Creative Writing

Introduces the essentials of poetry writing, including poetic form and forms (traditional and unconventional), line structures and rhythms, figures of speech, and other elements of rhetoric, voice, and subject matter. Regular writing exercises are the heart of the course, emphasizing problems to solve and techniques to master. Reading and study of important poetic models accompanies the poetry writing. Students produce a portfolio of original poems by the end of the semester.

Credits: 4

This introductory course in creative writing allows students to explore various genres. Poetry, the short story, and memoir are among the forms discussed. Students should be prepared to write, revise, and share portions of their work with other members of the class, and to read a selection of works by contemporary authors.

Credits: 3

An introduction to the fundamental aspects of fiction writing, including dialogue, plot, point of view, character development, detail, and voice. Starting from a series of writing exercises and analyses of published stories, students explore the techniques involved in creating effective fiction, using these as a springboard to complete a short story.

Credits: 4

In this introduction to creative nonfiction, students explore a variety of forms within the genre, including personal narrative, memoir, reportage, and the lyric essay. Students also write and workshop their own original essays.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR1000 Or CWR1100 Or WRI1110

Students begin to study and practice poetic strategies, producing a poem per week in response to assigned exercises. Students also develop skills in critiquing by commenting on each others’ work and by reading and discussing the work of established poets. Permission of Instructor required.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR1000 Or CWR1050

While continuing to explore narrative strategies, students write and submit several short stories during the semester. Students also learn the fundamentals of critiquing as they discuss their work and that of published writers. Permission of Instructor required.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR1050 Or (CWR1000 And CWR1100 )

Using the French location and selected readings related to the region, students explore the contexts and their responses through writing. Students meet at various locations, from castles and ruins to a local café, and receive writing assignments that draw on place and setting. Each week, students select one of their on-the-spot works to revise and develop into a short piece of fiction for submission. Emphasis is on capturing the nuances of one’s surroundings and experiences of these surroundings, and on how to use setting as a main “character“ in writing. Summer (offered in France)

Credits: 4

Often, to leave home is to truly see it. This course explores how writers craft “home” in their fiction. Whether crossing literal or figurative borders, the impulse for home is at the heart of character desire. Students will read the work of diverse writers as they write home in their own fiction.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR1100 And CWR1000 And CWR2500 And CWR3500

This writing workshop draws on a variety of texts, media, and film as students explore fictional portrayals of other worlds. In their writing assignments, students focus on elements that contribute to effective narratives—setting, character, situation, etcetera—in order to create alternate realities.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR2500

What makes the novella work? What power does the form offer that the short story and longer novel do not? Is there a subject matter best suited to such brevity? Students examine these questions through close reading of works by new and established writers (e.g., James, Conrad, Moore), and begin to structure and write their own novella.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR2500

Students are guided through the classical questions of form and style, the building materials of the personal essay, through reading and writing assignments. Students examine the elements that convince the reader of the truth of their tales and explore how to confront their own experiences creatively. Readings are various, but with a focus on the 20th-century essay in English.

Credits: 4

Focusing on the art of editing, students learn best editing practices through a practical and historical context of the literary journal landscape in the U.S. Students apply their skills to editing content to be published in the creative writing program’s literary magazine, Italics Mine.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR3400 Or CWR3500 Or CWR3200

Through hands-on collaboration, students apply their editing skills to the production of the creative writing program¹s literary journal, Italics Mine. From shaping manuscripts to layout and design, marketing, and public relations, students work as editors on the publication of the journal.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR3215

This course assumes that students have a good command of basic poetic craft. Writing assignments put increased emphasis on students’ own work, though there are still exercises to guide the workshop, as well as study and discussion of poetry by established writers.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR2400

Students interact with contemporary poets who have recently published their first poetry book or chapbook. Most classes are structured as a brief reading by and discussion with visiting authors. Topics include each author’s influences, how one assembles a collection, how manuscripts evolve over time, and the editorial/publishing process. Students read each poet’s collection and compose critical and creative responses.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: CWR1000

This course assumes a working knowledge of the craft. Students write and discuss short stories or chapters from a novel in progress, and continue to refine their critiquing skills through discussion of their own work as well as published stories. Revision of submitted work is an important component of this course.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR2500

A series of mini-workshops, guest speakers, and activities focused on current trends in the field and on broader topics germane to students in their senior year.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: CWR3400 Or CWR3500 Or CWR3200 Or CWR3200

Taught by a well-published writer-in-residence. Students work intensively on revising and editing their own work and each other’s fiction, as well as on critiquing published stories and novels. The course also familiarizes students with the professional writer’s market and the submission process, in order to encourage each student to prepare at least one story for possible publication.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR3200 Or CWR3500

Advanced students with practiced skills in poetry writing and criticism work to produce poems of publishable stature. Students should be able to assume full responsibility for their creative process in this course.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CWR3400

This course explores stories that employ alternative forms of narrative design (i.e. non-linear, episodic, parallel, multiple point-of-view) to establish form—the pattern of a story’s assembly, its arrangement and structure. Writers often think of plot as defining structure in a story. However, craft elements like point of view, tone, time, place etc. when employed structurally, can achieve meaning and design.

Credits: 4