English 290F - Fall, 2023

Creative Writing: Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Houston, Pam
Time: T 12:10-3:00
Location: SHREM

Description

Expanded Course Description 290F/NF Fall 2023:

In this class we will be workshopping and reading both fiction and nonfiction. We will investigate some of the essential components of written storytelling, including (but not limited to) image, metaphor, form, structure, voice, dialogue, character, scene, beginnings, endings, narrative arc. We will enact, witness and critique what I believe to be the central mechanism of narrative prose: the translation of the emotional stakes of the story onto its physical landscape, the way we dip our ladles into the bottomless pot of metaphor soup that is our lived and imagined experience and pull out what we need. We will be aiming for layered stories in which every line is working at least two ways at once, stories in which the language is more than simply a flat bed trailer in which the writer hauls the content of the story around but occasionally rises into what Steve Almond calls the lyric register. We will also discuss, no doubt, the role of the writer in these complicated political times.
I feel that it is my job as workshop leader to create and hold a space in which students feel free to take stylistic, artistic, and emotional risks.
Each student will be expected to turn in two new pieces of writing during the course of the quarter (stories, novel chapters, essays, memoir chapters), and turn in either a revision or a new story/chapter at the quarter's end. There will be weekly reading and brief weekly exercises at the beginning of the semester.




Reading List: The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Haunting of Hajji Hotek, Jamil Kochai
The Birdcatcher, Gayl Jones
Red Paint: Sasha La Pointe
Book of Delights, Ross Gay
Assorted essays/stories available on line.


Grading

Grading will be based on the quality of original material handed in as well as the quality of commentary on other participants' stories, and quality of discussion about the assigned reading.

Texts

The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Birdcatcher, Gayl Jones
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, Jamil Jan Kochai
Red Paint, Sasha Lapointe
Long Live The Tribe of Fatherless Girls, TKira Madden
Assorted on line essays/stories