Advanced Creative Nonfiction

Catalog description

For strong writers and impressive thinkers. Gets students thinking more deeply about their own craft choices and figuring out ways to experiment and maybe even fail in areas where they feel the weakest, while also learning how to recognize the specific quirks, talents or flairs that make them unique as a creative writer. To that end, starts with short in-class writing exercises aimed at challenging students as creative nonfiction writers and helping clarify their own writerly identity. Then launches into workshops where the goal is not to 'fix' anyone's works of creative nonfiction, but instead to encourage each student to articulate and refine his or her own inner editor and critic. Students read essays, literary journalism and short memoir by established writers throughout the semester, using those as craft guides of a sort, as well as pleasure reading. Students must be active, thoughtful and respectful participants during discussions of outside essays and throughout workshops. Successful students turn in new and exciting works of creative nonfiction, ideally ones that challenge them as writers but that are written with sufficient time to revise and fine tune them before the workshop takes place. Finally, students are supportive members of the writing community in our classroom and, via the literary magazine activity, participants in the larger writer community as well.