This course provides an introduction to the central concepts and techniques of fiction writing and creative writing workshop. Through exposure to a variety of literary texts across genres, periods, and styles, students learn to read as fiction writers—focusing as much on how stories are constructed as on what they say or mean—in order to enhance their knowledge of and facility with the basic elements of storytelling, including setting, character, plot, dialogue, tone, voice, point of view, symbolism, and so on. Students likewise develop an applied understanding of process, revision, and craft by composing their own stories and submitting them for consideration in workshop, using the constructive criticism of their peers to aid and guide the revisions and rewriting of their own creative work. May not be enrolled as the following Classifications: Fifth Year or Senior. No pre-requisites.

This course provides an introduction to the central concepts and techniques of fiction writing and creative writing workshop. Through exposure to a variety of literary texts across genres, periods, and styles, students learn to read as fiction writers—focusing as much on how stories are constructed as on what they say or mean—in order to enhance their knowledge of and facility with the basic elements of storytelling, including setting, character, plot, dialogue, tone, voice, point of view, symbolism, and so on. Students likewise develop an applied understanding of process, revision, and craft by composing their own stories and submitting them for consideration in workshop, using the constructive criticism of their peers to aid and guide the revisions and rewriting of their own creative work. May not be enrolled as the following Classifications: Fifth Year or Senior. No pre-requisites.

“Artists are here to disturb the peace,” James Baldwin reminds us. Through examination of a diverse collection of writing across time, space, genre, and style, we will increase our appreciation and apprehension of the music, mystery, and art, in sentences and narratives, with an eye toward building fictions of our own. Our approach to character, plot, style, and theme will critique conventional ways of thinking about fiction as we aim to produce our best literary art. Among the writers we’ll read are Djuna Barnes, Roland Barthes, Paul Beatty, Alejo Carpentier, Guy Davenport, Samuel R. Delany, Helen DeWitt, Jenny Erpenbeck, Renee Gladman, László Krasznahorkai, Robert Lopez, Garielle Lutz, Joyelle McSweeney, and George Saunders. There may be required textbooks or materials associated with this course.

This course provides an introduction to the central concepts and techniques of fiction writing and creative writing workshop. Through exposure to a variety of literary texts across genres, periods, and styles, students learn to read as fiction writers—focusing as much on how stories are constructed as on what they say or mean—in order to enhance their knowledge of and facility with the basic elements of storytelling, including setting, character, plot, dialogue, tone, voice, point of view, symbolism, and so on. Students likewise develop an applied understanding of process, revision, and craft by composing their own stories and submitting them for consideration in workshop, using the constructive criticism of their peers to aid and guide the revisions and rewriting of their own creative work. May not be enrolled as the following Classifications: Fifth Year or Senior. No pre-requisites.