INTRO Writing for Undergrads

Are you interested in taking a writing workshop in fiction, poetry, or non-fiction? Sign up for INTRO a non-credit workshop taught by graduate students in the writing division. Classes meet once a week for 2 hours; submissions will be established by the teacher, and range from 2-3 submissions (a story or essay) a semester, or a poem every week or every other week.

• Classes are FREE and will begin next Friday, April 3rd.
• They will run for approximately four weeks.
• All classes- Fiction, Poetry, and Non-Fiction, will take place on Fridays and Saturdays to accommodate your busy schedule.

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Sarah Schweig
Poetry
Saturdays, 11:00 - 1:00 p.m.
“Exploring Poetic Pairs in Meaning and Form”

In this class we will look at pairs who are, in content or in execution, partners in art. These pairings may include Sappho & Catullus, Emily Dickinson & John Keats, Edna St. Vincent Millay & Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop & John Berryman, and many more. These men and women, from the classical to the contemporary, will inform our understanding of poetry as conversations across time and geography, an idea that will contribute to conversation both in class and in our workshop poems.

This class will be primarily a workshop. Our readings will play an important part in our creative process and in the way we discuss our work.

The goal of the course is, of course, to create good work, to read good work and to challenge ourselves in regard to how we might better converse about poetry and through poetry.

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Evan Hansen
Poetry
Fridays, 11:00 - 1:00 p.m.
“Writing Contemporary Poetry: Revising Your Life”

We will write a poem every week, share work with classmates, and discuss a handful of generative strategies to approach poetry writing.

In addition to doing a great deal of writing, we will be reading and discussing poetry by Matthew Dickman, William Carlos Williams, Denis Johnson, Lisel Mueller, Charles Simic, John Berryman, Rainer Maria Rilke, Brenda Shaughnessy, and Ben Lerner.

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Roberto Taddei
Fiction
Saturdays, 11:00 - 1:00 p.m.
"Even Better than the Real Thing”

What is this thing called real in literature? Why are we faced with so many different types of realism in fiction- magic, fantastic, meta-, hyper, surrealist, etc? Why is so more important to create the real than to imitate reality? What does reliability and secrecy have to do with all that? Where do fantasies, desires and dreams come in? Are they real?

Come share your work with peers and talk about the different ways we attempt to create reality in fiction. We will perform various writing exercises to expand our consciousness as well as workshopping our own long pieces. We'll read selections from authors around the world known for their experiments in realism, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Bohumil Hrabal, Julio Cortazar, Rubem Fonseca, Franz Kafka, Lydia Davis, Clarice Lispector, Dino Buzzati, and Roberto Bolaño, among others.

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Maggie Sowell
Non-fiction
Saturdays, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
“Geography Matters: The Function of Place in Creative Nonfiction”

The purpose of the course is to experiment with the use of landscape, and investigate the function of place in forms of creative nonfiction (memoir, essay, and reportage). Each class will begin with a short discussion of the readings before looking at workshop submissions. We will examine how the author creates a sense of place and why. We will think about how landscape operates as character, how the characterization of place enhances narrative and question whether or not descriptions of landscape provide tension or narrative drive.

Each student will be encouraged to use some of the techniques found in the readings in a personal submission. Students can model an author’s style utilize it as a jumping-off point for their own style and structure.

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To register, please contact Ruchika Tomar 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.