Curriculum & Courses

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

This workshop operates from the premise that whether compelled by memory, gossip, witnessing, or revelation, people have a need to tell stories, and so we work on making the telling of our tales more resonant, purposeful, and entertaining. We draw from the short stories of Annie Proulx and Uwem Akpan, monologues of Suzan-Lori Parks, prose poems of Joe Wenderoth, essays of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf, the comedy of Hannah Gadsby, the investigative local podcast The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong and folk tales from a variety of cultures. Course work includes generative writing exercises and short, frequent presentations of your work with attention to its aural presentation; one academic paper comparing two pieces we have read for class; and a presentation of a final project. Workshops focus on ways to make your work better, clearer, and more understandable through discussion and rewriting.

If we define the ordinary as that which we can safely overlook, or that which we value most when it recedes from our attention, how can we consider such ordinariness, in language or image or event, as a generative, creative foundation? This course offers selected examples of American writing that concern aspects of the ordinary, formulated and structured according to principles of the ordinary, while considering how the ordinary differs for different people. A partial course reading list includes fiction by Amina Cain, Remedios Varo, Clarice Lispector, and Renee Gladman, poetry by Ed Roberson, Diane Seuss, and Robert Creeley, and nonfiction prose by Charles Olson. Students will participate in in-class writing sessions, take a midterm vocabulary test, and present their work twice through the semester for classroom feedback.

All writing begins with a writer. The writer in the middle of time, the writer alone, the writer entering a history of writers, the writer-child, the writer-citizen, the writer as artist among artists. Through reading and writing, and exploring our senses, those receptors of attention, we will seek to enter in vibrant conversation with ourselves in the current broader world. Using a process notebook, you will create an experiential record of your journey through the class. We will do close readings of poems, stories and essays, and listen to artists¿ presentations. We will study texts off the page, by visual artists. Some of the artists we will study are: Layli Long Soldier, Octavia Butler, David Whyte, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Andy Goldsworthy, Eula Biss, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Assignments/projects: Complete a PowerPoint presentation. Write a piece of creative prose. Make a record of what you have worked on throughout the course.

The inspiration for the course is the Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonder), or cabinet of curiosities, prevalent in 16th and 17th Century Europe. These `cabinets¿ were encyclopedic collections of objects kept by rulers, aristocrats, and early practitioners of science. In this prompt-driven workshop we will create our own cabinet of wonders, not a collection of physical objects but a collection of writing, arising from images, ideas, writing prompts, constraints, noises, observations, and other stimuli. The class meetings will be our `studio¿ and the bulk of the writing for the course will be completed during class sessions. We will approach writing as a collective exercise, taking the position that writing together, during a specific period of time (the class session) is a powerful and transformative act. The instructor and the students will provide the `curiosities,¿ and weekly homework will involve the creation of time-based prompts and constraints to be used in the classroom. In class writing exercises will be read aloud in their virgin state and edited pieces may be workshopped at the discretion of the student. This course is open to writers of all disciplines as well as studio artists interested in writing as a spontaneous practice.

This course departs from a straightforward but far-reaching two-part claim about fiction: 1) Just about all successful works of fiction narrate an external story (actions out in the world) as well as an internal story (the psychological drama of the protagonist). 2) These two parts of the narrative are interwoven and in dialogue with each other. In the first part of the semester, we will combine close readings of (mostly contemporary) short fictions (by Lydia Davis, Leo Tolstoy, Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, Charles Yu, among others) with a series of exercises that seek to isolate various features of this inner-outer story. These readings and exercises will give students a deeper understanding of how this dynamic operates at every level of the text, from a given sentence to the plot as a whole. The rest of the semester will be devoted to workshops, where students will share their attempts to create short fictions that satisfy the demands of this narrative double-helix. In addition to two stories written for workshops, students will submit a scene analysis and overall plot chart for two published works of fiction.

'No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.' (T.S. Eliot.) 'Wayward Puritan. Charged with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is antinomian.' (Susan Howe.) Poets relate to literature in the way they delve into its historical matter and context. Just so, they transform the art by disobeying its widely-held presumptions. In this workshop, we will study the works of five seminal poet-critics-Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot, Charles Olson, Susan Howe, and Nathaniel Mackey-in an effort to bring reading and writing (about these poets and about your own work as well) into a mutually elucidating act. We will be especially interested in how these poets relate to each other's work, with special attention paid to correspondence. To that end, your work in this course will be undertaken on a manual typewriter in the form of letters exchanged with your classmates.

This class will have as its focus the development of support materials and methods for professional practice relating to the work of writers and artists who engage in interdisciplinary projects with writing as a central element. This section is open to both BFAW Program students as well as non-BFAW students who are interested in developing professional practices strategies from that perspective.

Across the semester, you will work to generate and fine-tune professional practice support materials such as artist statements and artist resumes, tap into SAIC's CAPX and research other current online resources for funding, publication and exhibition opportunities, and align and present your body of work in order to further define and articulate central lines of concept and inquiry. Additionally, we'll discuss assigned relevant readings and meet and speak with a local writer/artist concerning their own body of work and professional practice.

Course work results in creating professional practice materials supporting a digital portfolio of your work and collaboratively participating in an exhibition and literary reading event.

What makes James Baldwin¿s voice so unmistakable? Why is it easy to distinguish between the works of Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov? This course investigates the art of sentence construction¿the building block of creative writing¿showing how a well-crafted sentence is not merely a vehicle for information or plot, but a vital tool for shaping voice, tone, and style. Through close study of sentences from iconic writers such as Baldwin, Woolf, Ocean Vuong, and Maggie Nelson, students will explore the intricacies of syntax, structure, and stylistic devices. Combining critical analysis with creative experimentation, students will deepen their understanding of the power of sentence-level techniques, honing their ability to cultivate a distinct literary voice. The course culminates in a creative portfolio, accompanied by a thoughtful reflection on individual writing processes and stylistic choices.

This course is designed for students interested in writing series, sequences, chains, and cycles. Rooted in poetry but stemming into lyric essays and prose, students will build upon their own projects every week. We'll consider ways to cluster, compound, piece, and layer the language that propels our inquiries. We'll look at how sections and segments both relate and negate in work by Ishion Hutchinson, Wallace Stevens, Alice Oswald, Mónica de la Torre, Eleni Sikelianos, Cathy Park Hong, C.D. Wright, Inger Christensen, Simone White, Elizabeth Willis, George Oppen, and more. Students will be encouraged to research and experiment in response to weekly readings, regular workshops, and recurring conferences. By the end of the course, students will have written and revised a long poetic series or a hybrid sequence.

In this course students will create a singular written project and enrich their understanding of how that project fits into a larger tradition. Through full-class workshops, small-group critiques, individual conferences, and engaged revision, students will deepen the grooves of their writing process and cultivate a practice that is open to feedback and that lets in surprise. Students' thesis projects can take multiple forms: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, comics, drama, hypertext, performance, hybrid work, or a combination thereof. The course's readings and inquiries will be driven both by students' own studies into material significant to their writing and by their productive engagement with their classmates' work. By the end of the semester, students will have completed a BFAW thesis, consisting of three parts: (1) a creative project; (2) an annotated bibliography; and (3) a reflective essay, which will examine an issue of craft, subject, process, or genre.

Writing workshops meet once a week for three-hour sessions and focus primarily on the work of students enrolled in the program, although published works will often be examined as well. Workshop sections vary in focus, emphasizing single genre, mixed genre, or new forms. Please see the Degree Course Schedule for current offerings. Students enroll in one writing workshop each semester.

In the third chapter of his landmark novel, Ulysses, James Joyce defines the 'ineluctable modality of the visible' as a form of 'thought through the eyes,' a sensory technique that transcribes the 'seen' into forms of knowledge and scenography. What does it mean to (strictly, only) write what one sees? What does 'thought through the eyes' look like, sound like, read like? In this course, we¿ll be playing with this concept by extending it into other realms of writing beyond just fiction: poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. More significantly, we'll be studying the intersections between cinema and writing that could provide avenues for exploration and experimentation in different visual-textual modalities. We will read work by authors like Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Bernadette Mayer, Nathalie Leger, Susan Howe, Danielle Colobert, and Lisa Robertson; and we'll analyze the work of filmmakers like Jean Cocteau, Sergei Parajanov, Marguerite Duras, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Godard, Barbara Loden, and Jim Jarmusch. Course work will consist of weekly creative writing assignments, revision exercises, in-class review sessions, a research statement, and a final portfolio of work.

This is a workshop on how stories are told across a variety of media, with an emphasis on Film/TV and genre storytelling. We'll strip down narratives of fantasy, gothic, sci-fi and non-fiction to their bare essentials. We'll explore what makes an effective story and talk shop on how to sell your story. We'll probe the professional side of pitching and skills for a writer's life in various platforms including writing for legacy characters, features, and properties to understand how a writing career works. Students will be required to submit two short stories or one short screenplay for critique and to write critical responses for their peers. Readings and screenings will vary but will include work from Sidney Lumet, Anne Lamott, Agatha Christie, Alexander Mackendrick among others.

Will Eisner was a trailblazer in many ways, one of which was to put the term 'graphic novel' on his 1978 book, A Contract with God. He was a tireless advocate for comics and wanted them to be included in scholarly discussions, reach a wide audience, but most importantly be appreciated as a medium, not a genre. A storytelling medium that could be used to tell an infinite number of stories in vastly different ways. By labeling his book as a graphic novel, he was able to do all of that and more. Comics aren't visual arts and they're not prose. They're a medium that exists in the tension between images and text. Readings will supplement this course and provide context and expectations for producing high caliber work paralleled with managing a studio practice and your health. Selections will vary but typically include This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, BTTM FDRS by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore, and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. Course work will be largely focused on developing, writing, workshopping, and beginning the visual planning stages for a long form narrative in graphic novel format. Work will be primarily created with the intention to communicate a plan (thumbnails and sketching) not finished artworks. Depending on each individual's needs, there will be varying supplemental material that is created, including but not limited to sketches, visual studies, and research. You don't need to be a master draftsperson to take this course, but you should be ready to visualize what you write.

This is a 'doers' workshop, designed to address the problems that present themselves when a writer is faced with a public performance or presentation of her or his work. We will investigate tactics and techniques essential for making those presentations stronger. How do I take the stage? How do use my voice well? How do I use the microphone? How do I relax in front of people? What do I wear? Do I use a prop? Do I memorize? How do I hold the text? We will view known performers' work and then examine your work, shaping and refining it until it feels complete. Class will conclude with a public performance of your work.

This course examines writing formulated and structured according to systems of thought and expression. The nine trans-disciplinary system types presented in the class derive from various modes and technologies of language and presentation: abecedarium, collection, calendar, dialectic, experiment, lipogram, palimpsest, substitution, transposition.

Case studies of system-based writing include works by Richard Powers, Andrea Rexilius, Gertrude Stein, Cesar Vallejo (tr. Joseph Mulligan), Renee Gladman, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (tr. Ana Lucic and Shushan Avagyan), and Jay Wright. Further references include Jen Bervin, Ann Hamilton, Viktor Shklovsky, and Kenzaburo Oe.

Each student will make two presentations during the semester: a primary presentation of work; a response (the following week) to the primary presentation of another; or a response to one of the readings. All presentations last a maximum 15 minutes, happen in the room, and involve language and the systems discourse in some way. Students also participate in three in-class writing sessions through the semester.

Detective fiction is perhaps the most extensively developed genre in the world, and has influenced writers and artists in every conceivable area. In this class, we will concentrate on the noir detective. We will get a grounding in the tradition of noir in the classic novels of Hammett and Chandler, and in examples of film noir and noir comics. We?ll look at experimental treatments in the feminist critiques of the performance art of Holly Hughes and the poetry of Laura Mullen, as well as the photography of Cindy Sherman, Jane O'Neal and Angela Strassheim and paintings by Magritte and Hopper. Students will develop their own projects that engage with this tradition. The course is open to writers and artists in any medium.

This exploratory seminar provides an opportunity to experiment with blending literary and artistic forms as a way to create something new. Be prepared to take risks and favor questions on our expedition. Some hybrid forms include: prose poetry, flash non/fiction, lyric essay, text and image, video poem/essay, epistolary, and more. To assist us, we study hybridity from practitioners Carole Maso, Terrance Hayes, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Torrey Peters, Kristen Radke, Kazim Ali, among others. Through generative exercises, group-led reading responses, a collaborative presentation on a hybrid form, and sharing new work in feedback sessions, the course culminates with a final project studio day. This class is open to writers and artists across all disciplines.