected to be lively participants in the arts community on campus, and will attend exhibitions, concerts, readings, screenings, and other events and experiences that bring us into contact with various modes of expression. Texts may include poems by, Harryette Mullen, James Schuyler, Brenda Shaughnessy, David Trinidad, and Virgil.

CRWR 24030/44030 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Feature

Apart from it being nonfiction, a nonfiction feature is like a short story—in terms of length and scenes and characters and all the potential innovations of storytelling. In this writing workshop, students will go through each stage of composing a narrative nonfiction feature story. After generating a few ideas that seem original, surprising in their approach, and appropriate in scope, we will write pitches. After the class agrees to “assign” one of these features, each student will report, research and write a draft. The features will be workshopped in class, and students will go through an editorial process, polishing their stories and experimenting with style and form for a final assignment. Along the way, we will consider the mechanics, ethics and craft of this work as we read published nonfiction and talk to writers and reporters about their process. There will be an emphasis in the class on Chicago writers and their beats; in weekly writing assignments, students will also report on local stories.

CRWR 24002/44002 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing about the Arts

Thinking about practices is a way of focusing a conversation between creative writers, art historians, curators, and working visual artists, all of whom are encouraged to join this workshop. We ourselves will be practicing and studying a wide variety of approaches to visual art. We’ll read critics like John Yau and Lori Waxman, memoirists like Aisha Sabbatini Sloan, inventive historians like Zbigniew Herbert, and poets like Gwendolyn Brooks and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, as well as curatorial and museum writings, catalogue essays, artists' statements, and other experimental and practical forms.

The course hopes to support students both in developing useful practices and experimenting boldly. Classes will be shaped around current exhibitions and installations. Sessions will generally begin with student-led observation at the Smart Museum, and we will spend one session on close looking in the study room at the Smart. Students will also visit five collections, exhibitions and/or galleries and, importantly, keep a looking notebook. Students will write a number of exercises in different forms (immersive meditation, researched portrait, mosaic fragment), and will also write and revise a longer essay (on any subject and in any mode) to be workshopped in class.

Instructor consent required. Email the instructor to submit a writing sample and/or to be added to the waitlist. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 24026/44026 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Feminist Biography

The personal is political – that slogan of Women’s Liberation – has long been understood, among other things, as a call for new forms of storytelling. One of those forms, feminist biography, has flourished in publishing since the 1970s, and it continues to evolve today, even as the terms of feminism and of biography are continually re-negotiated by writers and critics.  In this workshop, we read some of those writers and critics. And we read illustrative examples of contemporary feminist biography (and anti-biography) in various nonfiction genres, including magazine profile, trade book, Wiki article, audio performance, personal essay, cult pamphlet, avant-garde art piece. Mostly, we try out the form for ourselves, in our own writing. Each workshop writer will choose a biographical subject (single, collective, or otherwise), and work up a series of sketches around that subject. By the end of the quarter, workshop writers will build these sketches into a single piece of longform life-writing. The workshop will focus equally on story-craft and method (e.g. interview and research techniques, cultivating sources); indeed we consider the ways that method and story are inevitably connected. This workshop might also include a week with an invited guest, a practicing critic or biographer. 

CRWR 22133/42133 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing the Uncanny

Sigmund Freud defines "the uncanny" ("unheimlich") as something that unnerves us because it is both familiar and alien at the same time, the result of hidden anxieties and desires coming to the surface. In this advanced fiction workshop, we will explore how fiction writers use the uncanny to create suspense, lend their characters psychological depth, thrill and terrify their readers, and lay bare the darkest and most difficult human impulses. We will read and discuss fiction by writers like Shirley Jackson, Jamaica Kincaid, Octavia Butler, Kelly Link, Ben Okri, Haruki Murakami, and Victor Lavalle, drawing craft lessons from these writers to guide our own attempts at writing the uncanny. Much of our class time will be dedicated to evaluating student work and honing our skills of composition and critique. In addition to shorter writing exercises and "mini-workshops" throughout the quarter, every student will complete a full- length "uncanny" short story for workshop and compose critique letters for each of their peers. Students will be required to significantly revise their full-length short story by the end of the quarter.

CRWR 22157/42157 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Tiny Chapters

In this advanced fiction workshop, students will have the opportunity to assemble a long narrative out of short fragments. Composing with small units reframes the art of narrative. We’ll study the diverse affordances of working with fragments—collage, aporia, essayistic interpolation—always keeping an eye on the totality of our narratives. We’ll discuss the art of brevity—including related forms like the aphorism, the note, and the joke. We’ll begin in experiment and end with substantial compositions. Our readings will be drawn from the numerous contemporary novelists who use this method (Jenny Offill, Olga Ravn, Dorthe Nors) as well as the older generation of authors who, in their different ways, may be said to have pioneered the form (Marguerite Duras, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Gass, Renata Adler). But most of our class time will be devoted to workshopping original student work.

CRWR 22130/42130 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Inner Logic

In this advanced workshop, we will explore the range of strategies and techniques that fiction writers employ to make readers suspend their disbelief. We will consider how imagined worlds are made to feel real and how invented characters can seem so human. We will contemplate how themes, motifs, and symbols are deployed in such a way that a story can feel curated without seeming inorganic. We will consider how hints are dropped with subtlety, how the ‘rules’ for what is possible in a story are developed, and how writers can sometimes defy their own established expectations in ways that delight rather than frustrate. From character consistency to twist endings, we’ll investigate how published authors lend a sense of realism and plausibility to even the most far-fetched concepts. Through regular workshops, we will also interrogate all student fiction through this lens, discussing the ways in which your narratives-in-progress create their own inner logic. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work.

CRWR 22158/42158 Advanced Fiction Workshop: From the Ground Up

In a craft talk, writer Stephen Dobyns once described an exercise he used for generating stories inspired by Raymond Carver, who said about his process, "I write the first sentence, and then I write the next sentence and then the next." Apparently, Dobyns was frustrated by that answer, but later challenged himself to write 50 first sentences of potential stories. Then, he picked half of them and wrote 25 first paragraphs. From those, he eventually completed about a half dozen stories. (I learned this from an article by the great short story writer Kelly Link.) In this generative workshop, we will proceed in this fashion. During the first week, we’ll study the first sentences of stories and each write our own 50 first sentences. During the second week, we’ll study the first paragraphs of stories and each write 25 first paragraphs, and so on until all students have a few complete drafts of stories, one of which will be submitted to our in-class workshop. Along the way, we’ll read and discuss well-made stories by writers such as Kelly Link, Denis Johnson, Joy Williams, Edward P. Jones, Justin Torres, Mary Gaitskill, and many others. To be successful, students will read and write actively and share their well-informed opinions with enthusiasm, especially in our workshop discussions.

CRWR 22159/42159 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Family Life, Family Strife

If, as the opening lines of Anna Karenina suggests, it is true that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” then the unique character of family is largely determined by its distinct manner and type of conflict. In this advanced fiction workshop, we’ll examine fiction about family friction with an eye for observing the strategies that authors have used to construct dramas that revolve around how families love, cope, or crumple in the midst of crisis. As we identify tropes of family dysfunction, we’ll also consider the ways authors use narrative devices like point-of-view, setting, plot, and scene to investigate how we define family (and how those definitions have evolved); its bonds and intergenerational inheritances; how families—like institutions— are bonded by their distinctive habits, manners, mores, and laws; and how kinship might magnify, subvert, or critique larger society. Above all, we’ll debate what family life and family strife teach us about storytelling. Over the course of the term, we will write and workshop your own fiction inspired by model texts.

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Creative Writing Course Descriptions

Winter 2021, wr 224, introduction to fiction writing.

See the Course Catalog for available sections.

WR 224 is an introduction to the writing of fiction. Our approach in this fiction writing workshop will be to develop your skills as a creative writer through several means: careful reading and analysis of our own work; careful reading and analysis of established writers’ work; the execution of several meaningful fiction exercises; and a constant commitment to revision. Assessment methods include creative writing exercises, quizzes and reading checks on textbook craft sections, peer review, and the evolution of a short story from first to final, polished draft by the end of the term. Successful completion of Writing 121 is a prerequisite for this course.

Bacc Core, Skills – Writing II (CSW2)

Liberal Arts Fine Arts Core (LACF)

Wayne Harrison

WR 224 is an introduction to the writing of fiction. Our approach in this online fiction writing workshop will be to develop your skills as a creative writer through several means: careful reading and analysis of our own work; careful reading and analysis of established writers’ work; the execution of several meaningful fiction exercises; and a constant commitment to revision. Assessment methods include creative writing exercises, quizzes and reading checks on textbook craft sections, peer review, and the evolution of a short story from first to final, polished draft by the end of the term. Successful completion of Writing 121 is a prerequisite for this course

WR 240, INTRODUCTION TO NONFICTION WRITING

Creative nonfiction is the genre of creative writing that bridges the act of making literary prose--the crafting of vivid scenes, a thoughtful narrative voice, and meaningful formats--with the kinds of practical personal writing often required in our academic and professional lives. In this course, we will discuss several published pieces from the creative nonfiction genre, including personal essays, memoir, and lyric essay. More importantly, we will also write, edit, workshop, and revise several pieces of our own creative nonfiction. Expect a lively class with lots of imaginative prompts, free-writes, and hardy discussion.

Bacc Core Requirement(s) Fulfilled: Core, Skills, WR II

WR 241, INTRODUCTION TO POETRY WRITING

“The art of poetry is ultimately an art of attention—Michael Blumenthal.” Throughout this course, we will consider the tools necessary to approach poetry more attentively as both readers and writers. This course will provide a firm grounding in the rudiments of poetic craft such as word choice, line breaks, imagery, structure, and other devices, as well as an introduction to different forms available to poets. We will consistently work through writing exercises and read/ discuss the work of various poets in order to aid us in the generation of our own poems.

WR 324, SHORT STORY WRITING

Kristin Griffin

Prerequisite: WR 224. This class is a workshop for writers experienced in writing fiction. Students learn techniques of the form by discussing their work, as well as the assigned readings, in a group setting. We’ll be reading work by current writers, some of whom will Skype in with advice, and learning the features of today’s literary landscape. The course assumes familiarity with major fiction writers and fundamental craft concepts such as point of view, characterization, dialogue, and theme. If you’re hoping to take your short story writing skills to the next level, this course is for you!

WR 424, ADVANCED FICTION WRITING

Rob Drummond

In this workshop we will read and write fiction.  Using published stories as models, we’ll discuss methods of characterization, plotting, scene-setting, dialogue, and so on.  Much of our work together will involve close reading and analysis of the texts in question.  Our emphasis will be on writing more complicated and sophisticated stories with concision and economy.

WR 440, ADVANCED CREATIVE NONFICTION

Justin St. Germain

In WR 466/566, Professional Writing, we’ll study texts, contexts and concepts important to the practice of professional writing and produce documents for both paper and digital distribution. As future professional writers, students will be expected to analyze organizations and institutions in order to develop effective communicative practices. Therefore, the class is organized with an eye towards future action: you will be reading what others have done and we will be developing strategies for your own future writing activities. The fundamental question addressed in this class is: what do professional writers do? Through the course, students will read definitions of professional and technical writing from academic and professional perspectives. Students will also research and report on a variety of documents in genres common in professional and technical writing as they develop an awareness of genre. Class reading and writing assignments have been designed to help students gain greater insight into the issues and challenges of professional writing in a variety of workplace contexts.

Click here for a full list of Winter 2021 course descriptions in Applied Journalism, English, Film, and Writing.

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Creative Writing Program

1000 E. University Ave.

Laramie, WY 82071

Phone: 307-766-6452

Fax: 307-766-3189

Email: [email protected]

Course Descriptions

CW 1040 Intro to Creative Writing    Bergstraesser      

This course is designed to help you craft various works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In addition to in-class writing exercises, creative exercises outside of class, and discussions, you will critique each other’s writing in a constructive workshop atmosphere—thereby developing useful editorial skills that will help you improve your own writing.

Through lecture and discussion, we will explore the technique and devices involved in creating these three genres. We will read and discuss the works of many different writers, using their technique and content as a guide for your own writing.

And if this course description seems dull, the class is anything but.

CW 2080 Intro to Poetry      Northrop        TR 11 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

In this course we will read and write poetry; we will discuss, enthuse over and question our responses, question the poems and our expectations of poems. Completing and revising both in- and out-of-class writing assignments, students should expect to produce, by the end of the semester, a poetry portfolio (and artist statement).  Class time will be divided between discussion of reading assignments and workshop submissions.  Please see instructor with any questions. 

CW 2125 Special Topics in Writing: Animals. Northrop. TR 2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Our worlds are not the only worlds. We live with and beside the non-human animals: pronghorn, Swainson’s hawks, lap dogs, mountain lions straying through town, pine beetles, Mourning Cloaks, drowned kittens, nighthawks overhead, raccoons in the kitchen, Mountain Whitefish.  How do we sound these worlds?  And why? To what ends?  Writers have long looked to and imagined the non-human, but how  do  we do that?  How do we write (and think) that which we name but may not be able to fully know?  In this course we will consider (through class discussion of assigned readings, independent research, writing exercises and semester-long creative writing projects) ways of thinking / representing non-human animals and our relationships with them. In this course, we will approach and mind those relationships.

We will be considering a range of creative work: stories, poems, essays, short videos, dramatic monologues, paintings, photographs.  Of each creative piece we will discuss the questions that we read as driving the piece, and the questions the piece raises for us.  It’s not possible for me to know our questions now, ahead of time, but some  possible  questions, or rather, some of my own questions:  How do we look at non-human animals?  How are we looked at?  How do non-human animal and human animal lives intersect?  What boundaries have been erected historically and why, to what end?  How are our lives shaped by non-human animals?  How are non-human animals lives shaped?  What responsibilities do humans have?  What causes for joy, what concerns?

CW 4050-02 Writers Workshop: Fiction. Pexton. TR 1:20 p.m. - 2:35 p.m.  

In this class students will read examples of published short stories, and possibly some longer work, and participate in discussions that break down the elements of fiction at work: character, setting/place, point of view, tone/style/narrative voice, dialog, conflict/plot, main ideas, etc. The reading will be mostly, if not entirely, Realism. The writing will be short stories of varying length, from flash fiction to short-short stories to full-length stories. Students who wish to write longer pieces should discuss the work with the instructor before committing to such a project for this class. The writing will be approximately 30 pp +/- of original fiction (this excludes, for the purposes of this course, fan fiction or game fiction) plus additional writing of occasional exercises and critiques/analyses of the outside reading and peers' work. Attendance required. If circumstances force the class to move entirely online, attendance will consist of posting required materials on the required date at the required hour. Text materials supplied by the instructor.   

CW 5540-01 Seminar: Writing for Public Audiences. Brown. 

CW 5540-02 Seminar. Northrop. T 4:10 p.m. - 7:10 p.m.

CW 5560-01 Writing Workshop: Time & Place. Hagy. M 3:10 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.

CW 5560-02 Writing Workshop: Creative Nonfiction. Brown. W 3:10 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.

For a full listing all courses offered by Creative Writing, please use the UW Catalog .

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Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

Fall 2024 class schedule and course descriptions.

C W 101 1  Introduction to Creative Writing   ONLINE  Matthew Davison      C W 101 2  Introduction to Creative Writing   ONLINE  Matthew Davison C W 101 3  Introduction to Creative Writing   Tuesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA C W 101 4  Introduction to Creative Writing   Wednesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA 

This introductory course focuses on the creative writing process of generating material through writing exercises in poetry, fiction and playwriting. It also examines for craft selected readings of exemplary stories, poems and plays. Open to all students. CROSS GENRE COURSE. 

C W 301 1  Fundamentals of Creative Writing   Thursday 4:00 – 6:45. PM   TBA

Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to Creative Writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Instruction and extensive practice in writing poetry, fiction and plays, with selected readings of exemplary stories, poems and plays. This course is the prerequisite to Short Story Writing, Poetry Writing and Playwriting.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 302 2 Fundamentals of Creative Reading  Tuesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA

Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to Creative Writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Students learn to read like writers through lecture-discussion and reading assignments. Submerges the student in literature and asserts the importance of reading.

C W 511GW 1  Craft Of Poetry - GWAR   ONLINE Monday 4:00-5:40 PM   Paul Hoover

Prerequisites: Restricted to Creative Writing majors; GE Area A2;  C W 301  or equivalent. Focus on basic craft elements of poetry: diction, imagery, rhythm, voice and form. Close readings of published poetry. Creative and critical writing. (ABC/NC only)

C W 512GW 1  Craft Of Fiction - GWAR  ONLINE Tuesday 12:30-2:00 PM  Matthew Davison 

Prerequisites: C W 301; ENG 114; ENG 214; Restricted to Creative Writing majors. Focus on basic craft elements of fiction: plot, dialogue, character, point of view, and place. Discussion of student and professional writing. (ABC/NC only)

C W 520 1  Writers on Writing     Tuesday 7-9:45 PM   Caro De Robertis 

Prerequisite for C W 520 : Upper-division standing; GPA of 3.0 or higher; or permission of the instructor. Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 820. Note:  this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the “creative process” requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 820 may not take C W 520 for credit. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 550 1   Poetry Center Workshop ONLINE Wednesday 12:30-3 PM Tonya Foster

Prerequisite for  C W 550 : Upper-division standing; GE Area A2; GPA of 3.0 or higher; or permission of the instructor. A poetry writing and study course aligned with The Poetry Center Reading Series. Features guest performances throughout the semester by outstanding local, national, and international poets, writers, musicians, and related artists. C W 850 / C W 550  is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.

C W 601 1 Work In Progress  ONLINE Monday 4-5:40 PM  Andrew Joron 

Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing. 

Capstone course for seniors in which undergraduate final project is completed.

C W 606  Art of Revision  Thursday  12:30-3:15 PM   Matthew Davison

Prerequisites: C W 101 or C W 301; C W 302; C W 512GW or C W 603 Examine and experiment with the artistic processes of published writers (and a variety of other artists) who've taken a project from idea to completion. Study interviews, process notes, and "middle drafts" of these artists. Include analyses of the draft process, genre across artistic and literary forms, and creation and revision of student work. CROSS GENRE COURSE

C W 640 1  Transfer Literary Magazine     Wednesday  4-6:45 PM   Junse Kim

Prerequisite:  C W 301; C W 302; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW; or consent of instructor. This course will provide you with practical experience in literary publishing through work on  Transfer , SFSU’s undergrad literary journal.  Students will solicit and evaluate work for publication, gaining practical experience in editing, layout, and production of the journal, as well as in publicizing and promoting the finished product, and taking an active role in  Transfer ’s social media presence.  In addition, we will address various approaches to editing and aesthetics, as well as the politics of representation.  You will investigate your own editorial sensibility through exploratory essays and the creation of a hypothetical literary magazine.   Transfer  Magazine provides you with the opportunity to consider what’s currently being published in literary magazines and what you would add to that culture.  

This is a process course (not a lab) and can be used to fulfill 3 units of the Creative Process requirement. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 675 1 Community Projects-Literature Tuesday 7-9:45 PM Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads at  https://creativewriting.sfsu.edu/content/communityprojects-0 . Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships at  http://icce.sfsu.edu . These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions, please contact Michael David Lukas at [email protected] . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.     

C W 699   Independent Study          By Arrangement   

Prerequisite:  Consent of instructor and a 3.0 GPA.  Upper division students may enroll in a course of Independent Study under the supervision of a member of the Creative Writing department, with whom the course is planned, developed, and completed. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Petition for Individual Study forms are available online  https://registrar.sfsu.edu/sites/default/files/indstudyi.pdf . This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair. Your instructor will give you the schedule and permit numbers to add the course during the first week of the semester. 

GRADUATE CLASSES:

Note:  Preference in all Creative Writing graduate courses will be given to students admitted to either the M.A. or the M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing.  Preference in M.F.A. level courses will be given to students admitted to the M.F.A. program.  Priority in M.A. and M.F.A. writing workshops and creative process courses will be given to students admitted in the genre of the course.  Other Creative Writing M.A./M.F.A. students may enroll in these courses only with the permission of the instructor.

C W 803 1  Advanced Short Story Writing   Thursday 4-6:45 PM   Junse Kim

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Priority enrollment given to graduate Creative Writing fiction students; open to Creative Writing students in other genres only on a space available basis, to be determined at the first class meeting. In this seminar/workshop we will dissect the intricacies of fiction craft in Short Stories through discussions of assigned readings, students’ work and in-class exercises. We will analyze character, conflict, narrative structure, plot development as well as other aspects of craft and consider how they all work together in fulfilling a story’s dramatic intent.  There will be an emphasis on integrating this knowledge into your own writing process, from initial draft to revision, in order to make your work fully realized.

C W 809  Directed Writing for Graduate Students      By Arrangement

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Permission of the instructor is required to take this course; you will be dropped without prior consent of the instructor. The semester before you plan to enroll in Directed Writing, submit a sample of your writing in the instructor’s mailbox along with a note explaining that you want to take their Directed Writing class. Be sure you include your name, address, phone number and email. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.                                                                 

 C W 809 1  Directed Writing BA Students     ARR          Michelle Carter [email protected]

 C W 809 2  Directed Writing BA Students     ARR          Caro De Robertis [email protected]

 C W 809 3  Directed Writing BA Students     ARR          Paul Hoover [email protected]  

 C W 809 4  Directed Writing BA Students     ARR         Chanan Tigay [email protected]

C W 810 1  Documentary Poetics, Lighting Up: Seeing Things, Feeling Spirit (an Image-Text Documentary Poetics Workshop) ONLINE Tuesday 4-5:40 PM Tonya Foster 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in creative writing or consent of instructor. In a conversation with cultural critic and musician Greg Tate, cinematographer and filmmaker Arthur Jafa asserted that “rhythm in black art illuminates the spirit.” Jafa went on to explain that rhythm may be understood as the “least material but the most felt.” Spirit occupies that rhythmic territory in that it is on the outer edges of the material, and at the center of feeling. In music, it is the rhythm which holds us and moves us emotionally and intellectually. What are the textual and visual analogues for how music moves us—both crowds of us and the crowds within us? This is a writing workshop in which we'll explore what it is to witness and document what is and register possibilities of what may yet be. May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

C W 810 2  Speculative Fiction  Thursday 4-6:45 PM  Andrew Joron

Prerequisite: classified graduate status, M.A. or M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Speculative fiction is a genre that gives priority to “cognitive estrangement,” using narrative prose to push beyond ordinary reality into a zone where the familiar becomes strange and the strange familiar. This course will survey various modes of modern speculative fiction, including science fiction and fantasy, dystopian and Gothic literature, surrealism and magical realism. Students will utilize readings in these modes as points of departure for their own creative writing. The assigned readings will include works by Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang and Nnedi Okorafor.  

C W  820 1  Writers on Writing   Tuesday  7:00-9:45 PM   Caro De Robertis 

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor. Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 520. Note:  this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the C W 810 (creative process) requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 520 may not take C W 820 for credit.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 840 1  14 Hills Literary Magazine  Tuesday 4-6:45 PM  Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Fourteen Hills is a working small press as well as a graduate course in editing, publishing, and other skills essential to thriving and leading in the contemporary literary world. Each year, we publish one issue of  Fourteen Hills: the SFSU Review , a nationally recognized literary print magazine, as well as the Michael Rubin Book Award (MRBA) winner, a book-length work by an SF State student or recent graduate. Fourteen Hills is run entirely by students with support from our Faculty Advisor and the Department of Creative Writing. The course, taught primarily by the Editor-in-Chief, is designed to give students an opportunity to observe and engage in many aspects of running a literary magazine, from editorial decisions to distribution logistics, from public relations and author interviews to curating a literary prize, from aesthetic considerations to the dynamics of equity and narrative justice in the broader publishing field. Students in the class serve as staff for the journal, working closely with the editors to consider and evaluate work for publication as well as learning about the copy-editing process, visual art selection, cover design, distribution, sales, and promotion. This is a class designed to merge real-world, hands-on publishing experience with the honing of skills that can ignite, inspire, and empower us in all our literary endeavors. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 850 1   Poetry Center Workshop ONLINE Wednesday 12:30-3 PM Tonya Foster

Prerequisite for  C W 850 : Graduate standing or permission of the instructor. A poetry writing and study course aligned with The Poetry Center Reading Series and with re-imagining the 70-year old Poetry Center as a Center for Poetry  and  Poetics. Graduate student writers will, in addition to writing their own poetry and short lyric essays, be asked to think through parts of the Poetry Center archives and propose PC multi-disciplinary futures. Features guest performances throughout the semester by outstanding local, national, and international poets, writers, musicians, and related artists. C W 850 / C W 550  is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.

C W 853 1   Workshop in Fiction  Wednesday  4-6:45 PM     Nona Caspers

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Every work of art has its own consciousness and subtext waiting to be explored—its own demands and invitations.  In this graduate workshop course, we will strive to recognize what is alive and compelling in each other’s material, the invitations—and to help each other follow our own intuitive and intellectual impulses in developing the material. The following opening questions may help: what experience is being offered, on its own terms? And what’s strong and in motion? We’ll practice locating the heat, delights, surprises, intrigues. (These passages point to your subtext and once located can be further explored/crafted). We’ll locate possibilities for development and offer targeted writing experiments intended to unearth the real thing in the work-in-progress.  The intention is that the feedback discussions will stir up the writer’s (and everybody else’s) imagination in concrete ways, so they can further commit to and participate with the text’s deepest currents— on the text’s own terms .  Students can submit fresh work or significantly revised works-in-progress twice in semester (up to 25 pages)—projects that may already be in motion. Students will also have opportunities to show brief experiments. We will together create our class MFA Fiction Course Reader—to accompany each week’s discussion and inspire us toward the art of language and crafting possibilities. May be repeated for a total of 18 units. 

C W 854 1   Workshop in Poetry Wednesday 12:30-3:15 PM Paul Hoover

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in MFA in Creative Writing, the MA in English; Creative Writing, or the new MA in Creative Writing.  Students will concentrate on the creation and revision of their poetry.  The class format will include discussion of reading assignments, group discussion of student work, and in-class and at-home writing assignments. 

C W 855 1   Workshop in Playwriting Tuesday 4-6:45 PM TBA

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Students are expected to concentrate on the revision of a play, on bringing work to a finished state, ready for production. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

C W 859 1  Practicum in Teaching Tuesday 4-6:45 PM  Michelle Carter

Open to both MA and MFA Creative Writing students.  Repeatable once for credit.  Students working for the first time as Pedagogical Apprentices to instructors of undergraduate Creative Writing courses are required to take this Practicum course concurrent with their work with a teacher of record.  Students meet as a group once every three weeks in tandem with asynchronous work on Canvas, posting teaching journals and case studies on a weekly basis.   This course provides pedagogical grounding for pragmatic classroom teaching work and offers students a structured forum in which to discuss their teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher and in collaboration with other Pedagogical Apprentices.   NB: Each student must make arrangements with an instructor to serve as a Pedagogical Apprentice.

C W 860 1  Teaching Creative Writing Monday 4-6:45 PM  Nona Caspers

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. This course introduces advanced graduate students to the art and practice of teaching creative writing. Creative Writing 301 will serve as our prototype. We’ll be reading essays and interviews, discussing aspects of creative writing pedagogy and performing a variety of rigorous teaching activities. We’ll discuss giving useful feedback for student writers; designing effective writing assignments; use of texts and craft models; strategies for leading discussions of literary works and student works-in-progress. Students will also prepare and execute mini-lectures on a range of craft and process topics and develop a detailed syllabus for an introductory creative writing course. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 866 1  Craft of Translation Tuesday 4-6:45 PM  Caro De Robertis

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in creative writing or consent of instructor. In this course, we will delve into the rich, nuanced, ever-evolving world of literary translation—which is a creative act of its own, one that draws not only on one’s knowledge of language, but on one’s sensitivity to its music, shades of meaning, culture, aesthetics, and language. To unfurl these themes, we will engage in comparative translation, taking a global tour of international literature through the centuries and exploring the vast range of choices made by translators in bringing them to life in English. A core component of this class will be your own original work as a translator, and workshop discussions where the rubber meets the road. Fluency in the language you’ll be translating from is wonderful, but not required. Literary translation is an exquisite training ground for creative writers of all genres; in this class, you are invited to intensify your love affair with language, and your capacity to wield it with precision and power.

C W 875 1  Community Projects-Literature  Tuesday 7-9:45 PM   Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads at  https://creativewriting.sfsu.edu/content/communityprojects-0 .  Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships at  http://icce.sfsu.edu . These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions, please contact Michael David Lukas at [email protected] . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.                         

C W 880 1 Vampires, Androids, Detectives Tuesday 12:30–3:15 PM   Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing M.F.A. C W or consent of instructor. Over the past two decades, the field of creative writing has undergone a number of significant developments. One of the most exciting and far-reaching is literary fiction’s cross-pollination with what has been called “the more speculative genres.” Authors as stylistically diverse as Kazou Ishiguro, Karen Russell, Marlon James and Michael Chabon have used the tropes of science fiction, fantasy, detective novels and comic books to help revitalize literary fiction in an age of hybridity and interconnection, while at the same time helping to redefine the very idea of realism. In this course we will map the “genre borderlands” exploring the idea of genre fiction, how various genres have changes in the past fifty years and how writers of all stripes have used genre tropes to push the boundaries of both literary and genre fiction. Concurrent with these discussions, we will also try our hand at writing in various generic styles, pushing our own work to new and exciting places.

C W 882 1  The Comedic Play  Monday 4-6:45 PM   Michelle Carter

The centuries-old comedic genres aren't going anywhere--satire, farce, burlesque, comedy of manners, parody. Nor is our pleasure in laughter, "that sudden glory," ever likely to wane.  It's hard to imagine a time in which comedy could feel more urgent, more necessary, or more impossible than our own. We turn to comedy, as ever, to entertain and amuse.  We also treasure it as a force of disturbance, of disruption. We look to comedy "to comfort the afflicted."  We also cherish its power "to afflict the comfortable." It can be a howl of pain, or an eruption of joy. It can interrogate or comfort. We hold dear its power to transgress, and at the same time, we fear its power to offend. And often struggle over the distinction.  

In this course, we'll read and view contemporary comedic works with a wide range of intentions. We'll analyze the aims of these works and the theatrical strategies their creators have employed, responding to creative prompts each week in search of our own discoveries. In the final weeks of the semester, each student will share a draft of all or part of a comedic play of their own.

C W 893  Written M.A. Creative Project (3 units)  By Arrangement

Prerequisite:  advancement to M.A. candidacy in Creative Writing.  Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 3 units M.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which may be a collection of short stories, a group of poems, a novel or a play.  To enroll: contact your thesis/written creative work committee chair the first week of the semester for the schedule and permit numbers to add the class. You must enroll in this course or you will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 893  Written M.F.A. Creative Work (6 units)   By Arrangement

Prerequisite:  advancement to M.F.A. candidacy in Creative Writing; Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 6 units M.F.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which is expected to be a book length collection of short stories, or poems, or a novel or a play of publishable quality.  Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or you will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 899  Independent Study    By Arrangement

Prerequisite:  consent of instructor and a minimum GPA of 3.25.  A special study is planned, developed, and completed under the direction of a faculty member. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Petition Individual Study forms are available online  http://registrar.sfsu.edu/sites/default/files/indstudyi.pdf  (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with and brought with an unofficial transcript for the department chair signature. Your instructor will give you the schedule and permit numbers to add the course during the first week of the semester.       

Archived Class Schedules

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• Email: [email protected]
• Telephone: (415) 338-1891

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• Program Prerequisite: Not required.
• Minor: Required.
• Grade Requirements: A 2.0 or better in all courses required for this major in addition to an overall GPA of 2.00 (C) or higher.
• Credit Hour Requirements: A total of 120 credit hours is required for graduation; a minimum of 39 of these must be English courses. A total of 40 upper division credit hours is required (courses numbered 3000 and above); a minimum of 30 of these must be English courses.
• Program Code:  3020BA
• CIPC:  231302

English Creative Writing Emphasis majors are expected to meet with a faculty advisor at least twice annually for course and program advisement. Please call 801-626-6251 for more information or to schedule an appointment. (Also refer to the Department Advisor Referral List .)

Admission Requirements

Declare your program of study at the English department office, Elizabeth Hall 413. No special admission or application requirements are needed for this program.

General Education

Refer to Degree Requirements    for Bachelor of Arts requirements. See Language Courses Required to fulfill the BA listed under the major course requirements.

Consult with a departmental advisor for detailed general education guidelines.

For CA , students must take ENGL 2250    (Intro to Creative Writing. This course will be required before you may take upper division creative writing coursework.)

Program Learning Outcomes

• Experiment in writing and develop drafts into polished original work.
• Show critical self-awareness.
• Exhibit editorial proficiency.
• Understand the professional writing environment.
• Show knowledge of contemporary, canonical, and marginalized literature.

Major Course Requirements for BA Degree

A minimum of 39 credit hours is required in valid English courses, of which at least 30 credit hours must be upper division.

English Courses Required (39 credit hours)

The following courses are required. ( ENGL 2200    ,  ENGL 2250    and ENGL 2700    should be taken early in the major; ENGL 4940    should be taken in the final year)

• ENGL 2200 HU/EDI - Introduction to Literature Credits: (3)
• ENGL 2250 CA/EDI - CW: Introduction to Creative Writing Credits: (3)
• ENGL 2700 - Introduction to Critical Theory Credits: (3)
• ENGL 4560 - Contemporary Literature for Creative Writers Credits: (3)
• ENGL 4940 - CW: Senior Project Credits: (3)

Students choose two literature surveys from the five 3000-level courses

• ENGL 3610 - American Literature I Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3620 - American Literature II Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3650 - British Literature I Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3660 - British Literature II Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3510 HU/EDI - World Literature Credits: (3)

Language & Literature (one of the following)

• ENGL 3010 - Introduction to Linguistics     Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3030 - Structure of English     Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3040 - History of the English Language     Credits: (3)
• Any 4000-level literature course Credits: (3)

Introductory Writing Courses (one of the following)

• ENGL 2260 CA/EDI - CW: Introduction to Writing Short Fiction Credits: (3)
• ENGL 2270 CA/EDI - CW: Introduction to Writing Poetry Credits: (3)
• ENGL 2280 CA - CW: Introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction Credits: (3)
• ENGL 2295 - CW: Introduction to Screenwriting Credits: (3)

Advanced Writing Courses (6 credits of the following)

• ENGL 3240 - CW: Writing Creative Nonfiction Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3250 - CW: Advanced Fiction Writing Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3260 - CW: Advanced Poetry Writing Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3290 - CW: Advanced Screenwriting Credits: (3)
• ENGL 4930 - Visiting Writing Master Class Credits: (1) (repeatable four times)

Forms and Craft Courses (any one of the following)

• ENGL 3350 - Studies in Literary Genres Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3355 - CW: Creative Nonfiction Forms and Craft Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3360 - CW: Short Story Forms and Craft Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3365 - CW: Novel Forms and Craft Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3370 - CW: Poetic Forms and Craft Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3375 - CW: Notebooks and Journals Forms and Craft Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3380 - CW: Screenwriting Forms and Craft Credits: (3)

Editing and Publication (3 credit hours)

• ENGL 3100 - Professional and Technical Writing Credits: (3)
• ENGL 3050 - Grammar, Style, and Usage for Advanced Writing Credits: (3)
• ENGL 4960 INT - Metaphor: Editing the Student Literary Journal Credits: (3)

Language Courses Required to fulfill the BA

English majors must take either 12-credit hours of a foreign language or 6 hours of a foreign language and 6 hours of language arts. Any 3000 or 4000 level English class may be used as a language arts course, but one course (3 credits) with a primary emphasis on language or writing is strongly recommended. Courses chosen for the BA language requirement cannot also be counted toward the English Creative Writing major.

Coordinator:  Erica Cavanagh Phone : 540-568-3761        Email : [email protected] Website: http://www.jmu.edu/english/undergraduate/minors.shtml

The cross disciplinary minor in creative writing is designed to encourage students to develop their writing talents across a number of literary forms and communication contexts.

Course offerings in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, scriptwriting, screen and playwriting give students the opportunity to shape the minor to suit a variety of artistic interests and professional objectives. With the choice of at least one course from a group involving advanced topics, narrative and poetic forms, media criticism and film analysis, students will gain informed perspectives on current issues affecting readers, viewers, writers and their creative works. These courses support the core workshop courses and are vital to competence in the field.

The minimum requirement for a minor in creative writing is 18 hours. Two courses may be double-counted between the minor and the major. Students electing this minor may acquire more information from the creative writing advisor of the Department of English   , the School of Media Arts and Design    or the School of Theatre and Dance   .

Required Courses

Select four or five core courses from two or more departments: 12-15 credit hours.

• ENG 391. Introduction to Creative Writing – Nonfiction Credits: 3.00
• ENG 392. Introduction to Creative Writing – Poetry Credits: 3.00
• ENG 393. Introduction to Creative Writing – Fiction Credits: 3.00
• ENG 493. Advanced Creative Nonfiction Credits: 3.00
• ENG 494. Advanced Poetry Writing Credits: 3.00
• ENG 495. Advanced Fiction Writing Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 250. Scriptwriting Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 251. Screenplay Writing Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 311. Feature Writing Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 340. Advanced Screenplay Writing Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 498. Senior Seminar in Media Arts and Design Credits: 3.00 (when topic is appropriate) 1
• THEA 347. Playwriting Credits: 3.00
• THEA 441. Senior Seminar in Theatre Credits: 3.00 (when topic is appropriate) 1
• THEA 447. Advanced Playwriting Credits: 3.00

Select one or two support courses from the following: 3-6 Credit Hours

• ENG 390. The Environmental Imagination Credits: 3.00
• ENG 483. Narrative Form Credits: 3.00
• ENG 484. Poetic Craft and Creativity Credits: 3.00
• ENG 496. Advanced Topics in Creative Writing Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 373. Media Analysis and Criticism Credits: 3.00
• SMAD 463. Film Adaptations Credits: 3.00
• THEA 481. Theory and Performance Studies Credits: 3.00

Total: 18 Credit Hours

1 Students must check with the professor or creative writing coordinator to see if these courses are appropriate for this minor.

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