English 290F - Spring, 2015

Seminar in Creative Writing of Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Corin, Lucy
Time: M 12:10-3:00
Location: 308 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 in order to be "done" with a work, but to deepen and push at a work. Consistent, thorough attention to peer fictions both in writing and in discussion is required.

If you are working on a novel please contact me so we can talk about ways we might workshop it in class.

We'll have a course reader of short stories. I like to assign them in relation to topics that come up in class or what I sense would be helpful based on the writing I'm seeing. I'll also bring a selection of possible books (collections, short novels) and on the first day of class and we'll decide which to read together this quarter.

Grading

You are graded holistically on the quality of your creative and analytic work, both written and oral.

Texts

Course Reader