The following classes were available for audit by the general public at our July 2010 Residency.
Note: Each CC&T (Craft, criticism & theory) class description includes a question based on the required/suggested reading; elective seminars do not.
What is Historical Fiction?
Faculty member: Jaime Manrique
Time: Saturday, July 10 from 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Even some sophisticated readers and writers are under the impression that “historical fiction” is a subgenre with strict rules that limit the creativity of a writer. We will challenge that notion in our class. Students will read in advance “Storm in June,” the first novella in Irene Nemerovsky’s Suite Francaise. We will discuss how, though the story is set at the time of the German invasion of France during WWII, Nemerovsky’s main preoccupation was to depict “daily life, the emotional life, and especially the comedy it provides.”
Required reading: “Storm in June,” Part One of Irene Nemerovsky’s Suite Francaise.
Question: Where in “Storm in June” does Nemerovsky depict moments that transcend the historical period depicted in the novel?
The Read-Aloud Novel
Writer-in-Residence: Grace Lin
Time: Saturday, July 10 from 3:15–5:15 p.m.
One of the difference between a middle-grade novel and a YA (or even adult) novel is that the middle-grade novel is multifunctional. While they are books children can read to themselves, middle-grade novels are often read aloud in a classroom or at home after dinner or before bedtime. Words and sentences must be complex enough to have rhythm and interest, but not so much that they would discourage a young reader. In this class, we'll discuss the key elements of a middle-grade novel and consider them in our own writing.
Required Reading: The Cricket in Times Square by George Seldon; Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Suggested Reading: Holes by Louis Sachar; Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin; The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Question: Does the story experience change when the book is read aloud?
Layering Narrative, Lyric, and Meditative Elements: How Thinking About the Three Modes of Poetry Can Help Us Write and Revise Our Own Poems
Guest faculty: Patrick Donnelly
Time: Sunday, July 11 from 1:00–3:00 p.m.
This class will explore the defining characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of three modes of poetry: narrative, lyric, and meditative. We’ll examine, though close readings of several poems, how these modes can—and should!—combine into hybrid modes, in which each mode supplies virtues that the others lack. To strengthen our ability to recognize each of the modes in action, the class will include a “mode mapping” exercise, in which we’ll locate the modes as they operate and overlap in a particular poem, and writing exercises in which we deploy strategies from missing modes in single-mode passages.
Required Reading: handouts to be provided
Question: If you were to give a close, objective reading to your own work as a whole, which of the three modes would you say is in the foreground? (Put another way, toward which of the modes do you seem most temperamentally inclined or which comes easiest for you?) Likewise,
which of the modes do your poems put in the background (as a deliberate artistic strategy or unconsciously), and/or which do you need to work hardest to include?
Testimonies: The Art of Listening, Processing, and Rendering Interview to Story
Faculty member: Evelina Galang
Time: Tuesday, July 13 from 1:15–3:15 p.m.
This course will examine how to host an interview — the art of hearing, conversing, processing and then writing that other person's story. What are the writer’s responsibilities and what is the burden or gift of hearing someone else’s story and writing it for others to read? How does one handle the traumatic stories of abuse and struggle after only hearing it? When do the lines between social conversation and professional interviews blur?
Required reading: (at least two of the following): The Raping of Nanking, Iris Chang; Twilight Los Angeles, Anna Deavere Smith; Sold, Patricia McCormick; Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje; If I Die in Juarez, Stella Pope Duarte
Questions: The writer listens to the subject’s story. The writer translates that story from the speaker’s experience to the page—and, if he or she is good at it, the listener-writer disappears and what appears on the page is the subject’s experience unfolding as if for the first time. Here is the question: are the listeners in the stories listed above invisible? Is there a need to feel their presence? How do writers blur the act of listening, translating, and relating so that the final product is the essential experience, what John Gardner calls “that vivid and continuous dream”?
Act Your Age
Faculty member: Laura Williams McCaffrey
Time: Tuesday, July 13 from 1:15–3:15 p.m.
We’ve all read stories in which children speak like college-educated adults, 20-somethings have the perspective of 40-somethings in the throes of a midlife crisis, and older adults speak like Obe-Wan Kenobe. How can we avoid writing such clichéd and inauthentic characters?
The purpose of this class is to closely examine ways writers depict characters of diverse ages. While the focus might particularly interest those writing for young people, we won’t restrict ourselves to discussing child characters. We’ll explore what “age” means in terms of a character’s chronological age and years of experience, as well as in terms of the eras that have informed his or her perspective. Indeed, perspective and point-of-view will be essential aspects of this exploration. Please come prepared for a presentation, discussion, and writing exercises.
Required Reading: An Na. A Step from Heaven; Strout, Elizabeth. “Pharmacy.” Olive Kitteridge.
Question: Consider two characters of different ages in An Na’s young-adult novel and Elizabeth Strout’s short story. How have the authors portrayed the characters’ ages? How effective are the portrayals? Be prepared to discuss your answers with examples from the text.
I Love it, but.... The Author/Editor Tango
Guest faculty: Lesléa Newman
Time: Wednesday, July 14 from 1:15–3:15 p.m.
“I love it but...” “Nice job, if only....” “This is great, however...” Phrases like these are at the heart of the author/illustrator relationship. Rather than be adversarial, the author and editor both want the same thing: to produce the best book possible. The key is to have an editor who loves your work, but isn’t you. In other words, someone who can see your fine work with a cool, detached eye, and ask the questions/make the suggestions that help you improve it. In this class, Lesléa Newman will demonstrate how both picture books and YA novels come into being. She will read first, second, third, seventh, and fourteenth drafts of her own work, interspersed with actual letters at top New York City publishing houses, to show just how an author and editor work together to bring a book from idea and first draft to final product. You will be amazed at the thought, time, and effort that goes into all manuscripts, whether they are composed of 400 words or 400 pages.
Suggested reading: Nordstrom, Ursula. Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom. New York: Harper Collins, 2000; Michener, James. The Novel. New York: Fawcett, 1992; Perutz, Kathrin. Writing for Love and Money. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991; Newman, Lesléa. Jailbait. New York: Random House, 2004. (This book will be discussed at length in the class)
Question: How do you decide when to take an editor's suggestion, and when to stick to your guns and leave the manuscript as written?
The End …. Right? Right!
Faculty member: Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Time: Wednesday, July 14 from 3:30–5:30 p.m.
There are countless ways to end poems, and yet the great majority of endings do one of two things: greatly contract the focus of the poem, or expand it wider than any first time reader could anticipate. By taking a close look at some poems we’ll discover how the use of imagery, line-breaks, focus, leaps, surprises and other “tricks” lead to their satisfactory conclusions. This will be an inter-active workshop: participation in the discussion is most welcome.
Required reading: handouts will be provided
Question: What is the poetic device that Raymond Carver uses in his poem “Fear”? What strategy does Robert Hayden use in the closure of “Those Winter Sundays”?
Rewriting from the Sentence to the Book
Faculty member: Sterling Watson
Time: Wednesday, July 14 from 3:30–5:30 p.m.
Most of us begin as writers believing that we can get it right the first time. Most writers who make it to the MFA level know that this is a false article of faith. We learn that rewriting is necessary, and then we learn to enjoy it. The processes of rewriting offer us exercise for our meticulous and obsessive parts, the joys of discovery, and if we are lucky, even the occasional mystical surprise. The novelist and poet Fred Chappell said that writing is “saintly tedium.” Perhaps revision is more tedious than the casting of the first draft, but most writers who stay in the profession learn to enjoy rewriting. A few rewrite so obsessively that they publish very little. Paul Valery said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned in despair.” You will recognize immediately that the truth in this statement is not so much about despair as about the inevitable “letting go” at the end of the long struggle with a work of art. Even though we might create greatness, we will never be completely satisfied with what we write. There is an end to what revision can do, but before we reach it, we can learn much about how to improve our writing.
This session will center on a Power Point presentation with teacher commentary and frequent pauses for questions and comments from students. We will discuss rewriting at the level of the sentence, the paragraph and the page, and also at larger levels of structure including the act and the whole book.
Suggested reading: Burroway, Janet, and Susan Weinberg. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. 6th ed. Boston: Longman, 2003. 1-21 and 395-410. Print. [Please note: These page numbers refer to chapters 1 and 11 in the 6th edition of Burroway and Weinberg.]
Assignment: Come prepared to share with your fellow students at least one labeled strategy that you routinely use when you revise. A labeled strategy is a rewriting technique for which you have a name; e.g., Faulkner’s famous advice, “Kill all your darlings.” Write these on a sheet of paper and hand them in at the beginning of the class. We will read and discuss some of them.
Questions: How conscious are you of your skills as a rewriter? How do you rate yourself as a rewriter? Do you think you are you good at it, or not so good? By what processes have you learned to rewrite, e.g., studying great writing, reading books about how to revise, getting advice from others and trying to use it? Do you have terms or labels for the various activities you routinely perform as you revise a manuscript?
Writing and Reading the Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Guest faculty: Josh Neufeld and Sari Wilson
Time: Friday, July 16 from 3:15–5:15 p.m.
Long-respected in Europe, the American graphic novel is now finding its place in American literature. At the same time, more and more prose writers are venturing into the graphic form. We’ll look at the range of graphic books being published today, delve into the theory of the form, and engage with it as critical readers and through creative writing practice. Through a close reading of excerpts from three powerful nonfiction graphic books, we’ll examine how the interplay of text and image creates layers of meaning, how compelling characters are created, and how successful visual narratives emerge. Neufeld will give a presentation on his process to begin.
Required Reading: Josh Neufeld. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. New York: Pantheon, 2009.
Suggested Reading: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics. New York: Kitchen Sink Press/HarperCollins, 1993; Marjane Satrapi. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2003; Art Spiegelman, Maus. New York: Pantheon, 1986; Brendan Burford, ed. Syncopated: An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays. New York: Villard Books, 2009.
Handouts: Excerpts of A.D., Persepolis, and Maus will be provided, as will a Graphic Scriptwriting Template for the writing exercise.
Question: How do Neufeld, Satrapi, and Spiegelman use the comics form to create narratives of depth and dramatic, personal revelation?
Why Write for Magazines?
Faculty member: Laban Carrick Hill
Time: Friday, July 16 from 4:30–5:30 p.m.
This ES&S class will cover the nuts and bolts of pitching magazine articles for fun, profit, and heartache. Magazine writing is not an easy gig to break into (much like book publishing), but during this class we look at what magazine editors might be looking for, how to pitch with a compelling hook, how to write a query letter, and what to do once you got the gig. The great thing about writing for magazines is that it’s great “in-between” money. It’s really hard to make a living writing freelance for magazines, but it can help you can make that mortgage payment when nothing else is coming in.
Assignments: 1) Bring the magazine you want to write for, just not The New Yorker, please; and 2) bring at least two article ideas that you have.