For Real: Writing Based on Interview and Documentary Sources

Catalog description

How can you craft a story from the real? This course will give you the skills, strategies, and support to create your own interview and research-based piece of writing (fiction or nonfiction). Students will hone the practice of listening, recording, asking questions and writing. We'll deep dive on dialogue, structure, and look at different strategies for making art based on interviews. We'll study seminal texts, and over the course, students will create their own crafted narratives based on people's real words. We'll look at graphic novels, verbatim theatre (texts crafted from interviews), poetry, autofiction, photography and film. What might you investigate and create? We'll all work alongside each other, crafting, workshopping, and shaping your own project from the initial idea to the final project. Discover what's possible when you work from the material of real life.