SAMPLE CRAFT CLASSES & ELECTIVES
FICTION
CC&T: THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR
Faculty: Writer-in-Residence, Dennis Lehane
Since all storytelling is a form of lying, we might consider why audiences enjoy being lied to and why we, the storytellers, love telling those lies. One method of coming to terms with the inherent falseness of the narrative act is to consider the unreliable narrator. The unreliable narrator makes no claims, by narrative’s end, to truth. He freely admits that he has lied. But does such an admission make him less or more admirable than those narrators with pretensions of truth telling? In order to get to the bottom of this trickster archetype, we will be discussing Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Stewart O’Nan’s A Prayer for the Dying, and Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, as well as delving into the very genesis of the unreliable narrator in Genesis itself, noting where the archetype reached its mid-millenarian heights with the introduction of Shakespeare’s Iago.
Required reading: The End of the Affair, Graham Greene; A Prayer for the Dying, Steward O’Nan; Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
CC&T: THE MARVELOUS REAL: MAGICAL REALISM FOR 21st CENTURY VOICES
Guest Faculty: Sheree Renée Thomas
Magical realism, or more accurately, “the marvelous real,” is a powerful genre that takes ordinary people and places them in extraordinary circumstances. First coined by the great Cuban novelist and musicologist Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) in his novel on the Haitian revolution, The Kingdom of This World, “magical realism” is actually a mistranslation of Carpentier’s vision of "lo real maravilloso,” where realistic elements appear in an otherwise “magical” setting. The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Walker, Arthur Flowers, Salman Rushdie, Luke Sutherland, Laura Esquivel, Gloria Naylor, Isabelle Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, and numerous other slipstream storytellers are representative of this complex and exciting body of work we will explore in this class. Come prepared to read, discuss, and pen your own marvelous tales.
Required Reading: Saints and Strangers, Angela Carter; Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link; Venus As a Boy, Luke Sutherland
CREATIVE NONFICTION
CC&T: FINDING THE MATERIAL YOU’RE HERE TO WRITE
Faculty: Joy Castro
Sometimes the aspects of our lives that we keep most carefully hidden —the hurtful or shameful experiences, acts, and thoughts we'd rather forget or hide— are precisely the things that, revealed and crafted in language, have the capacity to connect us most deeply with others. Using narrative theory and a variety of inhibition-shattering exercises, we will generate and critique new work that will move us in fresh and difficult new directions.
Required reading: Tzvetan Todorov, “Structural Analysis of Narrative” (handout)
CC&T: WALKING & TALKING: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY TRAVEL WRITING
Faculty: Randall Kenan
This workshop will take a closer look at travel writing as more than a guide for where to shop and eat and sights to see. Instead, we will focus on what Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature V.S. Naipaul (2001) has called “travel on a theme.” More than a description of locations and people, and more than merely a colorful set of descriptions of a locale, this form of reportage is a representation of place and people, an interpretation, an aesthetic statement, and ultimately its own being. We will look at some shining examples of the genre and will look at the practical steps and methodologies a writer can employ when setting out to discover his subjects.
“For all its faults, the book, like the fiction books that had gone before, was for me an extension of knowledge and feeling. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to unlearn what I had learned. Fiction, the exploration of one’s immediate circumstances, had taken me a lot of the way. Travel had taken me further.” -- V.S. Naipaul.
Required Reading: The Writer and the World, V.S. Naipaul; Travels with Charlie, John Steinbeck
POETRY
CC&T: REVISE!
Faculty member: Laure-Anne Bosselaar
The focus of this talk (followed by a Q&A and/or conversation) will be the solitary process of revision: how can we acquire the tools we need to revise work on our own? After graduating, many writers with an MFA find it challenging to revise without the help of a workshop group or mentor. Students will learn how to strengthen and hone revision skills which systematically, and in great depth, address all the elements of a poem — with (one hopes) enough distance as to be able to agree with Wordsworth and define poetry as “an intense emotion recollected in tranquility.”
CC&T: THE ILLUSIVE CHAMELEON: PROSE POETRY OR FLASH FICTION?
Faculty: Dzvinia Orlowsky
What differentiates Margaret Atwood’s “Making Poison” as a prose poem from Atwood’s “Bread” as flash fiction? And why did Stephen Berg’s “Shaving” receive enthusiastic reviews as a remarkable collection of short creative nonfiction pieces while Jorie Graham, on the same book’s cover jacket, praised this collection for establishing Berg as “the master of the prose poem”? Questions such as these will be discussed in depth as we attempt to make heads & tails of two genres that often mimic each other in execution, imagery, and tone. A brief overview of the development of the prose poem from Bertrand to the present is included for newcomers to this form. This seminar incorporates an in-class writing exercise in either genre of your choice.
WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
CC&T: WRITING AND READING PICTURE BOOKS
Faculty: Jacqueline Woodson
Too often, people think picture books are the easiest of the genre to write. Any author who has written a successful picture book will say it’s far from easy. Let’s take a look at the books that do work and examine how the stories are put on the page. From narrative arc to subtext, from character development to economy of language, how does a writer tell a story that has depth in so few words? We will do a close reading of various picture books and examine the way voice, words on the page, language, and intention play an important role in speaking to our youngest readers.
Required Reading: Sarah Stewart, The Gardener; Toby Speed, Two Cool Cows; Shana Corey, You Forgot Your Skirt; Amelia Bloomer, Mo Williams, Knuffle Bunny AND Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus; Jane Yolen, Owl Moon; Cynthia Rylant, The Relatives Came AND When I Was Young in the Mountains, Chris Rascka, Yo! Yes!; Linda Sue Park, Bee-bim Bop! Mary Ann Rodman, My Best Friend; Kaz Cooke, The Terrible Underpants
CC&T: WHEN A DJINNI ISN’T ONLY A DJINNI: FANTASTICAL IMAGE & METAPHOR
Faculty: Laura Williams McCaffrey
Readers have never spoken with djinnis or sealmaidens. They’ve never touched magical golden compasses or visited a monkey king’s realm. Yet writers can depict such images so readers will derive metaphoric meanings from them. Through lecture, discussion, and close reading analysis of text, we’ll examine how writers craft complex, resonant fantastical images, ones that say something about life out here in the “real” world.
Required Reading: The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud
CROSS GENRE
CC&T: THE LITERATURE OF ROCK N’ ROLL MUSIC
Faculty: Ray Gonzalez
This class will be a brief overview of two cultural-literary topics: the literature of rock n’ roll and writing about popular culture. We will look at various themes that have emerged in the literature of rock and discuss how literary writers use rock musicians, cultural history, and the evolving world of music in their novels, poetry, and short stories. Numerous lists of fictional works about rock will be handed out, along with lists of “desert-island discs” and key components of the “rock snob” life. We will also discuss several ongoing themes that connect various kinds of literary writing about rock. These include the power of the electric guitar, the rise and fall of the “rock star,” politics and revolution, women in rock, and the impact of iPod culture on today’s music. Several tips and ideas about writing about popular culture will be presented. The market for writing about popular culture and its trends will also be discussed.
Required reading: hand-outs, music samples, and video samples will be provided.
WRITING ABOUT SPORTS
Faculty: Writer-in-Residence, Michael Steinberg
There’s a substantial body of literary work—fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, literary journalism, and drama—written on/about sports. As in all good literary writing, the subject becomes a vehicle for investigation and discovery (writing about sports), as opposed to, say, a factual rendition, retelling, or remembrance of a situation, experience, or sporting event (sports writing). To illustrate, I’ll provide short examples—from poems, stories, personal essays, memoirs, literary journalism, feature newspaper and magazine columns and articles—written by adult and YA authors. We’ll also discuss ways that writers can use sport both as a metaphor and a medium for exploring larger human concerns. We’ll either do a short free write in class, or I’ll bring a prompt you can take with you.
CRITICAL WRITING & RESEARCH
CC&T: NO MORE ANGST: CRITICAL WRITING FOR CREATIVE WRITERS
Guest Faculty: Melanie Drane
Trepidation toward annotations and the critical essay seems an almost universal phenomenon among creative writers in MFA programs. Yet the critical essay semester offers an opportunity to inquire into the heart of issues that matter urgently to us as writers. It can be an intense, transforming experience. This class will explore critical writing as an endeavor of self-discovery and adventure.
We will also discuss why critical writing is an essential part of the MFA degree—specifically, how our resources of community, craftsmanship, and imagination are expanded by cognizance of our literary antecedents and cultures beyond our own. With this approach, the critical semester will leave you with a broader, more confident awareness of the creative terrain available to you as a writer.
CC&T: WHAT CREATIVE WRITERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LITERARY THEORY
Faculty: Joy Castro
The short answer: Absolutely nothing. Plenty of brilliant and successful creative writers choose not to engage with contemporary literary theory at all, and they sleep fine at night. On the other hand, if theory is intriguing to you (or makes you nervous) and you’d like to know more about it, you'll be well served by this lecture-style class. We will do a quick-and-dirty overview of formalist, historical, and biographical criticism (i.e., old school criticism), and then turn to some of the foundational principles of what’s known as “critical theory.” We’ll demystify psychoanalytic/psychological criticism, Marxism, feminism, reader response/reception, structuralism & deconstruction, New Historicism, cultural studies, queer theory, postcolonial theory, body studies, trauma studies, and ecocriticism. Most important, we’ll have fun with theory and learn to use it as a fruitful jumping-off point for creative writing.
Required reading: Cixous, Helene, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (essay)
CAREER DEVELOPMENT
ES&S: THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW
Faculty: Randall Kenan
This seminar will focus on the practical skills, techniques and strategies for interviewing various types of subjects for different formats and publications, from oral histories to profiles to other forms. We will review basic questioning practices, the psychology of the interviewee and the interviewer, and the importance of equipment and preparedness. We will look at the work and styles of significant interviewers—Truman Capote, Studs Terkel, Adrianne Nicole LeBlanc, Joseph Mitchell, Susan Orleans, John McPhee, and others. The class will employ a few in-class interview exercises to illustrate points.
Required reading: Joe Gould’s Secret, Joseph Mitchell
ES&S: “YOU READING TO ME?”
Faculty: Laure-Anne Bosselaar
At readings, have you sometimes been disappointed not by the work, but by the way it was read? In this inter-active session, we’ll learn to bring our poems or prose to life by developing the ability to engage the public and allow our work to have maximum impact on the audience. With some easy but essential “tricks,” we’ll develop techniques that will help us get our work across fluently, and appear confident and convincing at all times.
Requirement: Each participant should bring a three-to-five minute piece of writing she/he would like to practice performing, as well as a text (poetry or prose) by another author.
CC&T: CREATIVE WRITERS IN THE CLASSROOM: A TEACHING PRACTICUM
Writer-in-Residence: Mike Steinberg
Suppose you’re in a low residency program (like this one) and you want to teach at a university, small college, community college, or adult education program? Since you can’t realistically compete (for tenure-stream jobs) with TA’s who have extensive, hands-on experience, your best asset/qualification will still be your familiarity with the kinds of composing processes and strategies it takes to teach writing workshops of all kinds. That said, the positions you’ll most likely qualify for are with English departments that need adjunct writer/teachers—teachers, that is, who can and want to teach freshman writing—and possibly advanced composition*. In this session, I’ll provide examples and prompts, in addition to sharing strategies and exercises that have worked well in both composition and creative writing workshops. And of course we’ll talk about the vagaries of the job market: more specifically, the ways in which you’ll need to present yourself when you’re looking for a job.
*Aspiring K-12 teachers will need additional course work for certification, but the things we’ll discuss can be adapted to teaching writing at all levels, K-graduate school.
CC&T: STONE BY STONE: ASSEMBLING A BOOK MANUSCRIPT
Faculty member: Steven Huff
Too often writers attempt to collect their work in a book-length manuscript using a sort of numbers game—do I have enough good poems to make a book? Enough good stories?—without considering the aesthetics and craft necessary to give the book the shape and power of careful selection. In this class we will examine a few principles of arranging work by theme, and tone, avoiding aesthetic clashes. We’ll talk about the editorial process—both from the author’s and the editor’s position—and touch a bit on how books are made. We’ll also talk about how assembling a book manuscript can help to organize and motivate the practice of your art.
You are encouraged to bring your manuscript to class—in whatever stage it is in. In the last hour of the class we will do some hands-on sorting and organizing, and write a new table of contents. (Open to 3rd & 4th-semester and graduating students only.)
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
ES&S: TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING BEHIND THE WALLS
Faculty member: Helen Elaine Lee
In this seminar we will discuss the experience of teaching creative writing to people who are incarcerated. I will share my background teaching in Massachusetts prisons and houses of correction. We will discuss the assigned texts and talk about the questions which arise from the readings. What can you expect from this endeavor? Why do it? What is different about the classroom behind the walls? What kinds of exercises are effective? What particular sensitivity and awareness are required? What kinds of writing do prisoners produce? How can writing change lives?
Required reading: X, Malcolm, “Coming to an Awareness of Language”
Lamb, Wally, ed. Couldn’t Keep it to Myself (read at least three pieces in this anthology)
ES&S: THE TELLING ROOM: BUILDING A GRASS-ROOTS COMMUNITY WRITING CENTER
Guest faculty: Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Writing is solitary and can have little to do with the community in which the writer lives. Founded in Portland, Maine by three accomplished writers, The Telling Room aims to create community among local writers and put kids ages eight to 18 in contact with authors & mentors. The Telling Room provides free writing workshops, brings award-winning writers to town, and publishes anthologies of student work. Director Gibson Fay-LeBlanc will talk about why (and how) his organization does what it does and what it’s like to write and do nonprofit work.
ES&S: WRITING THAT MATTERS
Guest Faculty: Gary Duehr
In this seminar, students of all genres will explore how to create work that matters to the world at large, beyond the literary community. Several brief exercises—writing an epistle, writing a persona piece, retelling a story from a newspaper article from a participant’s point of view, for example—will act as springboards for discussion. Questions we will address include “How can writers enter a cultural dialogue?” and “What responsibilities do writers have toward building community?”
Required reading: Examples will be provided via handouts from Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché (Norton, 1993)
CULTURAL MATTERS
CC&T: INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION
Guest Faculty: Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright
Translation as an art begins with failure. The translator of a poem cannot help but fail to reproduce the poem. The art consists in finding correspondences, in analogy. In this seminar I will introduce altering moves translators use to discover these correspondences. I will read translations of poems by a range of international poets, briefly discuss my own work, and then take a look at multiple renditions of the same poem with the class and attempt to create one good version. Although this class will focus on the translation of poetry, its themes and concepts can be applied to the translation of most genres of literature.
CC&T: CENSORSHIP & LITERARY SURVIVAL
Guest Faculty: Alexander J. Motyl
This seminar will consist of two one-hour parts. The first will be a lecture discussing how censorship was established in the USSR, who implemented it, how it affected literature and the arts, and how writers responded. The lecture will focus on the experience of Soviet writers and poets in general and in Soviet Ukraine in particular.
The second part will be a workshop in which students will be asked to write prose and poetry according to the censorship criteria in place in the Soviet Union. (Three such criteria were that writing glorify the working class, the “leading role” of the Communist Party, and the so-called “friendship of peoples”.) In this manner, participants will get a hands-on feel of how censorship affects the creative process. Students will read and discuss their work in class.
WRITERS ON THE WEB
ES&S: FOUNDING AND RUNNING AN ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE
Guest Faculty: Rob Arnold
Online journals are not only gaining in legitimacy and popularity, but are rapidly becoming the locus for a new kind of literary movement. This session will explore the realities and challenges of creating and running an online literary journal, including tactics for soliciting the first issue, building your readership, and establishing an editorial identity that will guide the development of issues to come.
ES&S: BLOGGING FOR REAL WRITERS
Guest Faculty: Jessica Lipnack
Do you fantasize about having a daily—or hourly, depending on how obsessive you are—outlet for all those sentences running around in your head? Consider blogging. No rejections! No editing! Only your pure, brilliant prose for all the world to click. Learn how to choose topics, write quick posts, and attract editors who ask you to write for them.
Required Preparation:
To prepare, check out these blogs: a novelist < lailalalami.com/blog >, a hospital CEO http:// runningahospital.blogspot.com, and this workshop’s instructor, www.endlessknots.com.
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