Spring 2008

E 385N • Creative Writing: Workshop in Fiction

Course Description

As in most workshops, we'll attempt to shoot the moon by discussing, in connection to student and published work, all the various technical components of stellar fiction-making. There will be a smaller if more consistent focus on rhythm, friction, and the notion of the sentence as both music and a unit of consciousness. To illustrate such abstractions, we'll read selectively from the past and the near present. Our reading list might include Flaubert's letters, stories and longer fictions by Chekhov, Isaac Babel, Conrad Aiken, William Gass, Peter Handke, Tobias Wolff, Janet Peery and others, and essays on craft from Howard Nemerov, Donald Justice, Frank O'Connor. In addition to submitting a substantial amount of fiction, the exact amount of which will be determined by enrollment, good citizens will write weekly critiques of the work at hand, and meet with the instructor in conference. Hard work, long hours, just rewards.

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