This signature workshop engages close reading as a literary, political, and spiritual practice. Students develop creative and critical writing in response to a range of poetry and nonfiction readings and even films. In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison wrote “Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer’s imagination, for the world that imagination evokes. Both require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.” In the spirit of this assertion, time in class will be devoted to discussing both assigned readings and original student work. The aim of the workshop is to create the circumstances that might allow you to create the strongest work of your writing life. Professor Polito, founder of the MFA in Creative Writing and the Writing & Democracy Honors Program at The New School, poet biographer, essayist, critic, and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, will work with students toward the successful completion of a final nonfiction, poetry, or hybrid genre project of their own devising. This may take any form—personal or public subjects; experimental or classic approaches; a single sustained work, or a succession of shorter pieces.