Course Descriptions Occasions for Poetry Wednesdays, February 10th-March 3rd 6:00 pm-8:00 pm, Dodge 407 Instructor: LiAundra Grace Occasions are not limited to particular events or circumstances. In fact, any moment can constitute an occasion for writing poetry. In this class we will discuss the nature and content of specific poems as well as that of your poems. We will most likely examine poems by William Carlos Williams, Yeats, Merwin, Marie Howe, Gertrude Stein, Paisley Rekdal, Mark Strand, Mark Bibbins, E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, James Galvin, Emerson, D.A. Powell, and Claribel Alegria. Writing the Half-Hour Comedy Pilot Wednesdays, February 10th-March 3rd 6:00 pm-9:00 pm, Dodge 603 Instructor: Libby Leonard The construction of a half-hour comedy involves some pretty serious rules. In this class, we’ll break down current shows in order to get your brain used to rhythm and structure and then apply it to your own original pilot ideas. By the end of the workshop, rather than coming up with a full script, we’ll come up with the world of your show and a beat sheet of the pilot episode. Some of the shows we’ll be viewing either in or outside of class include: 30 Rock, Peep Show, The Office, Modern Family, Extras, Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Adventures of Pete and Pete. The rest of class time will be devoted to the reading and critiquing of the student’s work. Please start thinking of one or two ideas that we'll get to the second week. (And make sure to just relax and have fun with it). Openings and Closings Thursdays, February 11th-March 4th 6:00 pm-8:00 pm, Dodge 407 Instructor: Emily Adler In this class we will focus on beginnings and endings. Often, beginnings serve to draw the reader in or subvert the reader’s expectations, while endings are where the reader learns what the writer is really after. As writers, the approach we take in the beginning of a piece of prose can shape the rest of the story, while nailing the ending coalesces the theme. Editors often say, I read the first paragraph and last paragraph, then I decide whether to read the whole thing. Although editors’ motivations may be commercial, still most stories are only as good as how they begin and end. You could have the most gorgeous prose (and we will work on making our prose ever-more gorgeous, as this is always a worthwhile pursuit) but if the beginning and/or ending don’t work, the story won’t work either. In this course, we will workshop student writing, as well as discuss readings. Writers should feel free to come to class on their workshop day with alternative ideas they’ve considered for approaches to the beginning and ending. We will workshop all pages submitted and discuss the writer’s questions/ideas at the end. Discussions of readings will especially focus on drilling down into what the writer accomplishes on the first and last pages. What‘s the set up, the surprise, and the revelation. One reading may be an exemplar of a final turn, while another may be a study in beginnings. Reading may include: Raymond Chandler, Mary McCarthy, Janet Malcolm, Natalia Ginzburg, and Richard Ford. There will also be in-class writing exercises associated with some of the readings. Becoming Poets Thursdays, February 11th-March 4th 6:00 pm-8:00 pm, Dodge 411 Instructor: Chris Garrecht-Williams All great artists are influenced by those their greatness eclipses. If we can remember this, and value the existence of great poems beyond the importance of authors, our individual successes becomes less important. We are all engaged in the ancient practice of trying to make sense of life through literature, and there is intrinsic importance to this extraordinarily a-capitalistic endeavor. I’m interested in our class being a forum in which we come to take our writing more seriously. To facilitate this the majority of our time will be spent on in-class exercises and workshopping poems that you have composed outside of class. However, we will begin each class by looking at poems by our poetic fore parents and outstanding contemporaries, as well as taking a brief and risky look into the lyric inventiveness within the most popular poetic form of our day: Rap. In order to do so we will spend some time studying rhythm in lyric poetry and exploring how attention to it can improve our own poems. Readings may include Frank O’Hara, Lorine Niedecker, Anne Sexton, Josh Bell, Lucie Brock-Broido, Yusef Komunyakaa, Allen Ginsberg, Reginald Gibbons, John Keats, ee cummings, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Albert Goldbarth, Slyvia Plath, Gerald Stern, Thom Gunn, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jay-Z, Cool Calm Pete, Babbletron, Nas and others. Travels to Pandora in My Bathrobe: Experimenting with Short Fiction Fridays, February 12th-March 5th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Dodge 407 Instructor: Naomi Waletzky This class will be both a casual study of the contemporary short story as well as provide a relaxed environment in which we can workshop and discuss our own work. We will read and discuss writers who have taken their work in new and innovative directions, developing voices that are wholly original but also respected by literary critics and the mass intelligentsia. How do these writers take the ordinary and make it extraordinary? What do they have in common that is odd, transgressive, unusual and compelling but also completely relatable? How are they advancing or changing the form of the contemporary short story? How do they compare to our favorite short stories we read in high school—i.e. Poe, Carver, etc.? How do they fit into what we generally define as a “short story?” Reading will include selections from Donald Barthelme, Junot Diaz, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Aimee Bender, Kate Braverman, Sherman Alexie, Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, Wells Tower, Joshua Ferris, Mary Gaitskill, Jorge Luis Borges, Lorrie Moore, and others. Students will also be expected to keep an eye out for writers that their fellow classmates (or their teacher) might not be knowledgeable of, and keep up with short fiction in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and at least one other journal in order to build a relationship with these publications to understand the current marketplace. They will be expected to write a one-page response paper each week to a particular short story that especially resonated with them. (Nothing formal, just immediate reactions – what works, what doesn’t, how this advances the form, etc.) Writing exercises will be done in and out of class each week after focusing on an element of craft from the reading. The workshop submissions will be due on a rotating schedule in order to give each student a chance to receive feedback on their work. This is meant to help you grow and act like a writer. The goal is to support you as you develop your own particular voice. So grab your bathrobe, and let’s travel to Pandora together. TENTATIVE 6-WEEK SYLLABUS 1st CLASS

• INTRODUCTIONS: What the class will be about; the Name Game; why on this earth you would ever want to become a writer; favorite books, authors and current reality television stars; 6-word biographies.
• Read, discuss “People Like That Are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore; the use of fiction to mask memoir, etc.
• Read, discuss essays on the creative process.

2nd CLASS

• Workshop Submissions
• In-Class Writing Exercises
• Potential Topic: PLOT IN THE SHORT STORY (Alice Munro, Wells Tower, Sherman Alexie)

3rd CLASS

• Workshop Submissions
• In-Class Writing Exercises
• Potential Topic: VOICE AND NARRATIVE STYLE (Kate Braverman, Deb Olin Unferth, Amy Hempel)

4thCLASS

• Workshop Submissions
• In-Class Writing Exercises
• Potential Topic: DEVELOPING CHARACTERS

5th CLASS

• Workshop Submissions
• In-Class Writing Exercises
• Potential Topic: THE BIZARRE (Borges, Murakami, Barthelme, Aimee Bender)
• POTENTIAL WRITER’S VISIT

6th CLASS

• Workshop Submissions
• In-Class Writing Exercises
• Potential Topic: FLASH FICTION AND THE REALLY SHORT STORY (Lydia Davis)
• SO LONGS, FAREWELLS, AUF WIEDERSEHENS AND GOODBYES, CLASS BAKE-OFF AND PICTURES.

The Craft of First Bodies - First Novel/Short Story Collection Workshop Fridays, February 12th- March 5th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Dodge 411 Instructor: Frances Cha In this class, we will be workshopping our first novels or short story collections, discussing overarching themes and the weaving together of multiple storylines, as well as use of temporality in a longer piece of work. Readings may include Maile Meloy, David Schickler, Jeffrey Eugenides, Chris Adrian, Andrew Sean Greer, Evan S. Connell, Lorrie Moore, Amy Tan, and Charles Baxter. Voice in Fiction Fridays, February 12th-March 5th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Dodge 413 Instructor: Laura Jean Moore This class will be a combination workshop and intensive study of voice in fiction. We will read excerpts and short pieces from many writers including George Orwell, John Cheever, Mikhail Bulgakov, Don Delillo, Toni Morrison, James Salter, Virginia Woolf, Saul Bellow, and others. Selections will be chosen to illustrate how different writers create voice through careful syntax and word choice. We will look at how these writers use voice to enhance plot and story rather than distract from these essential components of good fiction writing. Over the course of our six weeks, we will also workshop multiple pieces of our own writing, experimenting and honing our storytelling skills while looking for a voice of our own. As in any workshop, students will receive feedback from their peers and myself regarding ways to improve their pieces; we will, however, pay special attention to that elusive quality of voice, that way that we, and only we, can tell our stories. By way of Sonnet: Intro to Lyric Argumentation Fridays, February 12th-March 6th 12:00pm-2:00pm, Dodge 407 Instructor: Justin Boening “The sonnet has good claim to be one of the oldest and most useful verse forms in English. Like the engraving or the string quartet it provides simple yet flexible means to a classic artistic end: the expression of as much gravity, substance and lyrical beauty as a deceptively modest form can bear. The form is a minor one, but capable of the greatest things and, like all such forms which potential variety keeps alive, must jealously preserve its true lineaments and their rules.” (John Fuller) But what are these most essentially “true lineaments?” How does this lyric wonder continue to buoy itself? In this seminar/workshop, a study of innovations and determinants, violations and obedience, will inform and develop our own strategies for constructing lyric argument. Each student will generate a weekly poem in response to the approach of one of our subjects. There is no previous poetry experience required (only the will). Readings will include (but not be restricted to) poems by:

• Edmund Spenser
• William Shakespeare
• John Donne
• John Keats
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• W.B. Yeats
• Seamus Heaney
• Louise Gluck
• Henri Cole
• Karen Volkman
• Ben Lerner

Balloon Boy and the Weight of the Heart: Experiments in Using Nonfiction to Reach Fictive Universes and Universal Truths Fridays, February 12th-March 12th 12:00 pm-2:00 pm, Dodge 411 Instructor: Harvest Henderson In this five-week class, we will read an array of mostly contemporary short fiction, short nonfiction, and other (short) pieces that bridge the spaces between in unanticipated and/or innovative ways. We’ll discuss the techniques that the authors of these works use to transform the banal and everyday into the bizarre and exciting. We'll bring in factual found items to share with the class—science and technology articles, medical diagrams, historical and news stories, Craigslist ads, the limited warrantee on the microwave and our own personal experiences—and use these as springboards or tunnels to our own short works of hybrid oddity. Readings may include selections from Nick Flynn, Nathan Englander, Sei Shonogon, Rebecca Brown, Michelle Seaton, Miljenko Jergovic, Daniel Orozco, George W. S. Trow, David Shields, Amelia Kahaney, Dave Eggers, Haruki Murakami, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lauren Slater, Annie Dillard, and others. The reading load will be varied and very manageable—roughly ten to twenty pages per week—and there will be one writing experiment assigned in each class, culminating in an informal workshop of our results. Hilarity Saturdays, February 13th-March 6th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Dodge 407 Instructor: Jeramey Kraatz In this course we will look at a handful of the forms that humor writing currently takes (satire, cultural critique, caricature, the personal essay, etc), and analyze the ways in which these forms triumph or fail. We’ll be focusing mainly on fiction and nonfiction pieces, though a poem or two will probably find its way into the readings. Emphasis will be placed not on what we find humorous, but why we think it’s so funny (or not, as the case may be). In addition, we’ll be workshopping our own attempts at humor writing so that you can finally answer the question “Aren’t I hilarious?” Or at least figure out what’s working and what may need some attention in your own humorous works. Readings may include pieces by Sei Shonagon, David Sedaris, Meghan Daum, Chuck Klosterman, Lydia Davis, and others, as well as work from The New Yorker, This American Life, The Moth, and The Onion. Stanzaic Deviants Saturdays, February 13th-March 6th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Dodge 411 Instructor: Eric Burg Plot, structure, meter, rhythm, form, are all templates to enhance our understanding of language. They are not what drive great writing; rather, the constructs of language are what give literature definition. Literature, stemming from this interpretation, is not a product of form, but a culmination of the veracity of experience and the desire to record it, artfully. It is basic knowledge that many of the works that comprise the canon of western literature, were, at their advent, considered to be aberrant. The poem is resolved instead, as something to be experienced, rather than the embodiment of a craft to be understood. That understanding is the locus from which any reader of any ability can go forth and find a meaning greater than information from the text, and in that same vein, the assurance that any budding writer can go forth and improve on what they wrote the previous day. There is no rubric to literature; there is no algebra that creates the perfect poem. Great literature is an intimation of human experience. This course will include a reading list of aberrant forms of startling humanity that will perhaps inform your own writing. Forging-on with this ideal, we will workshop your own poems on a weekly basis and have a blast doing it. Promise. Reading may include works by Richard Hugo, James Dickey, James Wright, George Oppen, W. Wordworth, G.M. Hopkins, Charles Wright, Henri Cole, D.A. Powell, Frank Stanford, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, Jennifer Knox, and others. Intro to Screenwriting Saturdays, February 13th-March 6th 1:00pm-4:00 pm, Dodge 507 Instructor: Gina Atwater Intro to Screenwriting will enable students to write stories in script format. The class will explore the craft of storytelling in both short and feature-length films by analyzing successful scripts and by writing, critiquing, and revising scripts written by each student. Students will leave the class having written one 3-12 minute short and an outline for a feature script. In addition, students will learn how to pitch their feature-length ideas, and will be introduced loglines, synopses, and treatments. Introduction to Contemporary Art Spaces in New York City Saturdays, February 13th-March 6th 1:00pm-4:00pm Instructor: N. Dash The class will explore contemporary galleries in New York City. We will visit areas such as the Lower East Side, Chelsea and 57th street. We will also visit the Biennial at the Whitney and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Students will be assigned to research specific shows and give presentations to the class. Limited to ten people. ============================================================== To register, please contact Chris Garrecht-Williams at writingcats@gmail.com with your 1. NAME 2. UNI/EMAIL 3. CLASS PREFERENCES (please list two classes to ensure placement) and any questions you may have. Best, Chris Garrecht-Williams CA/T and INTRO Coordinator Writing Division