Writing Courses

This hybrid craft class/workshop will survey the topography of craft. Each week, we will focus on one term or topic that commonly arises in writing workshops and then will dig into its meaning and origin. We will identify established conventions attached to each topic and ask what it’s like to explode them. What do we really mean when we talk about the stakes of a story? What, on an essential level, is point of view? How do we distinguish the narrator from the author? What is a beginning, and what is an end? What shapes can hold narrative beyond the arc? How can sensory details drive a work of fiction rather than merely decorate it? And what is style? We will read stories, essays, and excerpts by authors such as Uchida Hyakken, Clarice Lispector, D. Foy, Deb Olin Unferth, Garielle Lutz, James Hannaham, Renee Gladman, Robert Lopez, Yasunari Kawabata, Rachel Cusk, Pema Chodron, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, and Arthur Bradford. We will also discuss songs, films, semiotics, and other projects that twine with fiction. Every exploration will be accompanied by at least one writing experiment. When we discuss pieces by students enrolled in this class as a workshop, the writers’ craft concerns will be our first focus—and we will bring the same curious and open-minded spirit to these works in progress as we will to the published prose.

Muriel Rukeyser wrote, “If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.” In this workshop, we will explore what influences the subject and fabric of our poems and what is our necessity as a poet? We’ll explore how other forms of art, science, nature, philosophy, mythology, religion, etc. can inspire our work as poets. What shapes our own education as a poet? How has place influenced us? What are the deep sounds and music that reside within us? We’ll read and discuss poems and essays as paths to consider opportunities, strategies, and mysteries integral to the questions that we ask of our own poems. Our reading list will be somewhat organic but will include: Ai, Betts, Bachelard, Gay, Frost, Gluck, Lux, Levine, and Whitman.

Toni Morrison once wrote, “If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” She referred to the interior life of her ancestors as being a large (perhaps the largest?) charge that she, as an author, faced; the characters she created—in part from pictures, in part from the imaginative act—yielded “a kind of truth.” We are experiencing a new age of Black artists and activists, charging the world to heed their own truths; as writers, we’ll delve into the fullness of their experiences. Nana Ama Adjei-Brenyah brings magical realism to the doorstep of our daily lives; Edward P. Jones establishes setting as character, garnering comparisons to James Joyce. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay posit large questions about writing and Black identity, while Nafissa Thompson-Spires uses satire to address themes of class and culture; and both Danielle Evans and Jamel Brinkley write in a charged realist tradition that is RIEBY (my new acronym: right in everybody’s back yard!). Class readings will include essays on technique, short stories, and memoir. We’ll discuss the elements of craft as they pertain to the published literature as well as to our own work. This workshop will also have at its heart the discussion of student manuscripts and the development of constructive criticism. Talking about race, talking about craft, and talking about our own fiction should occur in an environment where everyone feels valued and supported. The road may be bumpy at times—but how else to get to that truth that Toni Morrison so prized?

In this course, we will examine contemporary voices in poetry and build our own poetry-writing practice, engaging in lively questions about process and craft as we work to define and contextualize poetry in our class discussions and workshops. Students will individually produce material and submit drafts to the poetry workshop for discussion, where we will learn to offer serious and constructive criticism. The goal of the poetry workshop is generative: It propels a dynamic revision process so that, at the end of the semester, each student will submit a portfolio of revised material. This course strives to equip students with a framework to both read and relate to poetry as an artistic discipline, as well as a means to connect individual and collective expression within a broader social, historical, political, colonial, and/or transnational context.

This course, which takes its title from Vivian Gornick’s classic book, is intended to help students settle into their voices and produce work that resonates with their experiences, interests, and insights. The prime focus will be personal essay and memoir. The course work will include workshop pieces that students develop in conversation with the instructor and shorter exercises intended to open the student’s awareness as both a reader and a writer. We will engage in a deepened practice of reading and learn to draw connections between writing and other creative fields, such as music and film.

While many books delve into the writing process, it’s rare for a semester-long class to treat the creation and maintenance of that process as a project in itself—which is what we’ll be doing—with an emphasis on prose and, especially, nonfiction writing. Through writing prompts, workshops, and the work of other writers, we’ll explore the conditions under which writers produce their most effective work and what a sustainable writing process can look like for each of us. Routine, productivity, mental obstacles, family, relationships, perfectionism, writing by hand vs. on computer, internal vs. external rewards, and tapping into the unconscious are issues that will be explored, unpacked, and questioned, along with any other issues related to the writing process that come up. Readings will include Melissa Febos, Annie Dillard, Zadie Smith, Natalie Goldberg, Samuel Delany, Ross Gay, and Jenny O’Dell. Students taking this for workshop credit will have biweekly conferences and are expected to produce two workshop pieces—between 10 and 20 pages each or one new piece and a substantial revision—that come out of our explorations of writing process. Craft class members should expect weekly writing prompts to be shared and discussed in class, with the option of further feedback during professor’s office hours.

Okay, you’ve gotten the words out—but now what? While no workshop can sit beside you while you stare at the screen, wondering what you’re supposed to do next, this class aims to get you (somewhat, maybe even very) excited about revision. Together, we’ll examine the underlying architecture of stories and have discussions that generate the kind of specific, constructive feedback that makes the revision process less like walking blindfolded. I aim to foster a community of readers with the kindness, toughness, honesty, and sensitivity that can make the workshop a unique and valuable writing tool. Ambition and risk-taking will be encouraged. Through the work, we’ll discuss the makings of strong plots, memorable characters, and strategies for creating and sustaining narrative momentum. After two weeks of craft discussions and in-class writing, the rest of the semester will be devoted to reading and responding to workshop submissions. Our discussions will be supplemented by wide-ranging outside reading geared to the needs and concerns of the class. Likely suspects include Lesley Arimah, Richard Bausch, Edith Pearlman, and Tom Perrotta.

I am amused by the idea that only some fiction is “speculative.” A blank page, after all, is not a physical construction site. What a writer puts on that page is a series of hypotheses that sponsor no life and no activity outside the page’s confines. Whether the work falls under the umbrella of “psychological realism” or “expressionism” or “science fiction” or “surrealism” or “naturalism” or “fantasy,” the goal is the same: to move, change, or otherwise affect the reader. This is the spirit in which this speculative fiction-writing workshop is offered. Our reading list will include everything from the postmodern fracture narratives of Donald Barthelme to the genre-bending world inversions of Anne Carson to the surrealism of Rahawa Haile to the madcap speculations of Harlan Ellison to the architecturally unique work of Carmen Maria Machado to the patterned realism of AM Homes. The goal in discussing these works will be to see their underlying patterns and the ways in which every story—including the realist stories—must “cheat” reality in some way to deliver its message to you. As for how the class will actually run, here are a few things I’m (relatively) sure about. Each student will bring at least one, and possibly two, stories into the classroom over the course of the semester. Students will often write in response to prompts designed to help them find a voice, take a chance, do something that they wouldn’t expect of themselves. We will, on two or three occasions, take a break from our routine to discuss a great (and yes, “speculative”) novel. We will try to do away with the words “I want” in our critiques of student stories and, instead, to attune ourselves to what each story is trying to do and to imagine how it might become more purely what it is rather than something we want it to be. If this sounds interesting, show up; we’ll work the rest out as we go.

The aim of this workshop is to help students write a long-form work—novel, memoir, or some hybrid project—from beginning toward an end. The workshop’s parallel goal is to give you, through theory and discussion, a grounded understanding of what drives a text and thereby drives a reader to read it.

The course will stretch across two semesters and discuss novels, memoirs, and hybrid forms, using traditional conventions of plot and character as a launching point for more unconventional approaches. It will be an ambitious class, as outside readings and discussions will supplement the discussion of student work. In particular, I think of a story as a kind of circuit—a system with a current that runs through it to achieve certain effects along the way, directing that energy toward some final expression of catharsis. It’s important to understand just what is inherently interesting to a stranger entering into that circuit cold—and how the guided charge and shape of its energy is a reader's engagement. I believe that first grasping traditional ideas of plot, unity, and catharsis is the best way of then branching off into other methods of building narrative interest. Som we’ll begin with Aristotle’s Poetics and contemporary adaptations of the theory of plot but soon move into other modes of thinking: how narrative plots are driven by metaphor, image chains, recursion and consecution, rhizomatic models and their variants, animistic and divinatory poetics, psychological and neurological concepts, models of desire, cinematic form, musical form, and so on. We will probably discuss a couple of films and some film theory. We’ll also discuss music theory as narrative—voice-leading, counterpoint, fugue variations, binary methods, improvisation over chord changes, etc.—as a way of generating a text. The ideas will be supported throughout with creative interpretations so that you can see how they work in practice and beyond the theory. Because it’s a yearlong effort, we’ll have latitude for stretching beyond the conventional boundaries of “workshop”: Half of each session will be devoted to outside readings, ideas, and some theory; the other half, to a more conventional peer workshop. Probably one student piece per session will be discussed in the workshop. But this also means that the ambitions of the class may be more than some can reasonably manage right now. The reading list will be demanding, probably leaning toward forms that illustrate more experimental ideas (though not entirely). It will absolutely include dark, complicated, and emotionally difficult readings. Several may be triggering to some people. Peers will be free to write what they want, as well. I’d like to ensure an open discussion, free of remonstration, in the interest of experience and learning. Please consider this before committing to the class. I’m aiming for a gestalt here and hope that the discussions and ideas will continue to unpack long after the class is over. I’ll be learning alongside you. I may try to write something, too. I’d love to think that, in the end, we created something original, enduring, and compelling.

In this course, we will read and analyze a series of personal-history narratives to discover what makes a compelling memoir. This will require both self-discovery and discovery of something outside the self. As always, in order to write meaningfully about the world, we must be fully engaged with it through deliberate thought and through focused exploration. In this course, we’ll practice the art of thinking and of self-examination—both involving silence and separation from distraction, the ongoing work of developing a relationship with one’s own intellect, and one’s own past. We’ll work on fluency in writing and will apply keen editing skills to our own sentences and paragraphs. Students should come to class with a personal story or some aspect of their history that they would like to explore in a workshop setting.

Prerequisites: Completion of at least two semesters in the MFA Writing program.

This course will prepare student-teachers with a working knowledge of theories, methods, and procedures for teaching functional and academic reading and writing skills to first-year college students. The course has two main components, which include attendance in the Teaching Good Prose pedagogy seminar held on Fridays from 12:30 to 2:10 pm, as well as a supervised Teaching Assistantship in a freshman writing class at SUNY Purchase. In the pedagogy seminar, readings and class discussions will explore strategies for designing and teaching lessons that will improve the students’ ability to compose analytical college essays; to express ideas clearly and effectively in well-developed, focused arguments with relevant and adequate evidence; and to use the style and conventions of standard academic prose. Student-teachers are supervised by an instructor and are required to attend one session of a freshman writing class per week. Additionally, student-teachers are expected to meet with students outside of class for one-to-two hours per week.

Amy Beth Wright, SUNY Purchase Faculty

This hybrid craft class/workshop will survey the topography of craft. Each week, we will focus on one term or topic that commonly arises in writing workshops; then, we will dig into its meaning and origin. We will identify established conventions attached to each topic and ask what it’s like to explode them. What do we really mean when we talk about the stakes of a story? What, on an essential level, is point of view? How do we distinguish the narrator from the author? What is a beginning, and what is an end? What shapes can hold narrative beyond the arc? How can sensory details drive a work of fiction rather than merely decorate it? And what is style? We will read stories, essays, and excerpts by authors such as Uchida Hyakken, Clarice Lispector, D. Foy, Deb Olin Unferth, Garielle Lutz, James Hannaham, Renee Gladman, Robert Lopez, Yasunari Kawabata, Rachel Cusk, Pema Chodron, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, and Arthur Bradford. We will also discuss songs, films, semiotics, and other projects that twine with fiction. Every exploration will be accompanied by at least one writing experiment. When we discuss pieces by students enrolled in this class as a workshop, the writers’ craft concerns will be our first focus—and we will bring the same curious and open-minded spirit to these works-in-progress as we will to the published prose.

As opposed to an emphasis on the big or break-through, why not celebrate the small, the minor, the ordinary? Perhaps in those spaces the radical and poetic can co-exist…prose works that are about attention and care. In this craft class, we will consider smaller forms—the fragment, brief essay, flash, report, note, fait divers, crônicas, journal entry, calamity, feuilleton, short talk, lecture, pillow book, miniature, portrait, the sketch or vignette, the little virtue or labor. Writers that we will read may include Kate Briggs, Lauren Elkin, Mieko Kanai, Fleur Jaeggy, Renee Gladman, Natalia Ginzburg, Lydia Davis, Robert Walser, Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, Sophie Calle, Anne Carson, Amina Cain, Barbara Browning, Sei Shōnagon, Rivka Galchen, Claire-Louise Bennett, Barbara Browning, Etel Adnan, T Fleischmann, and Moyra Davey. Students will read and write small forms weekly.

This craft class, open to writers of any genre, will use methods derived from the world of dance to explore new ways to generate and revise compelling writing. Shifting back and forth between dance studio and seminar table, movement will be our starting point in finding connections between physical embodiment and literary expression—which will allow us to reexamine our writing practice. Areas of dance and performance from which we will draw and that overlap with writing concerns include techniques for heightening physical perception, movement through space as a gateway to memory, dance as a method for accessing heritage, the use of randomness in composition, and choreography derived from improvisation, as well as relationships between dance and nature. While the emphasis of the class will be on using movement to find new approaches to writing, participants are more than welcome to bring in works-in-progress and their own existing methods. For inspiration and insight, we will watch works and read from choreographers like Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Bill T. Jones, and Simone Forti. A background (or perceived ability) in dance is absolutely not required.

Writers don’t discriminate between forms or genres as much as critics or academics do. Writers read fiction and nonfiction alike—novels and memoirs, stories and essays—scavenging ideas and techniques omnivorously. This will be a creative nonfiction class; but we’ll primarily be reading fiction, as well as books on the fuzzy boundary between fiction and non-, scrutinizing them for anything that we can steal and put to our own purposes. Can’t nonfiction prose be as opulently gorgeous as lyric novels? Is there a place in nonfiction for genre conventions like melodrama or suspense—for surprise twists or strategically withholding information? Does your story need to be in boring, old, chronological order? Do you have to be a reliable narrator? How much does your persona and voice overlap with the real you? We’ll also, unavoidably, stumble into the icky ethical mire of exactly how true things need to be for the purposes of nonfiction—and who gets hurt or implicated by the truth—and slog on through. We’ll just hash it all out, is what we’ll do. Students will write some exercises to explore these questions and incorporate the techniques that we study into their own works-in-progress.

This class will approach speculative fiction as a space for boundary transgression. We will read and write fiction that contains explicit movement across states of being, worlds, genres, realities, bodies, or beliefs. We will begin with the concept of “weirdness,” defined as an event or experience which does not belong to consensus reality, and consider how authors use weirdness and estrangement to subvert literary genres and conventions. In our writing practices, we will experiment with different modes of storytelling to explore the boundaries of realism and “reality” in our own work. Each class will focus on a source text in which a boundary is crossed—sleep, self, species, culture, death, sobriety, the laws of physics—and examine the mechanics of the transgression or traversal. How do you take a reader with you into the unknown? How can prose choices destabilize what is taken for granted? We will read work by writers that include Mark Fisher (normal/weird), Helen Phillips (self/other), Stanislaw Lem (human/planet) Haytham El Wardany (sleep/wake), Algernon Blackwood (animate/inanimate), Anna Kavan (sober/drugs), Jeff VanderMeer (human/alien), Julian of Norwich (mortal/divine), and more.

No small number of poets have tried their hand at writing fiction; there are also a select few writers who became known for their novels after beginning their careers in verse. But what is it that makes a novel poetic? Where do we notice the hand of a poet when reading a novel? Is this just about “attention to language” or “lyricism” or some other vague praise? Or is there something essentially poetic in the thinking and crafting of certain works of fiction? This craft class will wrestle with these questions by making a foray into recent and contemporary novels by poets. After touching on some earlier antecedents (Basho, Dante, Rilke, Stein, Plath), we will make a careful study of a range of models: Anne Carson, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Denis Johnson, Ben Lerner, Eileen Myles, and Michael Ondaatje. With these texts as foundations, we’ll then begin a student-led exploration of contemporary novels by poets. Throughout, we’ll consider a number of themes, including the relationship(s) between prose and verse, the significance of syntax; fragmentation, the role of narrative in poems, novel architecture, and the relationship between one writer’s fiction and their poetry. In addition to presentations and line-level analysis of passages from each text, students will have the opportunity to write stylistic imitations and to explore their own writing across generic borders.

The spark and sustaining fire for our work is this tercet from Octavia E. Butler’s unfinished novel, Parable of the Trickster: “There’s nothing new/under the sun,/but there are new suns.” We take those lines as both inspiration and aspiration, reckoning with what we create, how we create, and for whom we need to create. At the heart of this course pulses an ever-evolving progression of catalytic writing experiences, experiments with form, and conversations about daring contemporary poems. And as a coda to those explorations, we will challenge ourselves to design—and then bring to life—dynamic projects that engage with the wider world, thrive in the public sphere, and redefine the possibilities of poetry and community.

Literary Translation encompasses numerous interdisciplinary fields, including comparative literature, linguistics, cultural studies, and creative writing. Therefore, this craft course will touch on all of these academic disciplines at varying and overlapping intervals. Dynamically designed, this program will proceed conceptually and cumulatively––mixing history, theory, and practice. “Perhaps a time will come when a translation will be considered as something in itself,” said Jorge Luis Borges in English during one of his Norton Lectures during the fall of 1968. That time may have arrived. To find out, we will delve into a wide selection of literary works (poetry and fiction) alongside their respective English translation. Some of the languages and authors include, but are not limited to: Spanish (Lorca, Borges, Pizarnik), Portuguese (Pessoa, Lispector, Amaral), French (Labé, Michaux, Beckett), Italian (Lahiri), German (Celan), Farsi (Rumi), and Chinese (Wang Yin). Reading as translators, we will reflect on common translation challenges such as style, Latinate/Germanic choices, cognates/false friends, and prosody. We will examine the benefits of retranslation and collaborative translation, as well as generative aspects of self-translation and transcreation. Curiosity, rigor, collaboration, and play will accompany us on this journey between voices, between languages. While English is the target language of the course––with translators such as W. S. Merwin, Richard Sieburth, and Margaret Jull Costa––for the final semester project, each student will select a literary work to translate, written in any source language of their choice. The course aims to hone literary translation skills so that participants will also become better readers and writers of literature. The course is open to all graduate students with experience in one or more foreign languages—or none, for that matter! Either way, come with a native language and leave with a world under the tongue.