Literature and writing course where incoming graduate students analyze book-length memoir, selected autobiographical poems, and an autobiographical novel, and practice essential elements of craft and the process of revision.

In-depth survey of the elements of fiction, focusing on the craft of both short story and story cycle. Discussion of such authors as Alice Munro, John Fante, Bessie Head, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Walker, Tobias Wolff, Toni Cade Bambara, James Joyce, James Baldwin, Wang Ping, Willa Cather, Lorrie Moore, Dagoberto Gilb, and others. Students learn story structure, plot, theme, point of view, characterization, sensibilities of place, and the passage of time in narrative.

Why does a writer challenge conventions in the first place? How can a mixed-genre approach to narrative aid a writer in his investigation of where he comes from? How can a break with convention help the writer articulate her worldview? How can straying from tradition assist a writer in his unearthing of complex personal, social, and political problems? In short, how do blurred boundaries inform meaning? In this course, students write fiction while studying the work of writers who cannot be confined to a single genre” the poet turned journalist, a poet-biographer, fiction-writing photographer.

Beginning with the mechanics of a single chapter, this workshop investigates the craft of longer works. We develop the progression of two or more chapters and then take up the issues of through-lines, scenic development, and the evolution of themes.

This course examines the historical development of the short story. We study the interplay between the conventions of romance and realism in short stories by Nikolai Gogol and Gustave Flaubert, before studying twentieth century formalism in short stories by Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter and others. Contemporary writers explored include Leslie Marmon Silko, Donald Barthelme, and Russell Banks. We conclude with micro-fiction and graphic storytelling.

This workshop course addresses issues of form, structure, dramatization, voice, characterization, fictional time and place, point of view, and theme in fiction. Each week we discuss examples of these isolated topics in the context of both published short stories and students’ own manuscripts. Through ongoing feedback, students address the practice of revision as an essential component of fiction writing.