Spring 2027 Course Atlas

Pre-requisite: None

Accepted students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Sections:

ENGCW 271W-1     Glenum     Tues/Thur 1:00-2:15

ENGCW 271W-2     Glenum     Tues/Thur 2:30-3:45

In this class, we will engage in a dynamic exploration of the craft of poetry writing. We’ll pursue poetry as a vital and potentially radical art form with much to contribute to contemporary cultural dialogue. To that end, we will undertake a variety of in- and out-of-class writing experiments and read adventurously among contemporary poets. Across the arc of the semester, you will construct a portfolio of your own poetry—one that showcases the scope and depth of your work and demonstrates incisive examples of self-reflection and revision. Additionally, you can look forward to making a collaborative video poem and contributing to our class zine.

Electronics-free classroom.

This is a student-centered and work-centered space. In hopes of creating a space where everyone is optimally present and engaged, we are all going to unplug. No cell phones, no laptops. You will need to print out each individual poem and bring hard copies of your comments to class with you. If you have a disability that requires the use of a laptop, please let me know.

Texts:

TBA

Grading: 

Weekly writing prompts: 30%

Book maps & imitations: 25%

Participation: 30%

Group video poem: 5%

Final Portfolio: 10%

Pre-requisite: none

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Sections:

ENGCW 272W-1     Yanique          Mon/Wed 10:00-11:15

ENGCW 272W-2     Kornick           Tuesday 1:00-3:45

Yanique's section:

TBA

Kornick's section:

In this class, students will develop their craft as fiction writers, considering how to tell compelling, memorable stories, and why storytelling matters. How can fiction reflect and illuminate our lived experiences? How might it imagine alternate ones? Why do we write, and what can our writing offer to others?

To answer these questions, we’ll read fiction by a range of contemporary authors and respond to it as writers—that is, we’ll think critically about why we reacted to it as we did, what we can take from it ourselves, where it inspired or failed us, and how it worked.

We will explore the possibilities of fiction craft, including plot, structure, narrative tension, conflict, scene, setting, characterization, and dialogue. Students will write often in response to prompts, and will workshop two new stories. At the end of the semester, students will turn in a final portfolio consisting of a reflective statement and expanded, revised, and reimagined versions of their workshopped stories.

Texts: 

The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing by Alice LaPlante     

The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story edited by John Freeman    

The Best American Short Stories 2025 edited by Celeste Ng     

Assessment:

Assessment in this course is based on (1) Participation & Preparedness, which includes productive contribution to class and written feedback on one another’s stories (30% of final grade); (2) Short Writing Assignments, which includes Canvas discussion posts and short writing exercises (25% of final grade); (3) Workshop Submissions (20% of final grade); and (3) a Final Revision Portfolio & Introductory Statement (25% of final grade). Writing is evaluated based on fulfilling the prompt requirements, the ambition of engagement with craft concepts, and the strength of the results. It is not possible to do well in this course with half-hearted, rushed, or incomplete work. The use of AI, at any stage of the writing process, is not permitted and will result in a failing grade in the class.

Pre-requisite: any 200-level workshop

Sections:

ENGCW 370RW-1  Experiments in Fiction     Tolin           Tuesday 2:30-5:15

ENGCW 370RW-2                                                  Cooper       Wednesday 1:00-3:45

Tolin's section:

Writing sample: 10-15 pages of fiction (double-spaced), genre writing accepted

Only accepted students should attend the first class.

Experiments in Fiction

In an essay for LitHub, Mac Crane writes: “The best thing about experimental work is that there aren’t any hard and fast rules—it’s an expansive, freeing process.” In this course, we will read published work whose innovation in plot, form, and style broadens our conception of what fiction is “allowed” to do. Taking inspiration from writers like Rachel B. Glaser, Renee Gladman, Bennett Sims, and Carmen Maria Machado, students will be encouraged to cultivate a sense of play in their writing as they complete their workshop stories and prompts.

This course also expands craft concepts from introductory creative writing coursework, elements like structure, character development, voice, and point-of-view. In workshop and discussions of published work, craft will be discussed as an opportunity rather than a limitation.

Texts

Pee on Water by Rachel B. Glaser     

My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman    

All other selections for the class will be provided as PDFs that students do not have to purchase.

Assessment

Creative Writing (70%)

• Workshop Story #1, roughly 7-25 pages (15%)
• Workshop Story #2, roughly 12-30 pages (15%)
• Final Portfolio (30%)
  • Two revised workshop stories and a 4-6 page self-reflection (double-spaced, Times New Roman, etc.)
• Craft Journal (10%)
  • Will contain prompts, reactions to published work

Participation (30%)

• Peer critiques (15%)
  • Graded for completion and written in the form of a letter to your peer. As a general format, try to begin with 3 things you thought were working well in the piece, followed by 3 things you have questions about or would like to see in revision
• Literary citizenship (15%)
  • Includes attendance, participation during peer workshops and discussions of published work, attendance of creative writing departmental events, participation in in-class exercises/activities, and meeting with me in office hours at least once to discuss your writing trajectory

Cooper's section:

Writing sample: 10-15 pages of literary fiction (double-spaced), no genre fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, romance, etc.)

Students must attend the first class to be enrolled in this workshop.

This workshop is designed to build upon the experience and skills students have acquired in previous fiction workshops. Students taking this class will be expected to push themselves consistently to develop and hone their storytelling skills, and to engage with the gamut of human emotions and experiences—through both their own writing and the work of others (including published writers and fellow students). We will plumb the roots of storytelling and practice the various elements of craft (character, point of view, dialogue, setting, scene-building, structure, etc.), with students producing two strong, original pieces of short fiction, one of which will be revised significantly and submitted at semester's end (to serve as a final exam). Also required: detailed, thoughtful written and oral feedback on fellow student writing in workshop, as well as reading of and responses to published work. Class participation is not optional. (Note: we will center character-based literary fiction, meaning this course is not one in which genres like fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, romance, etc. will be read or written.)

Texts:

No texts, but students will be expected to print a significant amount of pages throughout the semester.

Assessment:

Students will be assessed on their writing and class participation:

• Writing (50%): two original workshop stories; one significant revision.

• Participation (50%): oral and written responses to student and published work; class discussion/participation; shorter writing assignments; attendance; overall effort/improvement.

Pre-requisite: any 200-level workshop 

Writing sample: 3-4 poems on separate pages

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Sections:

ENGCW 371RW-1                                        Kornick              Monday 1:00-3:45

ENGCW 371RW-2  Poetry & Cinema      Ciano                 Thursday 2:30-5:15

Kornick's section:

In this intermediate workshop, we will read books of poetry by contemporary poets that offer us—and perhaps stretch our ideas of—models for what a poem can be and what it can do. We will consider books of elegy and ekphrasis, at the most innovative interpretation of those modes; we’ll read a collection that takes us through a field study and another that brings us into an imagined country. We will read as writers, taking from each of these texts the ways they can offer us into what Emily Dickinson calls our “flood subjects.”

You will then write a poem in conversation with each of these books, in response to an assigned prompt. We will also do in-class writing and other experiments. You will be responsible for printing poems and commenting on them by hand each week. At the end of the semester, you will turn in a portfolio of five revised poems, two new poems, and an introductory artist’s statement.

Texts:

Magdalene by Marie Howe    

Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen    

Field Study by Chet’la Sebree    

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky     

Assessment:

Assessment in this course is based on (1) Participation & Preparedness, which includes discussion posts and written feedback on one another’s poems (30% of final grade), (2) Workshop Submissions (40% of final grade), and (3) Final Portfolios & Artist Statements, which includes five revisions and two new poems (30% of final grade). Writing is evaluated based on fulfilling the prompt requirements, the ambition of engagement with craft concepts, and the strength of the results. It is not possible to do well in this course with half-hearted, rushed, or incomplete work. The use of AI, at any stage of the writing process, is not permitted and will result in a failing grade in the class.

Ciano's section:

Poetry & Cinema

"When I speak of poetry, I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality” wrote the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in his book Sculpting in Time. In this Intermediate workshop, we will take Tarkovsky’s dictum to heart, as we use the intersections of poetry and cinema to contextualize our in-class discussions and the weekly creation of new work. Along with several collections of contemporary poetry, we will also watch several films, and draw on essays from film and poetic theory to help illuminate a distinctly cinematic poetics.  

In this intermediate course, you will find a community of poets serious about their craft, hoping to deepen their engagement with the art of poetry. Through the shared sense of trust and endeavor provided by the workshop community, we will closely read the work of published poets, we will closely read films, and we will pay deepest attention to the work of our peers as we draft new poems ourselves. Students should be prepared to feel deeply, think critically, and embrace play and invention in the making of new work. 

Texts:  

Erosion by Jorie Graham    
Green of All Heads by Aracelis Girmay    
The Cineaste by A. Van Jordan    

Further readings will include selections from Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop, The Widening Spell of the Leaves by Larry Levis, The Art of Cinema by Jean Cocteau, Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky, Notes on the Cinematograph by Robert Bresson, Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, The Cinema of Poetry by P. Adams Sitney. 

Films:

Moonlight by Barry Jenkins 
Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky
Aftersun by Charlotte Wells
Everything Everywhere All at Once by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert
Tree of Life by Terrence Malick   

(Films subject to change)

Grading: 

Assignments for this course include one new poem each week, in-class exercises, weekly reading responses, and annotations on your peers’ work. With my feedback, and the feedback of your classmates, you will put together a portfolio of revised work as your final assignment, accompanied by an artist’s statement.

All students are required to attend the Creative Writing Program’s readings this semester.

Viterbi        Thursday       1:00-3:45

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Pre-requisite: none

Writing sample: 2-5 pages in any genre, preferably dramatic writing

I believe that theater is the antidote to loneliness. It demands an audience actively engage with community to seek meaning. Playwrights cannot know how a play works until they experience it in community because a play is just an architectural blueprint – they need actors, directors, designers, and audiences to turn that blueprint into a house. In Intermediate Playwriting, we will gather in community each week to draft messy blueprints of brand new plays.

To help us draft our blueprints, we will read and write a lot over the course of the semester. We will study plays and texts that elucidate basic dramatic principles such as dramatic action, structure, language, and character development. The plays we read will represent a range of writers, styles, genres, and theatrical forms to help us discover the kinds of stories we want to tell and what kinds of tools we have to tell them. We will also engage in complementary writing exercises designed to practice different elements of craft and stimulate your imagination. The primary objective of the class is to write a one-act play that will be read aloud and workshopped in a supportive and rigorous artistic community.

There is no one “right” way to write a play, just as there is no one “right” way to live. Through reading, writing, and rigorous class discussions, this class will help you unearth the stories you want to tell – stories that embody your unique concerns, values, and emotional curiosities – and help you find the most interesting way to tell them. Over the course of the semester, we will ask: what is the story you need to tell right now? And what choices do you make in terms of style and storytelling strategies to tell it most compellingly? My hope is that one day, beyond this semester, you will take the blueprints you create in this class and build sturdy, bold, and beautiful theatrical houses. 

Texts: none

Jones         Monday       1:00-3:45

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Pre-requisite: A or A- in Intermediate Fiction Writing

Writing sample: 5-10 pages of literary fiction (double-spaced)

TBA

Brown           Tuesday          2:30-5:15

Students must attend the first class to be enrolled in this workshop.  

Pre-requisite: A or A- in Intermediate Poetry Writing

Writing sample required: 3-4 poems on separate pages  

Generating Lines for a New Generation

In this course, we will discuss student poems in a workshop environment while examining contemporary poetry. As there is a profound relationship between reading poetry and writing it, we will read, discuss, and even recite the work of several poets whose example might lead us to a further honing of our craft. In each workshop, we will read and discuss students’ poems in order to examine the relationships between the poet's intentions and ideas and the phrases and images used to embody them. As poetry always has, this course deals with material meant for mature audiences and adult discussion. Students who do not wish to think or study should reconsider their enrollment in this course. Ten poems are due in the final portfolio. Students should budget for photocopying.

Texts:        

Green of All Heads, Aracelis Girmay      

Tell Me, Kim Addonizio     

Among the Monarchs, Christine Garren    

Wind in a Box, Terrance Hayes     

Rose, Li-Young Lee         

Information Desk, Robyn Schiff    

Grades:

Students will be evaluated on their writing and critiquing skills though the following expectations:

Invocation:  5%

Book Discussion:  25%

Workshop Participation:  25%

Workshop Discussion:  20%

Revisions:  25%

Skibell       Tuesday    1:00-3:45

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop. 

Pre-requisite: A or A- in Intermediate Playwriting

Writing sample: 10 pages of dramatic writing

This is an intensive workshop concerned with the writing and revision of plays for the live stage. The twin goals of the workshop are to provide the writer with awareness of the process of writing and a clarity of each individual writer’s personal concerns as a writer. The workshop will largely consist of reading and responding to the writing of members of the workshop. Each writer will create a number of one-act plays, which will be given a formal reading on the last days of class.

Materials/Costs:

Each author will be responsible for bringing in the pages of evolving work to be discussed in class, a set for each student and your professor.

We will be working in a round-table workshop format, and we will be guided by the work each of you brings in. Topics covered will include: 1) scene work; 2) plot vs. narrative; 4) beginning near the end; 5) characterization; 6) dramatic action, etc.

Grading:

I don’t feel it’s right to grade young writers on the quality of their work. Evaluating creative work is subjective at best; and so, our class will work on a 100-point grading system.

You will receive 50 points for your final reading.

You will receive 50 points divided evenly for attendance, which includes class participation and writing. 

Klibanoff       Tuesday       2:30-5:15

Both accepted and waitlisted students are required to attend the first class. 

Pre-requisite: none; NOT open to first-year students

Writing sample: 6-10 pages of nonfiction or journalistic writing OR explain in a 3-page essay what motivates you to seek a course that emphasizes nonfiction/journalism

This workshop is focused on long-form, nonfiction magazine and feature writing -- reading it, reporting it, writing it, and doing so in ways and by means that separate the exceptional from the pedestrian. This is nonfiction. Be prepared to be a reporter, to meet people face-to-face, to ask questions, to see and hear things with your own eyes and ears. We’ll have visiting experts on hand as we discuss where great ideas come from, how to be strategic in your reporting, the art of the interview, and crafting stories, then stories within stories. We're looking mostly at print, but we will see beyond the dead tree media at the growing opportunities for magazine-style writing and long-form narratives online. Ultimately, the goal of the course is for you to become a considerably wiser and more effective nonfiction story-teller, for which the basis is sound reporting. Students should budget for photocopying.

Textbook:

Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, Jack Hart (2nd edition)   

Assessment:

This course in magazine and feature writing requires students to report, report and report (which means interviewing people, conducting research, observing people, situations) and to write complete stories in a narrative, journalistic style that meets high standards for clarity, accuracy, story-telling and ethics. Students will be assessed primarily on their engagement in effective, ethical reporting (gathering of information) for magazine and feature stories, and on the overall development of their reporting skills; on the development of their narrative writing as they seek the ultimate goal: to produce publishable work; on class participation, and on the quality of their responses to assignments.

Extracurricular activities:

Students are required to attend on-campus readings and colloquia sponsored by the Creative Writing Program outside of class time.

ENGCW 376RW-2 Intermediate Nonfiction

ENVS 385W-2 Topics: Environmental Studies

Writing Environment and Place 

Kornick        Wednesday       1:00-3:45

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Pre-requisite: any 200-level workshop, no pre-req for non-majors

Writing sample for CW majors: 2-3 pages of creative writing in any genre (poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction) or 2-3 pages of writing about the natural world or place

Writing sample for non-majors: sections of academic essays are ok for this sample, so long as it is your best writing and the topic relates to this course (2-3 pages)

In this class, we will look to the lived environment as more than a setting for our stories, but as a dynamic force in creative nonfiction. At a time when questions of the ecological future and of place and belonging are particularly fraught, how do we write urgently and ethically about our environment? Over the course of the semester, we will try various approaches to writing about the natural and human-made world around us. We will read a wide range of essays to explore what environmental nonfiction looks like today, and we will use these readings as our models for weekly writing experiments. Students will write about place, ecology, and interspecies interactions in response to prompts, then will develop two of these experiments into longer essays to be workshopped. Students will leave this course with a polished portfolio of new writing and an engaged, thoughtful practice as a writer of ecology and place. Creative writers, environmental scientists, gardeners, hikers, and artists are particularly welcome in this course.

Texts:

Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology, Second Edition by Sean Prentiss and Joe Wilkins      

Additional readings available online via Canvas

Assessment:

Assessment in this course is based on (1) Participation & Preparedness, which includes productive contribution to class and written feedback on one another’s workshop essays (20% of final grade); (2) Short Writing Assignments, which includes Canvas discussion posts and short writing exercises (25% of final grade); (3) Workshop Submission of two essays (30% of final grade); and (3) a Final Revision Portfolio & Introductory Statement (25% of final grade). Writing is evaluated based on fulfilling assignment prompt requirements, the ambition of engagement with craft concepts, and the strength of the results. It is not possible to do well in this course with half-hearted, rushed, or incomplete work. The use of AI, at any stage of the writing process, is not permitted and will result in a failing grade in the class.

ENGCW 389W-1 Special Topics 

Sublime: Reading and Writing Poetry of Upliftment

Yanique       Tuesday      8:30-11:15

Students must attend the first class to remain enrolled in this workshop.

Pre-requisite: none 

Writing sample: Choose one of three options: up to 2 pages of poetry; up to 1 page of essay writing; or up to 2 pages of both poetry and essay

In this course we will read the books of Aracelis Girmay, alongside poems of her adulation writing contemporaries. We will attend readings and visit museums. We will spend time outside in nature. We will consider our own personal tr/thaumas. We will write poems from these experiences. 

Please note: Bring a notepad and writing utensil to class every day.

Please note one more thing: Our class will have meetings outside the regular meeting schedule. These meetings will still be considered class meetings. Missing them will mean missing class.

Texts and materials:       

All by Aracelis Girmay

Teeth                                    

Kingdom Animalia       

The Black Maria             

Folder for copies of poems when you start typing them

Assessment:

Students will be assessed on four elements of the course, as listed below.  Each aspect of the class will be weighed equally at 25%. Students must perform with excellence on all elements of the course to receive an A.  Excellence is defined by the professor.  Students performing very well will receive a grade on the B to B+ scale.  Students performing well will receive a grade on the C+ to B- scale.  Students performing mediocrely will receive a grade on the D to C scale. Students performing inadequately will be asked to leave the class or they will receive an F grade.

Graded Elements

• Written Comments/Marginalia Comments to fellow students

Written comments should be thorough, thoughtful, tough but also lacking in malice. Written comments should address the piece at hand and the ideal that the piece itself is striving for.

• Writing Exercises 

Writing exercises will sometimes be collected, sometimes not; sometimes done in class, sometimes for homework, etc. 

• Class Participation 

Excellent class participation is not waiting to be called on.  Excellent class participation is relevant to the discussion and text at hand, and/or the needs of the writing being workshopped. Excellent participation is not reductive or rooted primarily in personal history. Excellent participation deepens and furthers our conversation with critical insight and synthesis.  Excellent participation is smart without being snarky, is tough without being mean.  Basically, be bold, brave and benevolent.

• Poems, Revisions (no page count limitations)

At all times you must hand in work for workshop that is as polished as you can make it.  The ideal workshop poem is one that you have done all you can do with, and you now need the guidance of a room of smart peers and a mentor. Students must provide copies of their workshop poem(s) for the entire class at the beginning of the class meeting BEFORE their workshop day meeting.

ENGCW 389W-2 Special Topics

Amato            

TBA

FILM/ENGCW 378RW-1  Screenwriting

FILM/ENGCW 379RW-1  Advanced Screenwriting

Screenwriting and Advanced Screenwriting taught by Professor Joe Conway is offered through The Department of Film & Media and does not require an application -- you may register for those classes as normal. Do not include these classes on your application. Both of Conway's classes count as a workshop for Creative Writing majors; notify Nora Lewis if your Degree Tracker needs to be updated.