English 290F - Spring, 2012

Seminar in Creative Writing of Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Corin, Lucy
Time: R 12:10-3:00
Location: 120 Voorhies

Description

This is a graduate level fiction writing workshop. My approach privileges intensity and awareness of language textures and narrative shape, and asks each student to make each new work press the boundaries (intellectual, emotional, formal) of previous work. While making an immaculate-feeling piece of art is the ultimate goal, and we will work toward making your stories as beautiful as they can be, I am less interested in you finishing pieces than I am in you challenging yourself artistically. Willingness to revise, however, is essential to this challenge—and I believe revising is a skill you can learn if you are willing. You are expected, therefore, to engage in revision at some point during the quarter, not to be done with a work, but to deepen and push at a work. Consistent, thorough attention to peer fictions both written and in discussion is required. Most or all of you will have just read a ton of stuff for me in 235, so we will be almost all workshop all the time, with model stories or excerpts distributed as needed to support issues that arise in discussion.

If you are working on a novel please contact me asap we can discuss the best way to work on a novel in a course of this format.