Drew University Moodle

“It still comes as a shock to realize that I don’t write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.” –Patricia Hampl

This writing workshop will expand and deepen your understanding of creative nonfiction—a genre that ranges from the lyric essay to narrative journalism. Most commonly, it describes a form wherein writers apply the craft of fiction to true stories. We will read a range of styles and experiment with subject and form. We will learn from literary mentors, including Zadie Smith, Anthony Doerr, T Kira Madden, JoAnn Beard, and others. We will determine how to accurately render people, places, and experiences, and how to create honest, engaging work. We will ask hard questions: How much can we trust our reader to “get” our intentions? What’s the best structure to house the story we want to tell? How do we write about real people? We will practice the art of looking closely, of honing in on salient details. The workshop-style seminar will depend on active participation, in-class and take-home writing assignments, thorough critiques of one another’s work, and a commitment to the process of revision.

This class will illuminate the ways in which every Poet can use introductory craft concepts—while drawing upon their unique experiences, relationship to language, and innate sensibilities—to inform successful poetry. Once enrolled in this workshop, students will thereafter be (and be referred to as) Poets. This workshop will focus on providing a community wherein Poets share their poems and respond to the poems of their fellow classmates, both in equal measure. In each class, Poets will partake in an interactive exercise that is demonstrated or inspired by their weekly reading and geared toward the generation or revision of poetry. These exercises will teach Poets craft-based concepts for the page or performance, and they will reveal various points of access into everyday poetical and critical thinking. With the support and observations of the class as a team-oriented unit, each Poet will uncover what is unique and essential to their individual poetic voice and body of work as a whole.

This workshop-style seminar is the study of fiction for practiced writers, and is designed to move you beyond the rudiments of craft that you learned in English 332. We will read widely, from selected short stories to a full-length collection, all to deepen our understanding of the art of fiction. We will focus as much on the rules as how we can break them. Participants will compose and revise two short stories, thoroughly evaluate classmates’ work, and deliver presentations on literary journals so as to learn more about the publishing industry. Your aspirations as writers will be taken seriously in this course and we will, at the semester’s end, look into venues where you may submit your work for publication.