This course is intended for anyone interested in writing arts criticism about music, film, architecture, painting, photography, sculpture, dance, literature, or any other art. This class is also for artists-musicians, photographers, composers, painters, architects, curators, designers, poets, actors, novelists, sculptors, dramatists, dancers, and filmmakers who are interested in pursuing writing that either reflects on their own artistic practices or that crosses and combines arts (writing and visual art, writing and music, writing and film, writing and design, etc.). Each week we will read some exemplary instances of arts writing by arts critics present and past, as well as by artists. This is a writing workshop with an emphasis on how we might intensify and augment our own writing about the arts across our various designated forms - whether essays, reviews, interviews, podcasts, websites catalogs, or multi-arts experimental projects.

If everyone's a critic, why do we need arts writers? This writing workshop investigates arts journalism—encompassing theater, screens, architecture, food, dance, opera, fashion, music visual arts, books, and more—and what it means to be a feature writer or critic in the 21st century. We look with an editor's eye at classics (think: Edmund Wilson to Susan Sontag) and contemporaries (beyond your New Yorker). Weekly writing assignments include: first-person essays, Q&A interviews, reviews, and blog stories, with an opportunity at pitching and publishing to both mainstream and alternative outlet editors. Guest lecturers include traditional as well as e-publishing, from Amazon and the New York Times, to offer their viewpoint on what good arts writing means to us today.