fundamentals of creative writing

Creative Writing 101: Everything You Need to Get Started

Creative writing: You can take classes in it, you can earn a degree in it, but the only things you really need to do it are your creative thinking and writing tools. Creative writing is the act of putting your imagination on a page. It’s artistic expression in words; it’s writing without the constraints that come with other kinds of writing like persuasive or expository. 

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What is creative writing?

Creative writing is writing meant to evoke emotion in a reader by communicating a theme. In storytelling (including literature, movies, graphic novels, creative nonfiction, and many video games), the theme is the central meaning the work communicates. 

Take the movie (and the novel upon which it’s based) Jaws , for instance. The story is about a shark that terrorizes a beach community and the men tasked with killing the shark. But the film’s themes include humanity’s desire to control nature, tradition vs. innovation, and how potential profit can drive people in power to make dangerous, even fatal, decisions. 

A theme isn’t the only factor that defines creative writing. Here are other components usually found in creative writing:

• Connecting, or at least attempting to connect, with the reader’s emotions
• Writing from a specific point of view
• A narrative structure can be complex or simple and serves to shape how the reader interacts with the content.
• Using imaginative and/or descriptive language

Creative writing typically uses literary devices like metaphors and foreshadowing to build a narrative and express the theme, but this isn’t a requirement. Neither is dialogue, though you’ll find it used in most works of fiction. Creative writing doesn’t have to be fictional, either. Dramatized presentations of true stories, memoirs, and observational humor pieces are all types of creative writing. 

What isn’t creative writing?

In contrast, research papers aren’t creative writing. Neither are analytical essays, persuasive essays , or other kinds of academic writing . Similarly, personal and professional communications aren’t considered creative writing—so your emails, social media posts, and official company statements are all firmly in the realm of non-creative writing. These kinds of writing convey messages, but they don’t express themes. Their goals are to inform and educate, and in some cases collect information from, readers. But even though they can evoke emotion in readers, that isn’t their primary goal. 

But what about things like blog posts? Or personal essays? These are broad categories, and specific pieces in these categories can be considered creative writing if they meet the criteria listed above. This blog post, for example, is not a piece of creative writing as it aims to inform, but a blog post that walks its reader through a first-person narrative of an event could be deemed creative writing. 

Types of creative writing

Creative writing comes in many forms. These are the most common:

Novels originated in the eighteenth century . Today, when people think of books, most think of novels. 

A novel is a fictional story that’s generally told in 60,000 to 100,000 words, though they can be as short as 40,000 words or go beyond 100,000. 

Stories that are too short to be novels, but can’t accurately be called short stories, are often referred to as novellas. Generally, a story between 10,000 and 40,000 words is considered a novella. You might also run into the term “ novelette ,” which is used to refer to stories that clock in between 7,500 and 19,000 words. 

Short stories

Short stories are fictional stories that fall generally between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Like novels, they tell complete stories and have at least one character, some sort of conflict, and at least one theme. 

When a story is less than 1,000 words, it’s categorized as a work of flash fiction.

Poetry can be hard to define because as a genre, it’s so open-ended. A poem doesn’t have to be any specific length. It doesn’t have to rhyme. There are many different kinds of poems from cultures all over the world, like sonnets, haikus, sestinas, blank verse, limericks, and free verse. 

The rules of poetry are generally flexible . . . unless you’re writing a specific type of poem, like a haiku , that has specific rules around the number of lines or structure. But while a poem isn’t required to conform to a specific length or formatting, or use perfect grammar , it does need to evoke its reader’s emotions, come from a specific point of view, and express a theme. 

And when you set a poem to music, you’ve got a song. 

Plays, TV scripts, and screenplays

Plays are meant to be performed on stage. Screenplays are meant to be made into films, and TV scripts are meant to be made into television programs. Scripts for videos produced for other platforms fit into this category as well. 

Plays, TV scripts, and screenplays have a lot in common with novels and short stories. They tell stories that evoke emotion and express themes. The difference is that they’re meant to be performed rather than read and as such, they tend to rely much more on dialogue because they don’t have the luxury of lengthy descriptive passages. But scriptwriters have more than just dialogue to work with; writing a play or script also involves writing stage or scene directions.

Each type of script has its own specific formatting requirements. 

Creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction covers all the kinds of creative writing that aren’t fiction. Here are some examples:

• Personal essays: A personal essay is a true story told through a narrative framework. Often, recollections of events are interspersed with insights about those events and your personal interpretations and feelings about them in this kind of essay. 
• Literary journalism: Think of literary journalism as journalism enhanced by creative writing techniques. These are the kinds of stories often published in outlets like The New Yorker and Salon. Literary journalism pieces report on factual events but do so in a way that makes them feel like personal essays and short stories. 
• Memoirs: Memoirs are to personal essays what novels are to short stories. In other words, a memoir is a book-length collection of personal memories, often centering around a specific story, that often works opinions, epiphanies, and emotional insights into the narrative. 
• Autobiographies: An autobiography is a book you write about yourself and your life. Often, autobiographies highlight key events and may focus on one particular aspect of the author’s life, like her role as a tech innovator or his career as a professional athlete. Autobiographies are often similar in style to memoirs, but instead of being a collection of memories anchored to specific events, they tend to tell the author’s entire life story in a linear narrative. 
• Humor writing: Humor writing comes in many forms, like standup comedy routines, political cartoons, and humorous essays. 
• Lyric essays: In a lyric essay, the writer breaks conventional grammar and stylistic rules when writing about a concept, event, place, or feeling. In this way, lyric essays are like essay-length poems. The reason they’re considered essays, and not long poems, is that they generally provide more direct analysis of the subject matter than a poem would. 

Tips for writing creatively

Give yourself time and space for creative writing.

It’s hard to write a poem during your lunch break or work on your memoir between calls. Don’t make writing more difficult for yourself by trying to squeeze it into your day. Instead, block off time to focus solely on creative writing, ideally in a distraction-free environment like your bedroom or a coffee shop. 

>>Read More: How to Create Your Very Own Writing Retreat

Get to know yourself as a writer

The more you write, the more in tune you’ll become with your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. You’ll identify the kinds of characters, scenes, language, and pieces you like writing best and determine where you struggle the most. Understanding what kind of writer you are can help you decide which kinds of projects to pursue. 

Challenge yourself 

Once you know which kinds of writing you struggle with, do those kinds of writing. If you only focus on what you’re good at, you’ll never grow as a writer. Challenge yourself to write in a different genre or try a completely new type of writing. For example, if you’re a short story writer, give poetry or personal essays a try. 

Need help getting started? Give one (or all!) of these 20 fun writing prompts a try .

Learn from other writers

There are lots of resources out there about creative writing. Read and watch them. If there’s a particular writer whose work you enjoy, seek out interviews with them and personal essays they’ve written about their creative processes. 

>>Read More: How to Be a Master Storyteller—Tips from 5 Experts 

Don’t limit yourself to big-name writers, either. Get involved in online forums, social media groups, and if possible, in-person groups for creative writers. By doing this, you’re positioning yourself to learn from writers from all different walks of life . . . and help other writers, too. 

I wrote something. Where do I go from here?

Give yourself a pat on the back: You did it! You finished a piece of creative writing—something many attempt, but not quite as many achieve. 

What comes next is up to you. You can share it with your friends and family, but you don’t have to. You can post it online or bring it to an in-person writing group for constructive critique. You can even submit it to a literary journal or an agent to potentially have it published, but if you decide to take this route, we recommend working with an editor first to make it as polished as possible. 

Some writers are initially hesitant to share their work with others because they’re afraid their work will be stolen. Although this is a possibility, keep in mind that you automatically hold the copyright for any piece you write. If you’d like, you can apply for copyright protection to give yourself additional legal protection against plagiarizers, but this is by no means a requirement. 

Write with originality

Grammarly can’t help you be more creative, but we can help you hone your writing so your creativity shines as brightly as possible. Once you’ve written your piece, Grammarly can catch any mistakes you made and suggest strong word choices that accurately express your message. 

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Principles of Creative Writing: An Ultimate Guide

Explore the art of storytelling with our blog on the Principles of Creative Writing. Uncover the key techniques that transform words into captivating narratives. From character development to plot intricacies, we'll guide you through the fundamental principles that breathe life into your writing, helping you craft compelling and imaginative stories.

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Table of Contents  

1)  Understanding Creative Writing Principles 

2)  Principles of Creative Writing 

    a)  Imagination knows no bounds   

    b)  Crafting compelling characters   

    c)  Plot twists and turns 

    d) Setting the stage 

    e)  Point of View (POV) and voice    

    f)  Dialogue - The voice of your characters 

    g)  Conflict and tension 

    h)  Show, don't tell 

    i)  Editing and revising with precision   

    j)  The power of theme and symbolism 

    k)  Pacing and rhythm 

    l)   Emotionally resonant writing 

    m)  Atmosphere and mood 

3)  Conclusion  

Understanding Creative Writing Principles  

Before we move on to the Principles for Creative Writers, let’s first understand the concept of Creative Writing. Creative Writing is an exploration of human expression, a channel through which Writers communicate their unique perspectives, experiences, and stories.   

This form of writing encompasses various genres, such as fiction, poetry, drama, and more. Unlike Technical or Academic Writing, Creative Writing is driven by the desire to evoke emotions, engage readers, and transport them to alternate worlds.  

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Principles of Creative Writing  

Now that you know the meaning of Creative Writing, let’s explore its principles.  

Principle 1: Imagination k nows n o b ounds   

Your imagination is a treasure trove of ideas waiting to be explored. To cultivate your creative imagination:  

a)  Allow yourself to think without limitations. 

b)  Let thoughts collide and see where they lead. 

c)  Keep a journal to jot down fleeting ideas and use them as springboards for your writing.  

Break free from conventional thought patterns—experiment with "what if" scenarios – twist familiar elements into something new. Blend genres, combine unrelated concepts, or put your characters in unexpected situations .       

Principle 2: Crafting c ompelling c haracters   

Characters are the heart of your story. Develop characters with distinct personalities, motivations, strengths, and flaws. Delve into their backgrounds, understanding their past experiences and how they shape their choices. Consider their beliefs, fears, desires, and relationships with others in the story .   

Readers connect with characters they can relate to. Make your characters multifaceted by giving them relatable qualities. Flaws make characters human, so don't hesitate to bestow imperfections upon them. Your readers will find themselves emotionally invested in their journeys as they face challenges and grow.    

Principle 3: Plot t wists and t urns   

A well-crafted story thrives on plot twists and turns. These unexpected shifts keep readers engaged, encouraging them to explore the unknown alongside your characters. The art of plot twists lies in weaving surprises that challenge characters' assumptions and drive the story in unexpected directions.   

Develop logical and unforeseen twists, leaving your audience eager to discover what happens next. Experiment with various narrative structures. Choose the structure that best serves your story's theme and tone.  

Principle 4: Setting the s tage  

Transport readers into your story's world by vividly describing its physical elements – sights, sounds, smells, and textures. The setting isn't merely a backdrop; it's a living, breathing entity that influences the mood and atmosphere of your narrative. Create an immersive experience that makes readers feel like they're living the story alongside your characters. Make the setting integral to your storytelling, whether a bustling urban landscape or serene countryside. 

Principle 5: Point of View (POV) and v oice     

Point of View (POV) and voice are essential tools that shape how your story is perceived. POV determines the perspective through which readers experience the narrative – whether through a character's eyes (first person), an external observer (third person limited), or an all-knowing narrator (third person omniscient). Each POV offers a distinct vantage point, influencing what readers know and how they connect with the characters.   

On the other hand, voice is the unique style and tone of your writing that reflects the narrator's personality and worldview. Skilful manipulation of POV and voice deepens readers' immersion and connection with the story .       

Principle 6: Dialogue - The v oice of y our c haracters   

Dialogue is a powerful tool for revealing character relationships and advancing the plot. It's the medium through which characters reveal their personalities, motivations, and conflicts. Make your dialogue sound natural by paying attention to speech patterns, interruptions, and nuances.   

Each character should possess a distinctive voice, reflecting their background, emotions, and quirks. Effective dialogue moves the plot forward, adds depth to relationships, and provides insight into characters' inner worlds.    

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Principle 7: Conflict and t ension     

Conflict drives your story forward. Whether internal (within a character's mind) or external (between characters or forces), conflicts create stakes and keep readers invested. Make conflicts meaningful by connecting them to your characters' goals and desires. Tension, on the other hand, keeps readers engaged by evoking curiosity and emotional investment.  

Principle 8: Show, d on't t ell   

"Show, don't tell" is a principle that encourages subtlety and reader engagement. Instead of directly stating emotions or information, show them through actions, behaviours, and sensory details. Allow readers to draw their own conclusions, fostering a deeper connection to the narrative.   

For example, instead of stating, "She was sad," show her wiping away a tear and gazing out the rain-soaked window. This approach not only immerses readers in the story but also invites them to interpret and empathise with the characters' experiences.  

Principle 9: Editing and r evising with p recision   

Your first draft is just the beginning. Editing and revising refine your work into its best version. Editing is not just about correcting grammar; it's about refining your prose to convey your message with clarity and impact. Read your work critically, checking for consistency in tone, pacing, and character development. Trim unnecessary elements and tighten sentences to eliminate any ambiguity. Embrace the art of revision to sculpt your rough draft into a polished masterpiece.  

Principle 10: The p ower of t heme and s ymbolism   

Themes and symbolism add meaning to your writing, inviting readers to explore more profound insights. A theme is your story's central idea or message, while symbolism uses objects, actions, or concepts to represent abstract ideas. By infusing your narrative with meaningful themes and symbolism, you create a tapestry of thought-provoking connections that engage readers on both intellectual and emotional levels. 

Principle 11: Pacing and r hythm   

The rhythm of your writing affects how readers engage with your story. Experiment with sentence lengths and structures to create a natural flow that guides readers seamlessly through the narrative. Vary pacing to match the intensity of the scenes; fast-paced action should have short, punchy sentences, while contemplative moments can benefit from longer, more introspective prose. Mastering rhythm and flow keep readers entranced from start to finish.   

Principle 12: Emotionally r esonant w riting  

The goal of Creative Writing is to evoke emotions in your readers. Develop empathy for your characters and encourage readers to feel alongside them. Tap into your own experiences and emotions to connect with readers on a human level. Emotionally charged writing doesn't just entertain; it leaves a mark on readers' hearts, reminding them of shared experiences and universal truths.  

Principle 13: Atmosphere and m ood   

The atmosphere and mood of a story set the tone for readers' experiences. Through careful selection of words, sentence structures, and descriptive details, you can shape the emotional ambience of your narrative. Whether you're writing an exciting thriller, a magical fantasy, or a serious drama, infuse your writing with an atmosphere that wraps readers in the emotions you want them to feel. 

Conclusion   

The Principles of Creative Writing provide a roadmap for crafting stories that captivate and inspire. These principles allow you to transform your writing from ordinary to extraordinary easily. As you work on becoming a Creative Writer, remember that practice is key. Each principle mentioned here is like a tool in your Writer's toolbox, waiting to be improved and used effectively. 

Elevate your writing skills with our Creative Writing Training . Join today to unleash your creativity!   

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Creative Writing: What It Is and Why It Matters

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on Published: January 13, 2023  - Last updated: January 15, 2023

Categories Writing

Writing can be intimidating for many people, but creative writing doesn’t have to be. Creative writing is a form of self-expression that allows writers to create stories, characters, and unique settings. But what exactly is creative writing? And why is it important in today’s society? Let’s explore this further.

How We Define Creative Writing

Creative writing is any form where writers can express their thoughts and feelings imaginatively. This type of writing allows authors to draw on their imagination when creating stories and characters and play with language and structure. While there are no boundaries in creative writing, most pieces will contain dialogue, description, and narrative elements.

The Importance of Creative Writing

Creative writing is important because:

• It helps us express ourselves in ways we may not be able to do with other forms of communication.
• It allows us to explore our creativity and think outside the box.
• It can help us better understand our emotions by exploring them through storytelling or poetry.
• Writing creatively can also provide much-needed escapism from everyday life, allowing us to escape into a world of our creation.
• Creative writing helps us connect with others by sharing our experiences through stories or poems they can relate to. This way, we can gain insight into other people’s lives while giving them insight into ours.

Creative Writing: A Path to Mental and Emotional Wellness

Writing is more than just a way to express your thoughts on paper. It’s a powerful tool that can be used as a form of therapy. Creative writing has been shown to improve emotional and mental well-being.

Through creative writing, we can gain insight into our emotions, develop self-expression and communication skills, cultivate empathy and understanding of others, and boost our imagination and creativity.

Let’s examine how creative writing can relieve stress and emotional catharsis.

Stress Relief and Emotional Catharsis

Writing has the power to reduce stress levels significantly. Writing about our experiences or about things that are causing us anxiety or distress helps us to release those complicated feelings constructively. By expressing ourselves through creative writing, we can work through the emotions associated with stressful situations without having to confront them directly.

This is especially helpful for people who struggle to share their emotions verbally or in person.

Improved Communication and Self-Expression

Creative writing is also beneficial for improving communication skills. Through creative writing, we can explore our thoughts and feelings more intensely than by speaking them aloud. This allows us to think more clearly about what we want to say before actually saying it out loud or in written form, which leads to improved self-expression overall.

Additionally, writing out our thoughts before speaking aloud allows us to articulate ourselves better when communicating with others—which is essential for healthy personal and professional relationships.

Increased Empathy and Understanding of Others

Through creative writing, we can also increase our empathy towards others by exploring different perspectives on various topics that may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable for us—such as racism, homophobia, sexism, etc.—and allowing ourselves the opportunity to see the situation from someone else’s point of view without judgment or bias. This helps us become better communicators and more understanding individuals overall.

The Professional Benefits of Creative Writing

Creative writing is a powerful tool that can help you communicate better and more effectively in the professional world. It can also help you develop various skills that prove invaluable in many industries. Whether you’re looking to build your résumé or improve your communication, creative writing can effectively achieve both.

Let’s take a closer look at how creative writing can benefit your career.

Preparing Students for Careers in Writing, Editing, and Publishing

Creative writing is the perfect foundation for anyone interested in pursuing a career in writing, editing, or publishing. It teaches students the basics of grammar and composition while allowing them to express their ideas in imaginative ways.

Creative writing classes also allow students to learn from professionals who have experience as editors, agents, and publishers. They can use this knowledge to learn creative writing, refine their craft and gain valuable experience before entering the job market.

Improving Skills in Storytelling and Marketing for Various Careers

Creative writing teaches students to think critically about stories and craft compelling narratives that draw readers in. This skill is precious for those who wish to pursue careers outside traditional writing roles—such as marketing or advertising—where storytelling is key.

People who understand the fundamentals of creative writing will be able to create persuasive copy that resonates with readers and effectively conveys a message.

Enhancing Team Collaboration and Leadership Skills

Creative writing isn’t just about expressing yourself through words; it also provides an opportunity to practice working collaboratively with others on projects. Many creative writing classes require students to work together on group projects, which helps them develop essential teamwork skills such as communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.

As they work together on these projects, they will also gain confidence in their ability to lead teams effectively—an invaluable asset no matter what industry they pursue after graduation.

Uncovering the Power of Creative Writing

Creative writing has become an increasingly powerful force in shaping our society. Creative writing has many uses, from preserving cultural heritage to promoting social change.

Preserving Cultural Heritage with Creative Writing

Creative writing has long been used to preserve and share cultural heritage stories. This is done through fictional stories or poetry that explore a particular culture or group’s history, values, and beliefs. By weaving these stories in an engaging way, writers can bring a culture’s history and traditions to life for readers worldwide. This helps bridge cultural gaps by providing insight into what makes each culture unique.

Promoting Social Change & Activism with Creative Writing

Creative writing can also be used for activism and social change. Writers can craft stories that help promote awareness about important issues such as poverty, race relations, gender equality, climate change, and more.

With the power of words, writers can inspire readers to take action on these issues and work towards creating positive change in their communities.

Through creative writing, writers can raise awareness about important topics while fostering empathy toward individuals who may be facing difficult or challenging situations.

Fostering Creativity & Innovation with Creative Writing

Finally, creative writing can foster creativity and innovation in various fields. For example, businesses can use creative copywriting techniques to create compelling content that captures the attention of customers or potential investors.

Aspiring entrepreneurs can use storytelling techniques when pitching their ideas or products to potential partners or investors to make their cases more persuasive and memorable.

By harnessing the power of words through creative writing techniques, businesses can create content that resonates with their target audience while inspiring them to take action on whatever message they’re trying to convey. It often aids the overall creative process.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of creative writing.

Creative writing has many benefits, both for the writer and the reader. For the writer, it can be therapeutic, helping them to explore their emotions and better understand themselves. It can also be used as entertainment or communication, allowing them to share their ideas with the world. For the reader, creative writing can provide enjoyment, escapism, and insights into the human condition.

How can I improve my creative writing skills?

There are several ways you can improve your creative writing skills. Firstly, make sure you allow yourself time to write regularly. Use a writing prompt to inspire a short story. Secondly, read as much as you can; great writers are also great readers. Thirdly, experiment with different styles and genres to find one that suits you best. Fourthly, join a writers’ group, writing workshop, or creative writing program to get feedback from other writers. Finally, keep a journal to track your progress and reflect on your work as a creative writer.

What is the importance of imagery in creative writing?

Imagery is an important element of creative writing, as it helps to create a more vivid picture for the reader. By using sensory and descriptive language, writers can transport readers into their stories and help them relate to their characters or themes. Imagery can bring a scene alive with detail and evoke emotion by helping readers create strong visual images in their minds. Furthermore, imagery can help make stories more memorable by giving readers a deeper connection with the characters or setting.

What are the elements of creative writing?

The elements of creative writing include plot, character, dialogue, setting, theme, and point of view. The plot is the structure or main storyline, while the character is the personage involved in this story. Dialogue includes conversations between characters to give insight into their emotions and relationships. Setting refers to the place or time in which a story takes place, while theme explores deeper meanings behind a story’s narrative. Finally, point of view defines how readers experience a story through first-person or third-person omniscient narration.

What’s the difference between creative writing and other types of writing?

The main difference between creative writing and other types of writing is that it allows the writer to create their own story, characters, settings, and themes. Creative writing also encourages writers to be inventive with their style and use descriptive language to evoke emotion or bring stories alive in readers’ minds. Other academic or technical writing types typically involve more research-based information and are usually more objective in their presentation. Additionally, most forms of non-creative writing will have stricter rules regarding grammar, structure, and syntax.

What is the golden rule of creative writing?

The golden rule of creative writing is to show, not tell. It’s the core creative writing skill. When it comes to creative writing, it’s essential to use descriptive language that immerses readers in the story and allows them to experience the events through their emotions and imaginations. This can be done through metaphors, similes, sensory language, and vivid imagery.

How important is creativity in writing?

Creativity is essential in writing as it allows writers to craft a unique story and evoke emotion from the reader. Creativity can bring stories alive with fresh perspectives and exciting plot lines while creating an escape for readers and giving them more profound insights into the human condition. Writers who combine creativity with technical aspects such as grammar, structure, language usage, and flow will create pieces that capture their audience’s attention and provide an enjoyable reading experience.

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(6 reviews)

Sybil Priebe, North Dakota State College of Science

Copyright Year: 2016

Last Update: 2022

ISBN 13: 9798783934094

Publisher: Sybil Priebe

Language: English

Formats Available

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Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Corinne Ehrfurth, CE Instructor, Rochester Community & Technical College on 2/10/23

Priebe's book evocatively pushes the definition of "creative writing" to teach beyond the typical genres and modes. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Priebe's book evocatively pushes the definition of "creative writing" to teach beyond the typical genres and modes.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

All the content looks accurate as well as engaging and thought-provoking.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Leading with tweets could easily be replaced if this social media platform goes under after all the hullabaloo with Musk at the helm.

Clarity rating: 5

While Priebe's book plays off older texts with the ABCs, theses notes--such as the B, "inclusivity" (pg. 12), frames the textbook on a progressive scale that reaches outside notions of the pre-1980s literary canon. This textbook would not fit instructors concerned with a legacy and historical approach to creative writing.

Consistency rating: 5

The pattern of exercises, student examples, questions, tips or feedback continues throughout the entire textbook to provide modeling of habits, reasoning, and qualities of the genres of creative writing while also inviting classes of students to push the boundaries.

Modularity rating: 5

Hyper-modular with sound-bite like inclusions of tweets, call-out quotes, and other breaks in the text itself. The table of contents subdivides the last chapter into subheadings that the rest of the chapters could also be split into right away. Since the author cites herself (see a blog post on pg. 24 for example), some self-referential moments occur.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The genre-based chapters provide a familiarity to long-time instructors of creative writing while also being student-friendly for writers who want to dive right away into something particular.

Interface rating: 4

The primary font choice becomes increasingly distracting the longer one reads, as it looks as if it's from a typewriter. Students with dyslexia might have greater issues reading this text when compared with other options.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

Chapter titles and subtitles are not capitalized, which personally bothers me but fits the trendy style that might draw in younger students and less mature writers.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The more one reads this textbook, the less it makes good on its promise to include diverse voices since it features Walt Whitman and other typical canonical writers' excerpts as well as white people's or organization's tweets.

I especially enjoy how interactive this textbook would feel for writing students who want to hone and practice their craft.

Reviewed by Rachele Salvini, Emerging Writer Lecturer, Gettysburg College on 11/7/22

I decided to adopt Write or Left: an OER Book for Creative Writing Classes for my Introduction to Creative Writing classes for multiple reasons. The clarity and conciseness of the textbook makes it an excellent tool for college students who are... read more

I decided to adopt Write or Left: an OER Book for Creative Writing Classes for my Introduction to Creative Writing classes for multiple reasons. The clarity and conciseness of the textbook makes it an excellent tool for college students who are approaching writing creatively for the first time. I have used a few commercial textbooks and anthologies throughout the years, and while I found them to be extremely detailed and exhaustive, students seem to struggle with theoretical sections and they expressed difficulty understanding some of the anthologized readings. While most creative writing textbooks and anthologies might be extremely helpful for teachers, some of the selected readings might not be particularly accessible for students who are approaching reading literature as writers for the first time. However, the editors of Write or Left chose readings that seem to align with the taste and aesthetic that young writers find enjoyable or at least approachable.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

Introduction to Creative Writing is a class mostly based on workshops and lively discussions, but the students also need a foundational element — they need to familiarize themselves with a vocabulary that allows them to discuss writing. Write or Left provides brief and concise definitions that help the students navigate the vocabulary surrounding the particularities of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and dramatic writing.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

While the book does not provide a wide or particularly updated range of readings for each genre, it covers the main concepts that students need to know to start talking about writing and workshopping each other’s work — which is, I think, the main purpose of the basic Introduction to Creative Writing course.

Write or Left is an excellent tool for students who are approaching creative writing for the first time and need to familiarize themselves with the most important terms to use during reading discussion and workshop. Notably, this book also covers more innovative aspects of creative writing — flash fiction and multimodal writing — to avoid a banal and cut-and-dry institutionalization of the four main genres, and show once again the fluid, regenerating, and ever-shifting nature of creative writing.

The textbook offers very clear and consistent definitions of terms that students of creative writing should get familiar with during an introductory course.

I am very excited with the briefness of the "theoretical" chapters, as students usually struggle with long chapters that break down the elements of craft in the four genres of creative writing. I would be happy to assign a whole chapter for the introductory class of each genre (each module).

I found it hard to make most commercial textbooks approachable for the students, who seem often confused by the readings or bored with the lengthy theoretical explanations of creative writing terms. This textbook might be implemented with readings chosen by the instructor, allowing the course to benefit from a personalized, unique approach to creative writing, which might feel more dynamic and adventurous than following a textbook or an anthology page by page. Write or Left might be a great tool for sections of Introduction to Creative Writing with a high student count, as instructors might struggle to find the time to workshop every student in each genre, and also cover the readings from a commercial textbook to make it worthwhile for students who spent a lot of money on it. In fact, a lot of Introduction to Creative Writing students might have to take Creative Writing as a requirement and not an elective course, so having them buy expensive textbooks that they might not really use throughout the semester and then ever again might be a waste.

Interface rating: 5

The textbook is extremely easy to access. I think the students will be very happy to access their book online for free.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I haven't found any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The readings used as example might represent a wider range of experiences and identities, but overall I'm satisfied.

Reviewed by Yelizaveta Renfro, Assistant Professor of English, Saint Mary's College on 5/5/22

This book’s ambitious attempt to cover so much ground—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, drama, experimental fiction, and specialized genres like fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance—is ultimately its biggest weakness. There is no way a single... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This book’s ambitious attempt to cover so much ground—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, drama, experimental fiction, and specialized genres like fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance—is ultimately its biggest weakness. There is no way a single textbook can adequately cover all of these areas (and especially a slim volume like this one). As a result, the book is only the most cursory exploration of these multiple creative forms, barely scratching the surface of the field of creative writing. I could not imagine assigning this book in any course that I teach at the college level. Even my introduction to creative course—which covers fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in one semester—requires a text that goes more deeply into these genres and that offers more substantial content.

I would like to see more precision and thoughtful wording, especially in defining terms. For example, the glossary definition of “fantasy” that is offered at the end of the book is, “the kind of writing that cannot take place in real life.” This is imprecise and even potentially confusing; doing the simplest internet search will yield a much a better definition. For much of the book, the information is not so much inaccurate as it is general and incomplete.

The general topics included in the book are certainly relevant, but an instructor using this text would need to supplement every step along the way. Not only are the explanations in some of the chapters too basic and brief, but the examples (when they exist at all) leave much to be desired, being limited mostly to older texts (nineteenth-century texts like an excerpt from Frankenstein or a story by Kate Chopin) or texts written by the instructor’s students (which are very typical of works produced by beginning creative writers). What students need most are high-quality, recent models for their own work. There are thousands of such works available online. While I understand that Priebe cannot reproduce these texts in her book, readers could still be pointed towards online literary journals that publish excellent creative writing.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing is generally clear, though as I noted elsewhere, definitions of terms could be more precise. The tone of the book is informal and friendly, making it easy to follow. I think that most student would find the book clear and accessible.

Consistency rating: 3

The book seems somewhat inconsistent in the depth of treatment it gives to different genres. For example, in the chapter on drama, there is an exhaustive discussion of the proper way to format a screenplay (the correct font and margins, rendering action and dialogue, and so forth), which makes up the majority of the chapter and strikes me as an unnecessary level of detail for beginning students (and the student example that is offered at the end of the chapter does not even adhere to these “proper formatting” rules). Meanwhile, other chapters are woefully lacking in necessary content. In the poetry chapter, for example, the poetic “forms” that are included seem arbitrary, and there is no real discussion of poetic meter. An introduction to poetry is incomplete without a basic overview of metrical feet.

Modularity rating: 4

In principle, it would be possible to use any of the chapters in this book as stand-alone readings for a course. Instructors could easily switch the order of the chapters around to suit their own progression through genres. The most useful chapter, in my option, is Chapter 10: Assignment and Project ideas, which offers a sizable collection of writing prompts, reading response activities, and portfolio ideas. While these are of varying usefulness and I would not offer them all as options for my students, some do stand out as excellent exercises.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

I did question the order of some of the chapters. For example, why does the chapter on flash fiction (a sub-genre of fiction) come before the general fiction chapter? And why does flash fiction have a chapter of its own, when there is barely any content? (The chapter is all of two and a half pages long.)

Interface rating: 3

The font in the pdf version that I read is not at all reader friendly and is hard on the eyes, in my opinion. I also found the screenshots of Tweets that lead off most chapters to be distracting and confusing, and the text offers no explanation or discussion of these, which adds to the impression that the book is a superficial hodgepodge, dropping in content without engaging with it.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

While Priebe’s portion of the text is largely free of errors, the student texts that she includes do sometimes contain grammatical errors. While I understand the urge to present student writing as it is written, in a textbook I would expect writing that has been proofread.

This is a book that is at least aware of diversity/and inclusivity. In the opening chapter, Priebe lists the steps she has taken: “Most of the he/she pronouns have been flipped for they/them pronouns,” “‘White-sounding’ names have been replaced by more diverse ones,” “‘Husband’ or ‘wife’ have been replaced by ‘partner,’” and “The majority of examples in this book, by students or otherwise, are not written by white, heterosexual, cisgender men.” While I commend Priebe for her efforts, some of these moves strike me as cosmetic fixes, and the example published and student-written texts do not obviously reflect diverse perspectives (that is, they don’t explicitly tackle issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.). I would imagine that as Priebe continues to gather more information for future editions of this book, the diversity of voices represented will increase.

While I would not use this book in my college courses in its present form, I do think that is has a lot of potential and that future iterations of the book are likely to have enhanced content. As Priebe collects more student writing samples and as students fill in the numerous empty “Questions/Activities” sections that occur at the end of many chapters, this book may very well grow into a rich resource for creative writing instructors. I am planning to revisit this book in future editions to see what new material it has to offer.

Reviewed by Megan Green, Assistant Teaching Professor, Bowling Green State University on 4/25/22

This book offers a useful, concise guide for beginning creative writers. While many of the topics could be expanded upon, it fulfills its promise to offer only condensed snapshots of each subject. It would make a helpful addition to readings... read more

This book offers a useful, concise guide for beginning creative writers. While many of the topics could be expanded upon, it fulfills its promise to offer only condensed snapshots of each subject. It would make a helpful addition to readings chosen by a professor and to selective texts about elements that may require more insightful approaches and in-depth discussions. Chapters that may require additional readings for most introductory classes include the chapters about flash fiction and drama.

The content offers accurate, up-to-date information about creative writing.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The chapter topics are highly relevant and up-to-date. I particularly enjoyed that the author chose to incorporate a chapter on multimodal works, which is something I have found numerous authors either glance over or fail to explore. Likewise, the choice to conclude with a section about how to get published offers relevant and significant points that students should be made aware of at an early stage.

Priebe implements small doses of humor throughout the book that are engaging (I do wish there were more, though!) and utilizes Plain Language to make the reading accessible.

Each chapter is structured identically, beginning with readings about the chapter's topics and ending with exercises.

Each chapter is short and could, in itself, be an easy reading assignment. However, chapters have smaller reading sections that can be assigned. Instructors should be aware that many exercises are written as thoughts to instructors rather than students and, thus, may require editing.

Each chapter offers concise readings over topics followed by exercises. Multiple exercises are listed so teachers can find one or two they would like to employ, and many are creative and effective at reiterating learning objectives.

The book is offered in multiple formats, including PDF, Word, and Google Doc. In the PDF version I perused, there were no interface issues.

There are a very few small mechanical and/or grammatical mistakes.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The author makes it a point to offer a variety of works in this textbook rather than canonical works that are oftentimes the labor of White male authors. Non-binary language also makes the text more inclusive.

The strongest element of this work is its suggested exercises, many of which may be used as in-class activities to further explore topics.

Reviewed by Clifford Buttram, Assistant Professor of Management, University of Saint Francis on 3/22/22

The discussion of key writing areas is organized in a smoothly flowing manner. From Poetry to Experimental and Children's Literature, the content was well organized and indexed efficiently for understanding and analysis. The book is neither too... read more

The discussion of key writing areas is organized in a smoothly flowing manner. From Poetry to Experimental and Children's Literature, the content was well organized and indexed efficiently for understanding and analysis. The book is neither too long or too short (page length) to still be quite effective.

While I'm not a Creative Writing expert, I found the book quite accurate regarding the elements of idea formation and flow from an author or writer's perspective. I've written three historical fiction books and am currently working on a ten novella set in the same category. In choosing to review this book, I found it's accuracy in how an author thinks, organizes, and creates scenarios to be very helpful. The many quotes and references helped me greatly in forming new ideas and writing strategies, even in one chapter or sub chapter of my current book. I found no bias in any chapters, however, the informative proved was both relevant and useful.

I feel this book is not only relevant, but highly useful as a handbook companion piece. Although the title refers to a textbook, I found its organization to be formatted in a more usable sense as a handbook. A reader could focus on one chapter, a few chapters, or the entire book as a strong and handy reference. Although I read the entire book, a particular focus for me were the Fiction, Drama, and Flash Fiction chapters. Each provided much needed guidance and advice for idea creation and tips to improve elemental writing.

The chapter organization was clear throughout the book. Each chapter utilized an introduction of the key topic, self-questions, reading strategies, and exercises. I also enjoyed the dispersed quotes throughout the chapters that helped to support the key points within the chapter.

As noted above, the consistency of each chapter (organization) helped ensure a stronger understanding and immersion into the specific area of writing by chapter. The author cleverly injects quotes, references, and definitions to combine an effort to improve the reader's ability to apply these concepts. Additionally, this allows for a more even flow of information, even in chapters that may not be in the reader's interest.

Each chapter is distinct, however, the coordination and organization of the entire book creates a crescendo effect for the reader. Although each chapter is specific, it can be both compartmentalized and utilized as a complete handbook. This modularity further enables a reader to use the book as a specific reference or a complete handbook/guide.

The book was well organized and logical. The reading was made easier by the flow of information and the combination of data, quotes, and references used throughout the book.

I did not note any interface issues.

I did not note any grammatical errors.

The text is neither culturally insensitive or offensive. I noted that the character/third person student examples were mostly benign which helped to decipher the author's intent. In Chapter 2, a section noted as 'Your Voice' spoke to holes in diversity when writing. I found this helpful for students to understand that not all areas of writing interest are not interesting to everyone. However, one should write to increase the value to the audience and the writer. I found this to be excellent advice and guidance.

I found the book to be an excellent resource for a creative writer. The final chapter discussed Children's Literature and how the previous chapters were applicable to this specific genre. The final chapter (Assignment and Project Ideas) was quite useful for a writer experiencing a block or one simply working a new idea. One recommendation would be to title the book as a Handbook or Reference Guide as the Table of Contents and structure is formatted to provide specific and detailed information on specific creative writing elements. At 168 pages, it has the length for a small textbook, but a better fit as a Handbook for creative writers of all genres. There are many ideas, strategies, and helpful tips throughout the book to help most writers think and write more clearly and effectively.

Reviewed by Justine Jackson Stone, Special Purpose Faculty, Radford University on 3/8/22

The book’s overall intention is to present condensed chapters on the various genres of creative writing, and while condensed, the content is too terse. Chapters one through eight are generalized approaches that provide basic information with some... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

The book’s overall intention is to present condensed chapters on the various genres of creative writing, and while condensed, the content is too terse. Chapters one through eight are generalized approaches that provide basic information with some examples few and far between. The chapter on flash fiction is brief, only lasting from pages 53-57. The textbook also appears to be incomplete, missing student writing examples in addition to other literary recommendations. In chapter nine, the large overview of different genres such as horror, young adult, etc. provides some recommended writers for students, but this is not consistent throughout the textbook. In order for students to improve their creative writing skills, they need to read. A recommended reading list would make this textbook more effective. The index is well-done and easy to read. The glossary could benefit from additional terms added, but it’s a good start for students to grasp the terminology.

The content is accurate. For a college-level course, however, some of the content is quite juvenile. For example, a writing prompt on page 100 asks the writer to “Tell the story of a dragon who owns a jelly bean factory in an experimental way.” This prompt seems far more appropriate for elementary and middle school students. If the author suggested this prompt as an activity for how to write a children’s book, I could understand its inclusion.

The content of the book is expansive but basic. Overall, the textbook will remain relevant, though a teacher using this book would need to find supplemental material to increase student understanding of the different categories of creative writing. In addition, chapter nine briefly discusses publication opportunities and includes instructions on how to publish directly through Amazon. I found this to be an odd inclusion and question if it is necessary.

Clarity rating: 3

The author uses a conversational and informal tone throughout, which students tend to appreciate. Terms are well-defined for a basic understanding, though more context or examples would deepen student learning. The author tends to share more of her own personal experiences with writing rather than those of her students, which I think misses the mark for her intended audience. In addition, her humor ranges from childish to lewd, which I found at times to be off-putting.

Consistency rating: 4

Terminology is included in each chapter, though due to the condescending nature of the textbook, instructors may consider using supplemental material. In chapter two, the author covers a few fundamentals of creative writing such as point of view, character, setting, etc. For an introduction to creative writing class, it may be necessary to expand these definitions as some students may not have prior knowledge of understanding of these terms. The framework is fairly solid though lacking in student examples. I do appreciate the ample inclusion of creative writing prompts as students tend to find these useful and fun.

Modularity rating: 3

The author effectively uses subheadings to organize information. Information was well-displayed, avoiding larger blocks of text. Each chapter was clearly laid out, and the index was easy to follow. The text is very self-referential to the author. In example 2 of chapter zero, one of the activities states the following: “When we write, we’re using the alphabet. Duh. Yet, how many times have we used these letters to organize or brainstorm? Try using the alphabet to brainstorm different things characters could say in different pieces of fiction and drama and nonfiction.” The author uses herself in this example, including statements such things as, ‘J = “Jeezus Marth and Mary… will you please hurry up?’ (p. 16). I think the exercise would have been more effective if a character bio was given and then examples were provided rather than assuming the reader knows anything about the author. In addition, phrases like ‘Duh’ and other slang can be confusing for students who do not speak English as a first language.

I do not think the chapters are effectively organized. The fiction chapter should come before the flash fiction chapter, and I would personally place nonfiction after fiction instead of drama coming next. In chapter two of the review of the elements, I would personally discuss character first before point of view. I also ponder if it would be better to know these terms first before doing creative exercises to have a basic foundation before students start writing.

Interface rating: 1

The inclusion of Twitter screen captures at the beginning of each chapter is grossly unnecessary. They do not add anything to the chapter context and do not fit well into the design. Without a caption to explain these pictures' inclusion, I do think students could find them confusing. As far as I can tell, there’s no text over the image or note that the images are decorative. The charts included in chapter zero may be useful to some, but I did not find them overly beneficial. Finally, I found the textbook fonts to be hard on the eyes while reading.

The text was mostly free of grammatical errors. The author sometimes uses internet text speech or ALL CAPS, which I find to be inappropriate for a college textbook. In one of the dialogue examples, the author writes, “’Oh.My.God. For real?’” (p. 16). In another example, the author writes, “Writer’s block can happen to ANYONE” (p. 22). There are other ways to create emphasis, and if we want students to be published, they should know how to emphasize their work without gimmicks.

The book does contain adult language which may not be appropriate for all readers. As far as inclusion goes, the author has made a point to be inclusive, stating on page 12: “'White-sounding’ names have been replaced by more diverse ones … ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ have been replaced by ‘partner’ … and ‘the majority of examples in this book, by students or otherwise, are not written by white, heterosexual, cisgender men.’” In addition, the author discusses “holes in diversity” in chapter two, which is an incredibly important topic to address.

Write or Left: an OER textbook for creative writing classes is the kitchen sink of creative writing books, and unfortunately, is too broad in scope to be effective. While the author clearly states this is an introductory textbook for creative writing classes “with condensed chapters,” the notion that a student should learn poetry, flash fiction, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and experimental writing in a single semester is haphazard. Rather than developing a solid foundation of each type of creative writing, students and teachers alike are expected to blitz through each chapter, complete some creative writing prompts, and miraculously be competent. Combine this with the notion that students shouldn’t be assigned grades for their creative writing (p. 13), and it’s no wonder academia often sneers at creative writing as a field of study. While I do applaud the author’s efforts to make this textbook more diverse and inclusive in its examples, I found the overall book greatly lacking in content to be effective in the classroom.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Intro to Creative Writing
• Chapter 2: Review of Elements
• Chapter 3: Poetry 
• Chapter 4: Flash Fiction
• Chapter 5: Fiction 
• Chapter 6: Drama 
• Chapter 7: Nonfiction   
• Chapter 8: Experimental Literature
• Chapter 9: Final Chapter
• Chapter 10: Assignment and Project Ideas

Ancillary Material

About the book.

In this book, we'll go over some of the general principles of writing practices as well as advice and tips on how to write creatively, but mainly, you’ll be introduced to as many genres and categories as possible. We won’t get bogged down in doing the writing process “perfectly” or creating “perfect literature.” The goal is to learn about as many genres as possible, practice writing in those genres, and get feedback.

About the Contributors

Sybil Priebe lives in the upper Midwest with her partner-in-crime and crabby old cat. She teaches various composition courses at the North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, ND. She likes books, bicycles, and blasphemy.

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Common terms and phrases, about the author  (2020).

Lajos Egri (1888-1967) was born in Hungary and founded the Egri School of Writing in New York City in the 1930s. He was the author of The Art of Dramatic Writing, which is widely regarded as one of the best works on the subject of playwriting. He is also the author of The Art of Creative Writing, which expounds on the concepts in his first book. Born in Hungary, Egri emigrated to the United states with his wife. In America he became a journalist and wrote, directed and produced plays and screenplays. The Art of Dramatic Writing has been translated into seventeen languages and has been used as a textbook by many universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and New York University.

Bibliographic information

Fundamentals of Creative Writing

Cecilia manguerra brainard.

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

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Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

author and editor

Fundamentals of Creative Writing

Anvil, 2009, soft­cov­er, 98 pages ISBN 9789712722318

PALH has a few rare copies, $65 each, Free US ship­ping, email [email protected]

Powerful Resource

This slen­der book goes straight to the point and gives the basics in cre­ative writ­ing.  Each sec­tion focus­es on a con­cept, such as dia­logue, fol­lowed by a sam­ple sto­ry or two and sug­gest­ed activ­i­ties. It con­tin­ues to be a handy tool for teach­ers and stu­dents of cre­ative writers.

“ Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing is a pow­er­ful resource to encour­age stu­dents and/or aspir­ing writ­ers to strive for excel­lence in their writ­ing skills. Not only does it guide read­ers through the basics of set­ting, scene, char­ac­ter, con­flict, dia­logue, plot, point of view, voice, style, theme and tone but it also pro­vides use­ful activ­i­ties that chal­lenges the writer to get their cre­ative juices flow­ing. I would high­ly rec­om­mend this excel­lent book to any­one who wants to improve and enhance their cre­ative writ­ing skills.” (Jacque­line Gul­las-Weck­man, Vice-Pres­i­dent, Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs Uni­ver­si­ty of the Visayas) “ Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard has writ­ten a won­der­ful resource for stu­dents of cre­ative writ­ing. This book, Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing , pro­vides stu­dents with prac­ti­cal steps that tru­ly work. The strate­gies pre­sent­ed in this book are a prod­uct of the authors 15 years of teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing. She is also a pro­lif­ic writer who has writ­ten numer­ous short sto­ries, nov­els, and non-fic­tion books.” (Edmun­do F. Lit­ton, Ed.D., Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion, Loy­ola Mary­mount University) “ This book ( Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing ) describes the “essen­tials” of cre­ative writ­ing, not only from a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, but also by unveil­ing how cre­ative writ­ing leads us to imag­i­na­tive­ly engage and act upon the world. Brainard’s struc­ture reminds us that, above and beyond tech­nique, the most impor­tant thing a writer needs is a gen­uine love of sto­ry and a respect for the pow­er of words.” (Rocío G. Davis, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Uni­ver­si­ty of Navar­ra, Spain) “ Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing is a mar­velous text­book that com­bines use­ful tech­ni­cal advice on craft with beau­ti­ful prac­ti­cal exam­ples in her own sto­ries. Brainard’s treat­ments of writer­ly voice and left brain/right brain the­o­ry as it con­nects to writ­ing are among the best avail­able in today’s writ­ing text­books. Her sto­ry exam­ples cov­er a vari­ety of sto­ry types, tech­niques, points of view, and his­tor­i­cal as well as con­tem­po­rary top­ics and themes. This book will indeed help writ­ing stu­dents write strong sto­ries and improve their craft. Bra­va, Ms. Brainard.” (Vince Gotera, Edi­tor of North Amer­i­can Review, Pro­fes­sor of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty North­ern Iowa)

Table of Contents

• Intro­duc­tion (by Edmun­do F. Lit­ton, Ed.D.)
• Set­ting and Scene
• Char­ac­ter
• Point of View
• Style, Theme, Tone
• Left Brain Right Brain The­o­ry & Two Rules

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DESCRIPTION AND PRAISE:

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE WRITING  is a marvelous textbook that combines useful technical advice on craft with beautiful practical examples in her own stories. Brainard's treatments of writerly voice and left brain/right brain theory as it connects to writing are among the best available in today's writing textbooks. Her story examples cover a variety of story types, techniques, points of view, and historical as well as contemporary topics and themes. This book will indeed help writing students write strong stories and improve their craft. Brava, Ms. Brainard."  ~ Vince Gotera , Editor of North American Review, Professor of Creative Writing, University Northern Iowa

>>>

Fundamentals of Creative Writing is a powerful resource to encourage students and/or aspiring writers to strive for excellence in their writing skills. Not only does it guide readers through the basics of setting, scene, character, conflict, dialogue, plot, point of view, voice, style, theme and tone but it also provides useful activities that challenges the writer to get their creative juices flowing. I would highly recommend this excellent book to anyone who wants to improve and enhance their creative writing skills. ~ Jacqueline Gullas-Weckman, Vice-President, Academic Affairs, University of the Visayas 

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard has written a wonderful resource for students of creative writing.  This book, Fundamentals of Creative Writing, provides students with practical steps that truly work. The strategies presented in this book are a product of the authors fifteen years of teaching creative writing. She is also a prolific writer who has written numerous short stories, novels, and non-fiction books. ~  Edmundo F. Litton, Ed.D.,  Associate Professor of Education, Loyola Marymount University

This book describes the "essentials" of creative writing, not only from a technical perspective, but also by unveiling how creative writing leads us to imaginatively engage and act upon the world. Brainard's structure reminds us that, above and beyond technique, the most important thing a writer needs is a genuine love of story and a respect for the power of words." ~ Rocío G. Davis, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Navarre, Spain

Product Details

Customer reviews.

Fundamentals

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 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.

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 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 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 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.

CRWR 17014 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: A Gathering of Flowers: The Anthology

In 1925, The New Negro: An Interpretation, a collection of poems, short stories, and essays was published—it ushered a new era, what was then called the New Negro Renaissance. An artistic and literary movement with the objective to subvert what Alain Locke called the “Old Negro,” by providing a corrective and aspirational image of contemporary Negro life, was borne. Around forty years later, Black Arts: An Anthology galvanized the Black Arts Movement, what Larry Neal called the “aesthetic and spiritual sister” of the Black Power Movement. The Best American Short Stories and the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women are two more examples of anthologies, one to cultivate the genre and the other to recover the literature of marginalized women writers.  In this course, we’ll examine anthologies, a word derived from the Greek for “a gathering of flowers.” As we study these “flowers,” we’ll discern the objectives that shape their construction, as well as what was put in and what was left out. In short essays and exercises, we’ll also investigate the social, cultural, and political contexts that influenced these objectives, as well as the resultant literary and cultural implications. For your final, you’ll design your own literary anthology.

Tuesday 9:30am-12:20pm

Students must be a declared Creative Writing major to enroll. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17010 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: What is Character?

Characterization in any literary form seeks to bring a person, a story, and a world or worldview to life; but whether on the page or beyond it, what does it actually mean to be a character and to have character? In this course, we will approach this question not just as a matter of literary craft, but as an inquiry into how we see and construct our own humanity. Characterization, in that sense, involves more than design and imagination; it requires us to examine the various lenses we use to define ourselves collectively and personally as human beings—the lens of truth, of morality, of empathy, of self, etc. This can be a thorny but clarifying endeavor for a writer. Simply put: to create character, you have to interrogate who you are, even when your characters are nothing like you. To that end, we will discuss the fiction, essays, memoir, and poetry we read as exemplars of compelling and beautiful characterization, as well as a (speculative) reflection of who the authors think they are and how they see the world. We will also do reading responses, creative writing exercises, and presentations that will help us consider and apply what each of us means when we use the word character.

CRWR 17013 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Touchstones

Most passionate readers and writers have literary touchstones --those texts we return to again and again for personal or aesthetic influence and inspiration. When we are asked what book we would want with us if we were stranded on a desert isle, our touchstones are the ones that leap immediately to mind. Some texts are fairly ubiquitous touchstones: The Great Gatsby, Harry Potter and the [take your pick], The Bell Jar, Little Women, Letters to a Young Poet, Leaves of Grass. Others are quirkier, more idiosyncratic. What -- if any -- qualities do these touchstones share, within and across genres? What lessons about writing craft can be drawn from them? In this course, we'll read texts that are commonly cited as touchstones, along with fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that students bring to the table -- their own literary touchstones. In that sense, our reading list will be collaborative, and students will be expected to contribute content as well as an analytical presentation on the craft issues raised by their selections. Our assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, short essays and presentations.

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

This is class is restricted to students who have declared a major in Creative Writing. Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17000 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Literary Empathy

In this fundamentals course, students will investigate the complicated relationship between writers, fictional characters, and readers, toward determining what place literary empathy has in our conversation about contemporary literature. James Baldwin once observed that, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” We will use weekly reading assignments including fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction to ask questions about what Virginia Woolf described as the “elimination of the ego” and “perpetual union with another mind” that take place when we read. Students will write critical responses, creative exercises, and a final paper on a topic to be approved by the instructor. Readings include Baldwin, Bishop, Beard, Carson, Walcott, and Woolf.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30-4:20pm

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Contacts | Major in Creative Writing | Program Requirements | Optional BA Thesis | Program Honors | Summary of Requirements | Advising | Courses Outside the Department Taken for Program Credit | Double Majors in English Language and Literature and Creative Writing | Grading | Sample Plan of Study for the Major | Minor in English and Creative Writing | Summary of Requirements for the Minor Program in English and Creative Writing | Minor to Major | Sample Plan of Study for the Minor | Enrolling in Creative Writing Courses | Faculty and Visiting Lecturers | Creative Writing Courses

Department Website: http://creativewriting.uchicago.edu

The Program in Creative Writing takes a comprehensive approach to the study of contemporary literature, criticism, and theory from a writer’s perspective. In our courses, students work with established poets and prose writers to explore the fundamental practices of creative writing. The program is committed to interdisciplinary inquiry, academic rigor, and study of the elements of creative writing that underlie all genres.

The Program in Creative Writing offers workshops and seminars in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as a number of translation workshops. The major seminars—including technical seminars and fundamentals in creative writing—are designed to build a critical and aesthetic foundation for students working in each genre. Students can pursue their creative writing interests within the formal requirements of the major or through a minor in English and Creative Writing. (The minor is open to undergraduate students not majoring in English language and literature.) Students who do not wish to pursue a formal degree plan in creative writing will have access to courses that satisfy the general education requirement in the arts and open-entry "beginning" workshops. Our workshops and technical seminars are cross-listed with graduate numbers and are open to students in the graduate and professional schools.

Major in Creative Writing

Students who graduate with a bachelor of arts in creative writing will be skilled writers in a major literary genre and have a theoretically informed understanding of the aesthetic, historical, social, and political context of a range of contemporary writing. Students in the major will focus their studies in fiction, poetry, or nonfiction.

The organization of the major recognizes the value of workshop courses but incorporates that model into a comprehensive educational architecture. The creative writing major furthers students’ knowledge of historical and contemporary literary practice, introduces them to aesthetic and literary theory, sharpens their critical attention, and fosters their creative enthusiasm. Students are prepared to succeed in a range of fields within the public and private sectors through a multi-faceted, forward-thinking pedagogy centered on peer critique and craft.

Program Requirements

The Program in Creative Writing requires a total of 12 courses (1200 units) as described below. Students planning to complete the major must meet with the director of undergraduate studies or the student affairs administrator to file a major worksheet by the end of Autumn Quarter of their third year.

Students contemplating a major or minor in creative writing may choose to take one or two creative writing courses toward the general education requirement in the arts. These courses will not count toward major requirements, but they offer an opportunity for students to consider the program while satisfying a general education requirement. See  Enrolling in Creative Writing Courses  for additional details.

Primary Genre

Students are asked to declare a primary genre track either when they first declare the major or immediately following completion of the Fundamentals course. The primary genre track options include Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Students should complete a beginning workshop, two technical seminars, an advanced workshop, and one literary genre course. Students may also complete an optional thesis workshop within the primary genre. Students may change the genre track at any time by notifying the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

One (1) Fundamentals in Creative Writing Course  CRWR 17000 to CRWR 17999

Fundamentals in Creative Writing is a cross-genre, one-quarter seminar taken by all students in the major and minor. Every section of the course focuses on a current debate relevant to all forms of literary practice, such as mimesis, empathy, and testimony. This course introduces students to a group of core texts from each major literary genre. Fundamentals courses are restricted to students who have declared the major or minor, as they aim to develop cohort solidarity, promote a culture of articulate exchange, and induct students into a reflection on practice that will serve their artistic and professional development. Majors should take Fundamentals in Creative Writing and Beginning Workshop before enrolling in an Advanced Workshop. 

One (1) Beginning Workshop Fiction: CRWR 10206; Poetry: CRWR 10306; Nonfiction: CRWR 10406

Students in the major must complete one beginning workshop in the student’s primary genre. Successful completion of a beginning workshop is a prerequisite for enrollment in an advanced workshop in the same genre. Students may enroll in more than one beginning workshop. However, students who complete a beginning workshop in one genre and then complete a beginning workshop in another genre may count only the beginning workshop in their primary genre towards the major. Beginning workshops are intended for students who may or may not have previous writing experience, but are interested in gaining experience in a particular genre. These workshops focus on the fundamentals of craft and feature workshops of student writing.

Two (2) Technical Seminars Fiction: CRWR 20200 to CRWR 20299; Poetry: CRWR 20301 to CRWR 20399; Nonfiction: CRWR 20400 to CRWR 20499; Hybrid: CRWR 20701 to CRWR 20799

Students in the major must take two technical seminars in their primary genre (fiction, poetry, or nonfiction); during some quarters, the program may also offer hybrid technical seminars. Majors may petition to substitute one technical seminar in their primary genre with a technical seminar in a different genre, or with a hybrid technical seminar. Students should reach out to the director of undergraduate studies or student affairs administrator with questions on this petition process or hybrid technical seminars. 

The aim of technical seminars is to expand students’ technical resources through analysis of contemporary literature and practice-based training in elements of craft. Students submit papers that address technical questions, chiefly with reference to contemporary texts. For example, poetry students may write on “the line,” where fiction students write on “point of view.” Technical seminars may also count as electives in the minor.

Two (2) Advanced Workshops Fiction: CRWR 22100 to CRWR 22299; Poetry: CRWR 23100 to CRWR 23299; Nonfiction: CRWR 24001 to CRWR 24199; Hybrid: CRWR 27300 to 27499

Students in the major must complete two advanced workshops, at least one of which must be in the student’s primary genre. Majors may petition to substitute one advanced workshop in their primary genre with a hybrid advanced workshop when applicable. Students should reach out to the director of undergraduate studies or student affairs administrator with questions on this petition process or hybrid advanced workshops.

The advanced workshop is a critical pedagogical instrument of creative writing as an academic discipline. Workshop practice relies on a mutual exchange and understanding dedicated to improving students’ writing, rather than unconditional approval. Critique is the core value and activity of the workshop, and students will practice it under the guidance of the workshop instructor. Although advanced workshops begin with attention to exemplary texts, they typically focus on original student work. 

Four (4) Literature Requirements

Creative writing majors are required to take four literature courses offered by other departments. These courses can be focused on the literature of any language, but one must focus on the student’s primary genre; one must center on literary theory; one must involve the study of literature written before the twentieth century; and the final one can be any general literature course. 

The literary genre course should serve as an introduction to key texts and debates in the history of the student’s chosen genre. This requirement can be met by an English language and literature course or a comparable course in another department. Courses such as  ENGL 10403  Genre Fundamentals: Poetry: Rhythm and Myth,  CMST 27207 Film Criticism , or  ENGL 11004  History of the Novel may be eligible. 

The director of undergraduate studies will offer guidance and approve all qualifying courses. Specific courses that satisfy the distribution element of this requirement will be listed at  creativewriting.uchicago.edu . A literature course can potentially satisfy more than one requirement, e.g., both theory and literary genre, but a student can only use the course to fulfill one of the requirements.

Two (2) Background Electives

Students should take two courses outside of the Program in Creative Writing to support their creative projects or theses. Depending on a student's interests, elective courses can be offered by programs ranging from cinema and media studies to biological sciences. One creative writing translation workshop may also be approved as a background elective. Students may not use the same course to fulfill a background elective and a literature requirement. 

Optional BA Thesis

Students have the option to complete a BA thesis/project in their fourth year and should declare intent by the end of Winter Quarter of their third year. Majors who complete a BA thesis/project and meet GPA requirements are eligible for consideration for honors. In Spring Quarter of the third year, students who opt into the BA thesis/project will be assigned a writing and research advisor who will mentor student reading and research throughout the completion of the creative writing thesis. Students, in conversation with the writing and research advisors, will complete a preliminary project proposal during the Spring Quarter of their third year. The preliminary proposal will then be submitted to the student affairs administrator.

Over the Summer Quarter students will craft a reading journal centered on a field list of readings; chosen texts will be based upon work, conversations, etc., students will have begun with their writing and research advisors. In Autumn Quarter, students and writing and research advisors will work together to adapt the reading journal into an annotated bibliography, a focus reading list, and a précis/project plan (summary of student writing plan and goals for the BA thesis/project).

In Winter Quarter, students will continue meeting with their writing and research advisor and must also enroll in the appropriate thesis/major projects workshop in their primary genre ( CRWR 29200 Thesis/Major Projects: Fiction ,  CRWR 29300 Thesis/Major Projects: Poetry , CRWR 29400 Thesis/Major Projects: Nonfiction , or CRWR 29500 Thesis/Major Projects: Fiction/Nonfiction ). The thesis/major projects workshop is only offered during Winter Quarter. Students must complete the thesis/major projects workshop to submit a thesis project for consideration for honors.

The instructor for the thesis/major projects workshop will also serve as the faculty advisor for the BA thesis.

Students writing a BA thesis/project will work closely with their faculty advisor and peers in their thesis/major projects workshop and will receive course credit as well as a final grade for the course. In consultation with their faculty advisor and writing and research advisor, students will revise and submit a near-final draft of the BA thesis by the end of the second week of Spring Quarter. Students will submit the final version of their BA thesis to their writing and research advisor, faculty advisor, student affairs administrator, and the director of undergraduate studies by the beginning of the fifth week of Spring Quarter. 

Students graduating in other quarters must consult with the director of undergraduate studies about an appropriate timeline before the end of Autumn Quarter of their third year. 

Program Honors

The faculty in the program will award program honors based on their assessment of BA theses and the assessment of writing and research advisors. Students must complete all assignments set by writing and research advisors to be considered for honors. To be eligible, students must have a major GPA of at least 3.6 and overall GPA of 3.25. Honors will be awarded only to exceptional projects from a given cohort.

Summary of Requirements

Students considering the major should email the director of undergraduate studies or student affairs administrator as early as possible to discuss program requirements and individual plans of study. To declare the major and receive priority in application-based CRWR courses, students must confer with the director of undergraduate studies or student affairs administrator to file a major worksheet with the Program in Creative Writing. Declaration of the major will then be formalized through  my.uchicago.edu . To join the major, students must officially declare via a worksheet on file with the program before the end of Autumn Quarter of the third year of study. Students will need to regularly provide documentation of any approvals for the major to their academic advisors.

Courses Outside the Department Taken for Program Credit

Students double majoring in creative writing and another major (with the exception of English language and literature) can count a maximum of three courses towards both majors (pending approval from both departments). Ordinarily, two of these courses will be background electives. Substitutions for a further course will be subject to approval, but students may not substitute non-literature courses to meet a literature requirement. 

Double Majors in English Language and Literature and Creative Writing

Students who pursue a double major in creative writing and English language and literature, may count up to four courses towards both majors. These four courses typically include the four literature requirements, but in some cases one of the slots might be filled by a creative writing course (with director of undergraduate studies approval). However, the two required background electives should be taken outside of the Department of English Language and Literature. 

English language and literature majors may count up to four creative writing courses towards the major in English as electives without a petition. However, when students are pursuing a double major in English language and literature and creative writing, they must observe the shared four-course maximum. Double majors must then count any eligible creative writing courses beyond the four-course cap towards their English language and literature major.

Students in the program must receive quality grades (not pass/fail) in all courses counting toward the major or minor. Non-majors and non-minors may take creative writing courses for pass/fail grading with consent of the instructor. Students must request this consent by the end of week three of the quarter; otherwise pass/fail must be approved by the program director. 

Sample Plan of Study for the Major

Minor in english and creative writing.

Students who are not English language and literature or creative writing majors may complete a minor in English and Creative Writing. The minor requires six courses (600 units). At least three of the required courses must be creative writing courses, with at least one being a beginning workshop, at least one being an advanced workshop, and at least one being a fundamentals course. Three of the remaining required courses may be taken in either the Department of English Language and Literature or the Program in Creative Writing; these courses may include technical seminars or arts general education courses. General education courses cannot be used for the minor if they are already counted toward the general education requirement in the arts. In some cases, literature courses outside of English language and literature and creative writing may count towards the minor, subject to the director of undergraduate studies’ approval. 

Students who elect the minor program in English and Creative Writing must meet with the student affairs administrator for creative writing before the end of Spring Quarter of their third year to declare their intention to complete the minor. Students choose courses in consultation with the administrator. The administrator's approval for the minor program should be submitted to a student's academic advisor on the Consent to Complete a Minor Program form, available from the College adviser or online, by the deadline above.

Students completing the minor will be given enrollment preference for advanced workshops and some priority for technical seminars. They must follow all relevant admission procedures described at the  Creative Writing  website. For details, see  Enrolling in Creative Writing Courses .

Courses in the minor (1) may not be double counted with the student's major(s) or with other minors and (2) may not be counted toward general education requirements. Courses in the minor must be taken for quality grades (not pass/fail) and bear University of Chicago course numbers.

Summary of Requirements for the Minor Program in English and Creative Writing

Minor to major.

Student circumstances change, and a transfer between the major and minor programs may be desirable to students who begin a course of study in either program. Workshop courses and a fundamentals course may count toward the minor. Students should consult with their academic advisor if considering such a transfer and must update their planned program of study with the student affairs administrator or director of undergraduate studies in creative writing.

Sample Plan of Study for the Minor

Enrolling in creative writing courses.

General education courses and beginning workshops are open to all students via the standard pre-registration process. Our consent-based courses prioritize students in the major, the minor, and the Creative Writing Option of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH). Note: Students who have not yet met with the director of undergraduate studies or student affairs administrator to begin a worksheet are not considered formally declared and therefore are not guaranteed priority in course enrollment.

For more information on creative writing courses and opportunities, visit the  Creative Writing  website.

Creative Writing Courses for the General Education Requirement in the Arts

These multi-genre courses are introductions to topics in creative writing and satisfy the general education requirement in the arts in the College. General education courses are generally taught under two headings—"Reading as a Writer" and "Intro to Genres"—and will feature class critiques of students’ creative work. They are open to all undergraduate students during pre-registration. These courses do not count towards the major in creative writing, but students may use these courses to satisfy the creative writing minor’s elective requirements if they are not already counted toward the students' general education requirement in the arts.

Fundamentals in Creative Writing Courses

These courses focus on a current debate relevant to all forms of literary practice and aim to develop cohort solidarity, promote a culture of exchange, and induct students into a reflection on practice that will service their artistic and professional development. They are open to declared majors only, except in circumstances approved by the director of undergraduate studies. Majors should take a Fundamentals course and a Beginning Workshop before enrolling in Advanced Workshops. 

Beginning Workshops

These courses are intended for students who may or may not have writing experience, but are interested in gaining experience in a particular genre. Courses will focus on the fundamentals of craft and feature workshops of student writing. Open to all undergraduate students during pre-registration.

Technical Seminars

The aim of the technical seminars is to expand students’ technical resources through analysis of contemporary literature and practice-based training in elements of craft. 

Advanced Workshops

These workshops are intended for students with experience in a particular genre. Advanced workshops will focus on class critiques of student writing with accompanying readings from exemplary literary texts. Priority is given to students in the major, minor, or the MAPH Creative Writing Option . 

Optional Thesis/Major Projects

The thesis/major projects course is optional for minors. While it is not required to complete the minor, students are welcome to opt in to the course. This course will revolve around workshops of student writing and concentrate on the larger form students have chosen for their creative thesis. Priority is given to students in the major, minor, or the MAPH Creative Writing Option .

Faculty and Visiting Lecturers

For a current listing of Creative Writing faculty, visit the  Creative Writing  website.

Creative Writing Courses

CRWR 10206. Beginning Fiction Workshop. 100 Units.

Beginning Workshops are intended for students who may or may not have previous writing experience, but are interested in gaining experience in a particular genre. These workshops focus on the fundamentals of craft and feature workshops of student writing. See the course description for this particular workshop section in the notes below.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30206

CRWR 10306. Beginning Poetry Workshop. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30306

CRWR 10406. Beginning Nonfiction Workshop. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30406

CRWR 10606. Beginning Translation Workshop. 100 Units.

Beginning Workshops are intended for students who may or may not have previous experience, but are interested in gaining experience in translation. See the course description for this particular workshop section in the notes below.

Instructor(s): Jason Grunebaum     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Note(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 30606, SALC 10606, SALC 30706, CRWR 30606, GRMN 10606

CRWR 12124. Reading as a Writer: Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. 100 Units.

In this core course, students will investigate the complicated relationship between truth and art by reading and writing works "based on a true story." In poetry and prose, we will explore the lines between fiction and nonfiction, beauty and horror, as well as utterance and silence. Writers will develop critical responses to course readings, then explore those perspectives through creative work of their own. Readings include work by Jeffery Renard Allen, Ari Banias, Scott Blackwood, Brenda Hillman, Harold Pinter, and Claudia Rankine.

Instructor(s): Garin Cycholl     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

CRWR 12133. Intro to Genres: Writing and Social Change. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore the embattled, yet perpetually alive relationship between writing and activism by reading canonical and emergent works of fiction, narrative prose, and poetry that not only represent social ills, but seek to address and even spur social justice in some way. Students will be encouraged to choose an issue that they feel passionate about on which to research and respond for the entire quarter-and will be asked to produce short works in a range of genres in relation to that issue. Works studied will include the poetry of Percy Shelley, the short stories of John Keene, the essays of Anne Boyer, the graphic novels of Nick Drnaso, and the document-based poetry of Layli Long Soldier.

Instructor(s): Jennifer Scappettone     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.UChicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Satisfies the College Arts Core requirement.

CRWR 12138. Intro to Genres: Evil Incarnate. 100 Units.

Some of the most compelling pieces of writing across all genre deal with, and often feature, deeply problematic central adversarial characters without which the poem, story, or essay would have no forward motion, and no cause to exist. From Capote's In Cold Blood to Milton's Paradise Lost, from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita to Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and Sabato's The Tunnel, literature returns again and again to the question of evil and the concept of opposition. This course is designed to explore this question alongside authors who have devoted their lives to understanding the role of evil in literature, its necessity, its appeal, its frivolity and its betrayal. The course will be divided into three section, each section devoted to a specific genre during which two to three texts will be explored, discussed and analyzed in class, and at the end of which one brief analysis paper will be due. One creative piece, in any of the three major genres, exploring the said topic will be due at the end of the course.

Instructor(s): Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Note(s): Satisfies the College Arts/Music/Drama Core requirement.

CRWR 12141. Intro to Genres: Drawing on Graphic Novels. 100 Units.

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 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.

Instructor(s): Dan Raeburn     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 22141

CRWR 12143. Reading as a Writer: Embodied Language. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Margaret Ross      Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

CRWR 12145. Reading as a Writer: Re-Vision. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Margaret Ross      Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12146. London vs. Nature: Writing Utopia and Dystopia in the Urban Landscape [Creative Writing Arts Core: R. 100 Units.

In this Arts Core course, students will be introduced to a range of the utopian and dystopian fantasies that writers have produced in response to the metropolis of London as the imperial epicenter of manufactured ecologies, from the late nineteenth century through the present day. They will study early responses to modernism and modernization in the city by figures like William Blake, Frederick Engels, Henry James, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf before moving on to contemporary writers such as R. Murray Schafer, who apprehends the city through "earwitnessing" of noise pollution, and Bhanu Kapil, who recalls the race riots of the 1970s against the backdrop of the Nestle factory on the site of King Henry VIII's hunting grounds. Students will be exposed first-hand to how London is read by writers confronting planetary and political crisis through meetings with living publishers, authors, and art collectives like the Museum of Walking, grappling with the continual metamorphosis of the landscape-and through a sequence of on-site visits and psychogeographical experiments, they will have the opportunity to respond to the city in their own writing across a range of genres. (Arts Core)

Instructor(s): Jennifer Scappettone     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Acceptance to the London Study Abroad Program. Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 14146

CRWR 12147. Intro to Genres: The River's Running Course. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Soileau     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CHST 12147, ENST 22147

CRWR 12148. Intro to Genres: Speculative Women. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Note(s): Satisfies the College Arts/Music/Drama Core requirement. Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 22148

CRWR 12150. Intro to Genres: Writing for TV: The Writers' Room. 100 Units.

In this course, you'll learn the craft of writing for television by collaboratively developing a pilot script for an original television series set in the South Side of Chicago. Modeled on the "writers' room," we'll research and develop the concept, characters, the outline, and create a plan for the series. In addition to being introduced to the fundamentals of storytelling through lectures, discussions, screenings, and script analysis, you'll also learn to work collaboratively with a team, constructing a daily agenda, brainstorming, researching, pitching, discussing ideas, and composing in screenwriting format. By the end of this hands-on course, you will be armed with a set of techniques and skills that will support your professional development as a writer.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Summer TBD. September Term 2022

CRWR 12151. Intro to Genres: The Gothic Lens. 100 Units.

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. (Arts Core)

Instructor(s): Vu Tran     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

CRWR 12153. Reading as a Writer: The Walker in the City. 100 Units.

Flâneur: from French, "to stroll, loaf, saunter"; probably from Old Norse flana, "to wander aimlessly"; Norwegian flana, "to gad about. The image of the poet as flâneur -- a metropolitan artist in motion -- emerged as an archetype of romantic and modernist literature. We will consider the walking poet in interaction with race, mobility and disability, gender and queerness, class, migration, ecology, and other embodied experiences. Texts will include work by Kathy Ferguson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Walter Benjamin, William Blake, Judith Butler, Sunaura Taylor, June Jordan, Walt Whitman, and others. Students will lead one presentation during the quarter and keep a notebook/sketchbook.

Instructor(s): Anna Torres     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Acceptance to the London Study Abroad Program

CRWR 12154. Reading as a Writer: Brevity. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Margaret Ross     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12156. Fundamentals: A Gathering of Flowers: The Anthology. 100 Units.

In 1925, The New Negro: An Interpretation, a collection of poems, short stories, and essays was published-it ushered a new era, what was then called the New Negro Renaissance. An artistic and literary movement with the objective to subvert what Alain Locke called the "Old Negro," by providing a corrective and aspirational image of contemporary Negro life, was borne. Around forty years later, Black Arts: An Anthology galvanized the Black Arts Movement, what Larry Neal called the "aesthetic and spiritual sister" of the Black Power Movement. The Best American Short Stories and the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women are two more examples of anthologies, one to cultivate the genre and the other to recover the literature of marginalized women writers. In this course, we'll examine anthologies, a word derived from the Greek for "a gathering of flowers." As we study these "flowers," we'll discern the objectives that shape their construction, as well as what was put in and what was left out. In short essays and exercises, we'll also investigate the social, cultural, and political contexts that influenced these objectives, as well as the resultant literary and cultural implications. For your final, you'll design your own literary anthology.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12159. Reading as a Writer: The Bad Girls Club. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12159

CRWR 12160. Reading as a Writer: Exploring the Weird. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Augustus Rose     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list.

CRWR 12163. Reading as a Writer: Obscenities. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Chicu Reddy     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): PARR 33000

CRWR 12164. Reading as a Writer: Good Translation. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Annie Janusch     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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 12165. Intro to Genres: Short Form Screenwriting. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Nick Twemlow     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

CRWR 17003. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Truth. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Dan Raeburn     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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 17007. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: The Grammar of Narrative. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Augustus Rose     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 17012. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Creative Research/The Numinous Particulars. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Soileau     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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 17013. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Touchstones. 100 Units.

Most passionate readers and writers have literary touchstones --those texts we return to again and again for personal or aesthetic influence and inspiration. When we are asked what book we would want with us if we were stranded on a desert isle, our touchstones are the ones that leap immediately to mind. Some texts are fairly ubiquitous touchstones: The Great Gatsby, Harry Potter and the [take your pick], The Bell Jar, Little Women, Letters to a Young Poet, Leaves of Grass. Others are quirkier, more idiosyncratic. What -- if any -- qualities do these touchstones share, within and across genres? What lessons about writing craft can be drawn from them? In this course, we'll read texts that are commonly cited as touchstones, along with fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that students bring to the table -- their own literary touchstones. In that sense, our reading list will be collaborative, and students will be expected to contribute content as well as an analytical presentation on the craft issues raised by their selections. Our assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, short essays and presentations.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Soileau     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Students must be a declared Creative Writing major to enroll during preregistration. Contact instructor to be added to the waitlist. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17014. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: A Gathering of Flowers. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Students must be a declared Creative Writing major to enroll during preregistration. Contact instructor to be added to the waitlist. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17015. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Sincerity (and Irony) 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Ihns     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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 17016. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: The Frame Narrative. 100 Units.

In this course, students will engage in a close examination of the various permutations of the frame narrative device across time and genre. From A Thousand and One Nights, to Hamlet, to the "Call of Cthulhu" and Watchmen, the "story within a story" construction is one of the oldest and most employed literary devices-one which can either elevate or imperil the work wherein it is utilized. Students will respond to the material in both critical and creative manners, culminating in a final analytical and creative piece that employs the craft elements discussed and unpacked in class.

Instructor(s): Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas     Terms Offered: Spring Note(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing

CRWR 17017. Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Haunted Craft, the Art of the Spectral Metaphor. 100 Units.

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.

CRWR 20203. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Research and World-Building. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Augustus Rose     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40203

CRWR 20209. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Scenes & Seeing. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Vu Tran     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40209

CRWR 20217. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Elements of Style. 100 Units.

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 contemplate the influence that elements such as diction, syntax, rhythm, and punctuation have on a writer's style.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40217

CRWR 20221. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Detail. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Hoffman     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40221

CRWR 20224. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Tempo. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Lytal     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40224

CRWR 20232. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Influence. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Sharon Pomerantz     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40232

CRWR 20233. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Who Sees and Who Speaks? 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Sophia Veltfort     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40233

CRWR 20236. Technical Seminar in Fiction: Alternative Points of View. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Meghan Lamb     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40236

CRWR 20309. Technical Seminar in Poetry: Generative Genres. 100 Units.

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. Why does it feel so good to write a curse? What is an ode and how is it different from an aubade? 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 Aesop, 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 genre of their choice, including a short critical introduction.

Instructor(s): Suzanne Buffam     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40309

CRWR 20312. Technical Seminar in Poetry: Prosody. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Kirsten Ihns     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing, as well as graduate students. During add/drop the course will be instructor consent and open to all students in the College. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist for the option to enroll during add/drop. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40312

CRWR 20404. Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Forms of the Essay. 100 Units.

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

Instructor(s): Kathleen Blackburn     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40404

CRWR 20410. Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Epistolary Form. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Dina Peone     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40410

CRWR 20412. Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: The writer as researcher. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Kathleen Blackburn     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 40412

CRWR 21502. Advanced Translation Workshop. 100 Units.

All writing is revision, and this holds true for the practice of literary translation as well. We will critique each other's longer manuscripts-in-progress of prose, poetry, or drama, and examine various revision techniques-from the line-by-line approach of Lydia Davis, to the "driving-in-the-dark" model of Peter Constantine, and several approaches in between. We will consider questions of different reading audiences while preparing manuscripts for submission for publication, along with the contextualization of the work with a translator's preface or afterword. Our efforts will culminate in not only an advanced-stage manuscript, but also with various strategies in hand to use for future projects. We will also have the opportunity to have conversations via Zoom with some of the translators we'll be reading. Students who wish to take this workshop should have at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language and already be working on a longer translation project.

Instructor(s): Jason Grunebaum     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (include writing sample). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Students who wish to take this workshop should have at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language and already be working on a longer translation project. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 41502

CRWR 21504. Advanced Translation Workshop: Scales of Reading. 100 Units.

Peer review of translations-in-progress can often take the form of line edits: we discuss word choices that call attention to themselves rather than talking through the larger compositional units in which those choices are made. While a fine-grained reading is vital to revision, it can also run the risk of minimizing our critical engagement with translated texts merely on the basis of "awkward" or " stilted" language. This workshop will explore the different scales of reading employed in reviewing drafts: Yes, those instances that make us pause or take us out of the text are worth marking for the translator, but ultimately, they're only useful to the translator if we can synthesize them into a larger, coherent reading of the work as a whole. By treating translations-in-progress as literary works deserving of close readings (rather than merely manuscript pages to be edited), we'll seek to provide our peers with a critical account of our experience as the primary readers of their translations. Specifically, we'll practice grounding our accounts in aspects of craft and structure, form and content, in order to move beyond our subjectivities as readers and our idiolects as writers - and better understand how a translated work's larger concerns are enacted in the language itself. Students with translations-in-progress, as well as students who will be starting new projects, are welcome to participate in this workshop.

Instructor(s): Annie Janusch Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (include writing sample). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Students who wish to take this workshop should have at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language and already be working on a longer translation project. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 41504

CRWR 21505. Advanced Translation Workshop: Prose Style. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Annie Janusch     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 41505

CRWR 22117. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Beginning a Novel. 100 Units.

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 first chapter is our actual 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.

Instructor(s): Vu Tran     Terms Offered: Autumn Note(s): Students must have taken Fundamentals + a Beginning Workshop in the same genre as the Advanced Workshop you want to register for. 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42117

CRWR 22128. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Novel Writing, The First Chapters. 100 Units.

In this workshop-focused class we will focus on the early stages of both developing and writing a novel: choosing the POV, establishing the setting, developing the main characters and the dynamics between them, setting up the conflicts and seeding the themes of book, etc. As a class we will read, break down and discuss the architecture of the openings of several published novels as you work on your own opening chapters, which will be workshopped during the course.

Instructor(s): Augustus Rose     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (include writing sample). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42128

CRWR 22130. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Inner Logic. 100 Units.

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 students' 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.

Instructor(s): Baird Harper     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42130

CRWR 22132. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Strange Magic in Short Fiction. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Hoffman     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42132

CRWR 22133. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing the Uncanny. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Soileau     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42133

CRWR 22134. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Cultivating Trouble and Conflict. 100 Units.

If you want a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned." --Charles Baxter While crisis is to be avoided in life, when it comes to narrative, trouble is your friend. In this advanced workshop we'll explore the complex ways writers create conflict in their stories, be it internal or external, spiritual or physical, romantic, financial or familial. We'll read masters of the form like Edward P. Jones, George Saunders, ZZ Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Yiyun Li, and discuss how they generate conflict that feels organic, character-driven, and inevitable. Weekly writing exercises will encourage you to take creative risks and hone new skills. Each student will workshop two stories, with strong emphasis on focused and productive peer critique and in-class commentary.

Instructor(s): Sharon Pomerantz     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42134

CRWR 22135. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrative Time. 100 Units.

The Long and the 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 Kate Chopin. Students will be encouraged to experiment with time in both writing exercises and story revisions.By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and workshopped one story. Two stories, one polished and one in draft, will be prepared for the final.

Instructor(s): Sharon Pomerantz     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42135

CRWR 22137. Advanced Fiction Workshop: The College Novel (& Story) 100 Units.

In this advanced fiction workshop, we will examine and write narratives set at college, the so-called campus and varsity novels (and, in our case, short stories). We will try to capture the attendant promise and uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood, asking what it means to come of age, to age, to experiment, and possibly, to regress. We'll attempt to veer away from cultural cliché and caricature to portray the truth of life on campus and come to grips with the way you live right now, as we consider what it means-to borrow the title of one novel-to make our home among strangers. Students will read published works and submit two stories or novel excerpts for workshops. Please expect a rigorous but constructive workshop environment where being a critic and an editor is essential.

Instructor(s): Ben Hoffman     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42137

CRWR 22140. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Killing Cliché 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Baird Harper     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42140

CRWR 22146. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Disruption and Disorder. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Hoffman     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42146

CRWR 22149. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Long Stories. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Lytal     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42149

CRWR 22152. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Finding and Refining Voice. 100 Units.

As writers, your "voice" is you imposing who you are on the truthfulness of your sentences. Finding your voice, then, is the process-whether you're describing a character, an image, or an idea-of constantly asking yourself, Do I absolutely believe this?, of rewriting and rewriting your sentences until you absolutely do believe it, and finally of refining all the technical aspects you brought to bear to assure that level of individual truth. Out of that, naturally and inevitably, comes your voice-at least for the time being. In this workshop, we'll examine this crucial stage in the development of your own aesthetic, which is not merely a writing style, but more importantly a personal perspective on the world that informs and is informed by that style. We will read a selection of writers with distinctive worldviews and thus distinctive literary voices (Paul Bowles, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lorrie Moore, Ottessa Moshfegh, Ocean Vuong, Garth Greenwell, etc.), and we'll complement those readings with writing exercises and workshops of your own fiction, where you will actively interrogate, cultivate, and refine your emerging voice.

Instructor(s): Vu Tran     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42152

CRWR 22153. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Rants and Rambles. 100 Units.

The unshackled narrators that dominate many of our most exciting novels-from Dostoevsky's underground man to the uber-relatable mother of 2019's Ducks, Newburyport-take their bearings not from the scenic method of theater or the omniscient narration of history but from the essay form and from oral storytelling. This workshop plumbs those resources to better understand this alternative tradition, studying the craft that can make unruly narrative both highly entertaining and intellectually satisfying, exploring rhetoric, repetition, leitwortstil, logical nesting, suspense, digression, irony, and humor. While executing creative exercises in voice, we'll read books of furious energy by Thomas Bernhard and Jamaica Kincaid alongside cooler, essayistic meanders by W. G. Sebald and Claire-Louise Bennett. Students will compose and workshop a substantial work that takes its cues from these examples.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Lytal     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42153

CRWR 22154. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Unlikeable Characters. 100 Units.

From "unreliable" to "unlikeable," certain characters--and character qualities--are often measured against popular understandings of who is "good," who is "relatable," and who gets to decide. As Ottessa Moshfegh quips in a Guardian interview, "We live in a world in which mass murderers are re-elected, yet it's an unlikeable female character that is found to be offensive." In this technical seminar, we will critically investigate cultural dialogues around "unlikeability," and discuss the shared qualities and compelling narrative capabilities of "unlikeable" characters. Assignments will include reading responses, short craft analyses, and a presentation.

Instructor(s): Meghan Lamb     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42154

CRWR 22155. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing About Work. 100 Units.

Writing about work, jobs, and vocational experiences may seem contradictory- or even antithetical-to our goals in fiction. After all, if we aim to inspire, to invigorate, to otherwise wield a narrative "axe for the frozen sea within us" (as Kafka wrote), why write about the very day-to-day tasks so often charged with numbing and blurring our sensation of life? In this workshop, we will explore and answer this question with our own work-focused fictions, developing strategies for defamiliarizing the mundane, and using routines to build dramatic tension. Utilizing a combination of creative workshops and exercises-and drawing upon models from the job-focused fiction of Eugene Martin, Dorothy Allison, Lucia Berlin, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Edwidge Danticat, and other writers-we will also deepen and develop our characters through precise depictions of their work environments.

Instructor(s): Meghan Lamb     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42155

CRWR 22156. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrator as Personality. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Sharon Pomerantz     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42156

CRWR 22157. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Tiny Chapters. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Benjamin Lytal     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42157

CRWR 22158. Advanced Fiction Workshop: From the Ground Up. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Ryan Van Meter     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42158

CRWR 22159. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Family Life, Family Strife. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42159

CRWR 23113. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Waste, Surplus, Reuse. 100 Units.

What do writers and artists do with surplus, with extras, leftovers, and other excesses of production? Is there a creative use to put them to? When viewed in the context of ecology and economy, what are the ethical dimensions of working with surplus? Are there also ethics and aesthetics of the "useless"? With these guiding questions, this course will explore creative approaches to waste, and develop revision practices that draw on the reuse of material surplus. We will consider forms of excess, and we'll examine diverse types of waste and things that "waste", including literal trash, ruins, the body, time, the dream, and everyday texts (such as emails, text messages, rough drafts, conversations, and ephemeral media). Readings and media may include work by Georges Perec, Harryette Mullen, Nikki Wallschlaeger, T. S. Eliot, Kurt Schwitters, and Agnes Varda. Students should plan to complete various prompts, lead discussion on readings, and complete a final project.

Instructor(s): Nate Hoks     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43113

CRWR 23123. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Form & Formlessness. 100 Units.

Wallace Stevens suggests that "The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used." How does form provide a kind of freedom for a poet? How does it manifest itself in a poem? Does it mean we have to follow prescribed rules, or is there a more intuitive approach? This course will give students a chance to try out a range of traditional and experimental forms, both as an attempt to improve as writers and in order to interrogate form and its other, what Bataille called the formless, or "unformed" (l'informe). We'll explore traditional and contemporary takes on a variety of forms, such as sonnets, odes, aphorisms, serial poems, and poetic collage. Students should expect to write exercises, submit new poems, contribute feedback on peer work, write short response papers, and submit a final portfolio.

Instructor(s): Nathan Hoks     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (include writing sample). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43123

CRWR 23126. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry and the Present Moment. 100 Units.

In this workshop we will tackle the problem of writing poetry in the present moment at a range of scales, thinking critically about our world's obsession with the "contemporary." At the grandest scale, we will ask what it means to write into the contemporary moment, one in which we seem to feel time fading with every status update and tweet, and one that demands embodied engagement-reading works that have been written recently, in dialogue with living authors. At the most intimate scale, we will consider how poetry can cultivate critical awareness of the present moment amidst forces that pull us with dopamine-induced promises and regrets into the future and past. How does poetry, with its odd ability to punctuate, syncopate, fragment, and suspend time, intervene in daily life and in the historical record? Authors for consideration will include Issa, Basho, Gertrude Stein, F.T. Marinetti, David Harvey, Cecilia Vicuna, Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, Julie Patton, CA Conrad, Julian T. Brolaski, and Bhanu Kapil. Students will have the chance to experiment with different forms of attunement to the present, and will produce a daybook in tandem with a final "book" project that may take a range of forms.

Instructor(s): Jennifer Scappettone     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43126

CRWR 23132. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poets' Prose. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Suzanne Buffam     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43132

CRWR 23133. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poets in Archives. 100 Units.

This course will examine how the historical archive can be a source for poetry writing, seeking to develop frameworks for interpreting the experiences that poets enact through archives. Deeper questions to be examined involve the relation between poetic form and historical knowledge; the relation between imagination and memory; between material histories and their inscription; between poets and their historical and biographical pasts; and between the critical and creative, the historical and biographical, and the exteriors and interiors of literature, history, myth, and politics. Because this is an advanced workshop, we will rely on mutual exchange dedicated to improving writing. Critique will therefore be our core activity, guided by our readings and professor instruction, but driven primarily by original student work and discussion.

Instructor(s): Edgar Garcia     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43133

CRWR 23134. Advanced Poetry Workshop: The Book as Form. 100 Units.

What is a book? This supposedly obsolete medium has undergone vital metamorphosis over the course of the past century, migrating from text into the visual and performing arts, as well as online. As contemporary writers we will consider what it means to contribute to its evolution, thinking about new forms that the "poetry collection" can take, as well as more emergent forms of the book as project-or process. Authors to be studied include Sappho, Basho, Mina Loy, Bruno Munari, Bread and Puppet Theater, Susan Howe, Anne Carson, Ann Hamilton, Buzz Spector, Bhanu Kapil, Don Mee Choi, Jen Bervin, Mei-Mei Burssenbrugge, Stephanie Strickland, Tan Lin, Edwin Torres, Nanni Balestrini, Douglas Kearney, and Amaranth Borsuk. Be prepared to think about poetry from the scale of the syllable to the scale of the entire bound (or unbound) work.

Instructor(s): Jennifer Scappettone     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43134

CRWR 23135. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Weird Science. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Nathan Hoks     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43135

CRWR 23136. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry as Parasite. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Nathan Hoks     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43136

CRWR 23137. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry, Archives, and History. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Edgar Garcia     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43137

CRWR 23138. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetics of Procedure and Restraint. 100 Units.

Rats who build the labyrinth from which they will try to escape" is how Raymond Queneau famously described the members of Oulipo, a group of international writers and mathematicians founded in France in 1960, and which still thrives today. The group's aim is to use constraints and procedures to create new literary forms. ("Oulipo" is an acronym that stands for Workshop or Sewing Circle of Potential Literature.) In a similar spirit of playful experiment, we will take a hands-on approach, with students composing new drafts each week. We will experiment with a variety of methods, ranging from traditional verse forms to concrete poetry; creative translations; re-writing; erasures; collages; documentary and research-based poetics; site-specific and ritual poetry; incorporating film, sound, image; and a selection of stimulating Oulipian constraints (e.g. only using certain letters or writing three versions of the same poem, etc.). As we workshop students' drafts, we will discuss topics including inspiration, authorship, form, copying and plagiarism; poetry, activism, and social justice; and the idea of "fact" in poetry. At the end of the quarter, you'll revise your drafts and collect them in a portfolio.

Instructor(s): Rachel Galvin     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43138

CRWR 23139. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Ekphrastic Poetry. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Robyn Schiff     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CHST 23139, CRWR 43139

CRWR 23140. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry and Crisis. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Oksana Maksymchuk     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43140

CRWR 24002. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing About the Arts. 100 Units.

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(s): Rachel Cohen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (writing sample required). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44002, ARTH 34002, ARTH 24002

CRWR 24012. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Feature. 100 Units.

In this writing workshop, students will go through all the stages 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 and re-write pitches, learning how to highlight the potential story in these ideas. 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 through drafts 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/reporters about their process. In the end, we should be able to put together a publication that contains all of these feature stories.

Instructor(s): Ben Austen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44012

CRWR 24019. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Experimental Essay. 100 Units.

Most introductions to creative nonfiction include one sections devoted to the strange and unwieldy-Ander Monson's "I've Been Thinking About Snow" or a page or two of Anne Carson's Nox. A brief foray into the metaphysical essay, the interactive essay, the performance essay and then back into the mainstream of creative nonfiction. This course, however, will be ignoring the mainstream entirely and, rather, will be devoted to the fringe, the strange and almost undefinable. From the performance essay to the video game essay, from the illustrated essay to the found essay and everything in between. This course will consist of experimental readings with accompanying writing prompts and in-class discussions, as well as dedicated workshops to each student's own experimental creative nonfiction project.

Instructor(s): Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44019

CRWR 24020. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Eco-memoir. 100 Units.

We live in an era marked by human-driven environmental change, an epoch distinguished not only by the reality of anthropogenic impacts, but of human witness. Never before, writes Elizabeth Rush, have humans been here to tell the story of collapse, extinction, adaptation, and memory. In this workshop, we will read and write eco-memoir, a hybrid form of literary nonfiction that blends the work of ecology, history, and personal narrative to understand more fully how memory is bound to ecosystems. Some might simply call this memoir, following J. Drew Lanham's view that the writing of memoir is also the writing of environment. This course will ask how the memoirist looks at place, taking up W.G. Sebald's thinking that places seem to "have some kind of memory, in that they activate memory in those who look at them." Students will practice using the tenets of literary memoir-writing to engage with the theoretical frameworks of such environmental thinkers as Donna Haraway and Jedidiah Purdy. We will ask: to what extent is remembering a collective act? How might the eco-memoir represent the uneven consequences of ecological disruption? What narrative structures does the story of an ecosystem take? Students will write two-full length essays or memoir chapters. Readings will include texts by Kendra Atleework, Elizabeth Bush, Linda Hogan, J. Drew Lanham, W.G. Sebald, and visiting writers.

Instructor(s): Kathleen Blackburn     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44020

CRWR 24021. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: The Trouble with Trauma. 100 Units.

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 ones 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 quarters end each student will leave with a piece of writing that feels both true to their experience and imbued with possibility.

Instructor(s): Dina Peone     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44021

CRWR 24022. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Beyond the Event. 100 Units.

Much of the tradition of Western storytelling relies on scene-driven narratives propelled by rising action toward an inevitable apex. Often natural disasters are illustrated the same way: hurricanes, invasion of new species, infectious disease, and oil spills are cast as singular events with a beginning, middle and end. This advanced workshop will explore how to push beyond the event. We will examine how forms of nonfiction, from investigative journalism to lyric essays, push against the hegemony of the "event" to tell a longer, slower story of disruption across the nexus of time and space. Following Rob Nixon's concept of slow violence, readings will focus on places and communities whose narratives do not fit tidily into beginning-middle-end story structures. Workshop will ask students to consider how their work might recognize the contexts of extraction, commodity flow, climate change, and borders surrounding the "events" driving our stories.

Instructor(s): Kathleen Blackburn     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44022

CRWR 24023. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Coming of Age Memoir. 100 Units.

Where does childhood end and adulthood begin? For Wordsworth growth happens in reverse. "The Child is the father of the Man," he wrote in 1802, yearning to recall the fundamental joy of a rainbow. Proust was eager to forget his schooldays: "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us." In this class, students will search their lives for events and lessons which they may consider formative, together evaluating the standards they use to qualify rites of passage, in order to isolate unique patterns of growth that students can call their own. Half the quarter will be dedicated to discussing original student work. A multitude of possibilities will be offered by readings of contemporary memoirists from all walks of life. By quarters end, each student will have laid down the groundwork for a dexterous memoir about surviving the challenges of their youth, and in doing so perhaps even imagine a future that is less prescribed and more personally fulfilling.

Instructor(s): Dina Peone     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Submit writing sample via www.creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44023

CRWR 24024. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Reading. 100 Units.

There are many creative ways to write of, about, from, and because of reading. In this class, serious readers will have the chance to practice forms they love and may not often get chances to write: the incisive review, the long-form reading memoir, the biographical sketch of a writer in history, the interview, the essay about translation, diaristic fragments. In this course, we'll develop individual approaches, styles and regular practices. We'll make use of both creative (and traditional) research, analysis, and criticism, and explore the wide terrain available to creative writers. We'll go back to foundational essayists including Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf, study contemporary writers of reading such as Jazmina Berrera, Claire Messud, Niela Orr, Ruth Franklin, Emily Bernard, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Parul Sehgal. Students will keep a reading/writing notebook, conduct an interview, and write and revise a longer essay for workshop.

Instructor(s): Rachel Cohen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44024

CRWR 24025. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Queering the Essay. 100 Units.

In Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Queering the Essay, we'll approach the essay as a vehicle for queer narratives, as a marker of both individual and collective memory, and as a necessary compliment to the journalism and scholarship that have shaped queer writing. Through readings and in-class exercises, we'll explore tenets of the personal essay, like narrative structure and pacing, alongside considerations of voice and vulnerability. After a brief historical survey, we'll look to contemporary essayists as our guides--writers like Billy-Ray Belcourt, Melissa Faliveno, Saeed Jones, Richard Rodriguez, and T. Fleischmann-- alongside more familiar writers like Alison Bechdel and Maggie Nelson. And through student-led workshops, we'll wrestle with concerns that often trouble narratives of otherness: What does it mean to write a personal narrative that has a potential social impact? How can we write trauma without playing into harmful stereotypes? How can our writing work as--or make demands toward--advocacy, rather than voyeurism?

Instructor(s): Victoria Flanagan     Terms Offered: Winter Note(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 24205, CRWR 44025, GNSE 44205

CRWR 24026. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Feminist Biography. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Avi Steinberg     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44026, GNSE 44026, GNSE 24026

CRWR 24027. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Environmental Writing, Editing, and Publication. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Kathleen Blackburn     Terms Offered: Autumn Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44027

CRWR 24028. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: World-building in Long-form Nonfiction. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Rachel Cohen     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44028

CRWR 24029. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Sports. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Avi Steinberg     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44029

CRWR 24030. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Feature. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Ben Austen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): 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. Equivalent Course(s): CHST 24030, CRWR 44030

CRWR 29200. Thesis/Major Projects: Fiction. 100 Units.

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.

Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Note(s): Required for CW majors and MAPH CW Option students completing creative BA and MA theses in fiction and CW minors completing minor portfolios in fiction. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49200

CRWR 29300. Thesis/Major Projects: Poetry. 100 Units.

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 seminar, 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.

Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Note(s): Required for CW majors and MAPH CW Option students completing creative BA and MA theses in poetry and CW minors completing minor portfolios in poetry. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49300

CRWR 29400. Thesis/Major Projects: Nonfiction. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Dan Raeburn; Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Note(s): Required for CW majors and MAPH CW Option students completing creative BA and MA theses in nonfiction and CW minors completing minor portfolios in nonfiction. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49400

CRWR 29500. Thesis/Major Projects: Fiction/Nonfiction. 100 Units.

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis or minor portfolio in either fiction or nonfiction--or both. In other words, your project may take a number of forms: fiction only, nonfiction only, a short story and an essay, a novel chapter and a piece of narrative journalism, and so on. This course might be of special interest to those working on highly autobiographical pieces or incorporating substantial research into their creative process--fiction that hews close to fact, say, or nonfiction that leans heavily into storytelling. And/or it might be useful for those who want to pursue hybrid or between-genres projects or simply want to continue working in more than one form. We'll be open to many possibilities. It's not a prerequisite that you've taken both a fiction and creative nonfiction course previously, but it will nonetheless be quite helpful to have done so. Note, too, that this is the cumulative course in Creative Writing. There will still be room to explore and rethink (sometimes radically) the pieces you've drafted in previous classes, but please do come to our first session with a clear sense of what you want to work on over the quarter. Required for CW majors and MAPH CW Option students completing creative BA and MA theses in fiction or nonfiction and CW minors completing minor portfolios in fiction or nonfiction.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu (in application please indicate experience in fiction & nonfiction and how this thesis workshop informs your own writing practice). Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49500

Faculty Director

Director of the Program in Creative Writing Robyn Schiff Email

Undergraduate Primary Contact

Director of Undergraduate Studies Rachel Galvin Walker 511 Email

Administrative Contacts

Program Manager Michael Fischer Taft House 103 773.834.8524 Email

Student Affairs Administrator Denise Dooley Taft House 104 773.702.0355 Email

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ENGL Courses: ENGL 2110 - Creative Writing: Fundamentals of Short Fiction

• ENGL 1000 - Academic Writing
• ENGL 1001 - English Composition
• ENGL 1010 - Writing With Confidence and Purpose
• ENGL 2002 - Professional Writing for Successful Communication
• ENGL 2110 - Creative Writing: Fundamentals of Short Fiction
• ENGL 3110 - Creative Writing: Contemporary Nonfiction and Poetry
• << Previous: ENGL 2002 - Professional Writing for Successful Communication
• Next: ENGL 3110 - Creative Writing: Contemporary Nonfiction and Poetry >>

Storytelling was a way for our ancestors to pass on values, spiritual beliefs, and history. One of the ways in which we continue this heritage today is through short fiction. In this course, students encounter the processes and concepts of creative writing through short fiction. Students examine established authors, narrative techniques, and structures, which they use as a guide to write short stories that model voice, purpose, and elements of story writing. Through this course, students gain critical-thinking and analytical skills in writing, revising, and publishing creative fiction.

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Fundamentals of Creative Writing

Creative Writing Workshops lead by published authors and educators are opportunities for invention, inspiration, plus formal training in the conventions of storytelling, poetic expression, and publication.  A Workshop is a great way to hone and improve writing, grammar and mechanical skills, and do so while working on pieces that come from the heart rather than textbook assignments.  For anyone interested who hasn’t completed the course pre-requisites, entrance to the sections may also be based on teacher evaluation of the student’s writing. Many of our region’s published authors got their fiFundamrst exposure to the writing of poetry, fiction and essays in Creative Writing workshops at LSC-Montgomery.  Creative Writing at Lone Star College has a long history with over 20 years of publication of SWIRL , the campus literary and arts journal, and 25 years of Writers in Performance, a monthly reading series that brings published authors to campus to share with students their works and approaches to writing and the writing life. 

ENGL 2307: Fundamentals of Creative Writing

Section #:  4N01 Class #:  4123 Units:  3.00 Instructor:  D.Parsons Location:  LSC-Montgomery Days:  Wed Times:  06:00 PM-08:35 PM Mode of Instruction:  In Person Meeting Dates:  January 14 - May 12 Notes:

Section #:  4Z01 Class #:  17266 Units:  3.00 Instructor:  M. Lasco Location:  LSC-Montgomery Days:  Tue Thu Times:  01:00 PM-02:45 PM Mode of Instruction:  In Person Meeting Dates:  February 11 - May 12 Notes:

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If you are currently enrolled at Lone Star College, register for classes by visiting myLoneStar .

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If you are new to Lone Star College visit the admissions page to apply today. Stop by Lone Star College-Montgomery, MAC, located in the first floor of the Student Success Center, Building C and talk to an advisor today.

If you’re a current student looking to fulfill a humanities elective, an ESOL student who’d like to improve grammar and usage, or a returning scholar who seeks a fulfilling field to explore, ENGL 2307 is for you. 

Contact Information

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Mary Lasco [email protected]

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Bennington College Curriculum Spring 2023

Spring 2023, fundamentals of creative writing (lit2394.01).

In this class, we will begin by investigating sound, music, image, and form in poetry and how these poetic elements are presented in fiction. From fiction, we will study narrative, character, plot, and setting. Finally, we will progress towards personal nonfiction, fusing the elements of our poetry and fiction investigations. We will read classical and contemporary texts from diverse authors and voices, while also crafting individualized creative work. Students are expected to also write critically on creative texts. Throughout the term, students will engage in workshops, one in each genre, with the goal of completing a mini-portfolio of revised creative works.

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Fundamentals of Creative Writing

Senior High School

Series highlights.

Fundamentals of Creative Writing aims to develop practical and creative skills in reading and writing; introduces students to the fundamental techniques of writing fiction, poetry, and drama; and discusses the use of such techniques by well-known authors in a variety of genres.

• Junie Mart A. Talisay
• John Oliver M. Ramos

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing The Write Stuff for Writers

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100% online, 8-week courses

Transfer in up to 50% of the degree total

Grow Your Writing Passion into a Career with Liberty’s Online MFA in Creative Writing

Many people write creatively, but few hone their skills to develop their writing craft to its highest form. Even fewer learn the other skills it takes to become a successful writer, such as the steps needed to get a book published and into the hands of readers. Liberty’s 100% online Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing can help you develop your writing passion into a career so you can set your works free to impact culture and the world.

Employers in every industry need professionals who have strong writing skills, so you can be confident that your ability to write effectively can also help set you apart in your current career. With in-demand writing expertise and the ability to customize your degree with electives in literature or writing practice, Liberty’s online MFA in Creative Writing can help you achieve your professional writing goals.

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is designed to help you build on your writing skills with specific workshops dedicated to the craft of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or screenwriting. With a work-in-progress approach to writing practice and mentorship from our faculty of experienced writers and scholars, you can learn the specific skills you need to make your writing stand out.

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Why Choose Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing?

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is mainly offered in an 8-week course format, and our tuition rate for graduate programs hasn’t increased in 9 years. Through our program, you can study the writing process and develop your creative skills through workshops with experienced writing professionals. With our flexible format, you can grow in your creative writing while continuing to do what is important to you.

As a terminal degree, the online MFA in Creative Writing can also help you pursue opportunities to teach writing at the K-12 or college level. You will gain comprehensive and in-depth exposure to writing, literature, publishing, and many other professional writing skills that you can pass on to students. Partner with the Liberty family and learn under faculty who have spent years in the field you love. Your career in professional writing starts here.

What Will You Study in Our MFA in Creative Writing?

The MFA in Creative Writing program is designed to help you become an excellent creative writer across the genres of creative fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and poetry. You can learn how to produce aesthetically and culturally engaged creative works while gaining professional knowledge and practice. You will also study foundational contemporary literature so that you have a background in studying important works to draw on for your writing.

To help you in your professional writing, you will also study many essential skills in editing, layout, and the business of publishing so that you can best position yourself for success in the market. Through your creative writing courses and workshops, you can develop your craft so that you will be ready for your thesis project.

Here are a few examples of the skills Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing can help you master:

• Marketing your projects and pursuing new writing opportunities
• Organizing writing and adapting it to different types of writing
• Tailoring writing to specific audiences and markets
• Understanding what makes art effective, compelling, and impactful
• Writing compelling stories that engage readers

Potential Career Opportunities

• Book and magazine writer
• Business communications specialist
• Creative writing instructor
• Publications editor
• Screenwriter
• Website copy editor and writer
• Writing manager

Featured Courses

• ENGL 600 – Editing, Layout, and Publishing
• ENGL 601 – Writing as Cultural Engagement
• ENGL 603 – Literary Theory and Practice
• WRIT 610 – Writing Fiction

Degree Information

• This program falls under the College of Arts and Sciences .
• View the Graduate Arts and Sciences Course Guides (login required).
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Admission Information for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Admission requirements.

• A non-refundable, non-transferable $50 application fee will be posted on the current application upon enrollment (waived for qualifying service members, veterans, and military spouses – documentation verifying military status is required) .
• Unofficial transcripts can be used for acceptance purposes with the submission of a Transcript Request Form .
• Creative Writing Sample – A creative writing sample of one creative writing work of at least 2,500 words or a culmination of creative writing samples totaling 2,500 words.*
• Applicants whose native language is other than English must submit official scores for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or an approved alternative assessment. For information on alternative assessments or TOEFL waivers, please call Admissions or view the official International Admissions policy .

*A sample of one or more poems totaling a minimum of 750 words may also be submitted. Song lyrics are not accepted at this time as writing samples.

Preliminary Acceptance

If you are sending in a preliminary transcript for acceptance, you must:

• Be in your final term and planning to start your master’s degree after the last day of class for your bachelor’s degree.
• Complete a Bachelor’s Self-Certification Form confirming your completion date. You may download the form from the Forms and Downloads page or contact an admissions counselor to submit the form on your behalf.
• Submit an official/unofficial transcript to confirm that you are in your final term. The preliminary transcript must show a minimum of 105 completed credit hours.
• If you are a current Liberty University student completing your undergraduate degree, you will need to submit a Degree/Certificate Completion Application .
• Send in an additional, final official transcript with a conferral date on it by the end of your first semester of enrollment in the new master’s degree.

Dual Enrollment

Please see the Online Dual Enrollment page for information about starting graduate courses while finishing your bachelor’s degree.

Transcript Policies

Unofficial college transcript policy.

Unofficial transcripts combined with a Transcript Request Form can be used for admission. Official transcripts are required within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first, and will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

Before sending unofficial college transcripts, please make sure they include the following:

• Your previous school’s name or logo printed on the document
• Cumulative GPA
• A list of completed courses and earned credit broken down by semester
• Degree and date conferred (if applicable)

Official College Transcript Policy

An acceptable official college transcript is one that has been issued directly from the institution and is in a sealed envelope. If you have one in your possession, it must meet the same requirements. If your previous institution offers electronic official transcript processing, they can send the document directly to [email protected] .

If the student uses unofficial transcripts with a Transcript Request Form to gain acceptance, all official transcripts must be received within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first. Failure to send all official transcripts within the 60-day period will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

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Available Benefits:

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• 8-week courses, 8 different start dates each year, and no set login times (may exclude certain courses such as practicums, internships, or field experiences)

*Not applicable to certificates.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an mfa in creative writing.

A Master of Fine Arts degree, or MFA, is a terminal degree in an artistic craft that demonstrates that you have achieved the highest level of training and skill in your discipline. Like a doctorate, an MFA often allows you to teach courses at the graduate level while also providing many opportunities for scholarship and leadership in education. If you want to grow your creative writing skills to become the best writer you can be, then the Master of Fine Arts can help you get there.

How will students work towards developing their writing skills?

With creative writing workshops and a thesis project, you will receive support and guidance to help you become the best writer you can be.

How long will it take to complete the MFA in Creative Writing?

You can complete the MFA in Creative Writing in just 48 credit hours!

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