ArtW 260: Short Fiction I
ArtW 261: Poetry I
ArtW 262: Playwriting I
ArtW 264: News and Feature Writing
ArtW 364: Longer Fictional Forms
ArtW 159: Introduction to Creative Writing
ArtW 260: Short Fiction I
ArtW 265: Creative Nonfiction
ArtW 269: Writing for Children
ArtW 360: Short Fiction II
ArtW 361: Writing Poetry II
ARTW 159: Introduction to Creative Writing
J. C. Todd
Spring 2010
TTh 10-11:30 AM
This course is designed in particular for Bryn Mawr/Haverford freshmen who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, drama, and poetry. Priority will be given to interested freshmen; any additional spaces will be made available to upperclassmen with little or no prior experience in creative writing. This course is writing-intensive, which means that students will write or revise work every week; roughly four weeks each will be devoted to short fiction, drama, and poetry. There will be regular individual conferences for students with the instructor to discuss their progress and interests.
Half of each week's class time will be spent discussing student work, and half will be spent discussing syllabus readings. The focus of this course will be both on craft (the tools necessary to successful creative writing: voice, perspective, plot, character, setting, etc.) and on content (what it is in any literary work of art that we admire, and that makes us want to write something like it ourselves, if we are writers). Students in this class are expected to become not only creative writers but also close readers of literature and more capable critics of their own and each other's work. The term grade is therefore determined partly by written work and partly by participation during class discussions of syllabus reading and student work.
Syllabus readings will include (for fiction) classic and contemporary works from a Blackboard reserve list (for drama) Aristotle's Poetics and selected scenes from plays ranging from Shakespeare to Harold Pinter; and (for poetry) selections from The Norton Anthology of Poetry and other poems.
ART W 159 is intended to provide students with a basis on which to decide which kind of creative writing they wish to pursue at either the intermediate (200) or advanced (300) level, within the Bryn Mawr Creative Writing Program. Enrollment limited to 15 students.
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ARTW 260: Short Fiction I--Fall
Fall 2009: Dan Torday, Tuesday/Thursday 1-2:30 PM
This course will provide an introduction to fiction writing by focusing on the skills, process and craft techniques necessary to the generation and revision of literary fiction. Each week we will discuss both student work and published work in class, considering aspects of the craft of writing fiction—character, point of view, physical description, narrative logic—from a writerly perspective. Students will explore the material and styles that most interest them, gain awareness of the demands close readers will make on their work, and hone their writing in the interest of crafting clearer, more ambitious, more controlled stories.
Students will turn in writing exercises each week, and will have completed a number of stories by semester's end. One substantial revision also will be required, as well as a final portfolio demonstrating students' work and progress from the semester. Students will meet with the instructor regularly in individual conferences. Readings will include stories by Anton Chekhov, Mary Gaitskill, Barry Hannah, Denis Johnson, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Grace Paley and Philip Roth, among many others. Enrollment limited to 15 students.
ARTW 260: Short Fiction I--Spring
Spring 2010: Robin Black, Tuesday/Thursday 1-2:30 PM
This course will introduce students to fiction writing by focusing on its fundamental elements: character, plot, structure and prose style. Students will develop their ability to write scenes, dialogue, description, and will work towards fully engaging and complete stories through drafting and revision. Reading and responding to both student writing, as well as to a variety of canonical and contemporary authors, is as central to this class as writing. Students will expand both their technical and critical vocabulary to approach fiction as writers, and in a related enterprise, will hone the fine art of literary stealing.
Students in this class will turn in a number of stories, including one substantial revision, writing exercises and reading responses. Authors will include Denis Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, Miranda July, Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Edward P. Jones, Octavia Butler, Haruki Murakami and James Alan McPherson among others. This course requires a very high level of accountability to your craft and you classmates. Enrollment
limited to 15 students.
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ARTW 261: Poetry I
Karl Kirchwey
Fall 2009
TTh 2:30 —4:00 PM
This course will provide a semester-long survey of the formal resources available to students wishing to write print-based (as opposed to spoken-word) poems in English, beginning with syllabic verse, accentual verse and accentual-syllabic (metered) verse, as well as free verse. Students in this course will gain experience writing different kinds of verse (including cinquains, syllabics, Anglo-Saxon accentual verse, and sonnets). The objective of the course will be to provide students with a sense of poetic subject and with the skills to find a form and a voice with which to express themselves on the printed page. Half of the class time will be spent discussing syllabus reading, and half in a group critique (peer review) of student work. The primary text for this course will be a teaching anthology, The Watchspring of Its Tongue: a Source-Book for Prosody available from the instructor. This course is writing-intensive, which means that students will write or re-write poems more or less every week. Particular emphasis is placed upon the importance of developing a community of critics; the course is predicated on the belief that by becoming capable critics of our peers' work, we thereby gain new perspectives on our own. Enrollment limited to fifteen students.
ARTW 262: Playwriting I
Amy Herzog
Fall 2009
Tuesday, 1-4 PM
An introduction to playwriting through a combination of reading assignments, writing exercises, discussions about craft and ultimately the completion of an original one-act play. Students will work to discover and develop their own unique voices as they learn the technical aspects of playwriting.
Readings include plays by great contemporary American playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, John Guare, Jose Rivera, Lynn Nottage, Edward Albee and others. Students will learn to read as playwrights, rather than as students of literature; class discussions will focus how a play is made and what makes it work as a live theater event.
Short, biweekly writing exercises will complement the reading assignments. These exercises will ask students to respond creatively to an aspect of a play we’ve read by writing an original scene. Over the course of the semester, students will complete two drafts of a one-act play. In-class workshops will allow students to hear segments of their one-acts aloud and receive constructive criticism from their peers. The course will emphasize rewriting; at the end of the term, each student will submit a portfolio including a second draft of her one-act and three revised writing assignments. Enrollment limited to fifteen students.
ARTW 264: News and Feature Writing
Tom Ferrick, Jr.
Fall 2009
W 7-10 PM
In this class, you will learn how to develop, report, write, edit and revise a variety of news stories. We will begin with the basics of reporting and writing the news, then advance to longer-form stories, including personality profiles, news features and trend stories. We will end with a discussion of point-of-view journalism, where you will get an opportunity write columns, criticism and reported essays.
We will focus heavily on work published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times, as well as pieces written by other well-established magazine and newspaper writers. We also will have several working journalists as guest speakers to explain their craft.
To get the most out of this course, you must be willing to participate in class discussion. You must also be comfortable showing your work to your classmates, and you must be open to not only giving, but also receiving, constructive criticism in class. The teacher will also offer each student detailed written critiques of each assignment. You should expect to do frequent revisions.
Required Texts: Writing for Journalists by Wynford Hicks and The Associated Press Style Book (2007 Edition).
There will be a writing assignment nearly every week. As the final project of the semester, you will be asked to report and write a 2,000-word news feature. The rough drafts and revised versions of these papers will comprise your portfolio, which you will submit in lieu of a final exam. Enrollment limited to fifteen students.
ARTW 265: Creative Nonfiction
Dan Torday
Spring 2010
Monday, 7-10 PM
What is Creative Nonfiction—and what distinguishes it from its prose siblings, Fiction and Journalism? This course will provide an introduction to Creative Nonfiction writing by focusing on the skills, process and craft techniques necessary to the generation and revision of literary nonfiction. Each week we will discuss both student work and published work in class, considering aspects of the craft of writing Creative Nonfiction—point of view, physical description, narrative logic, the transposition of empirical experience to the written word—from a writerly perspective. We will look closely at the great practitioners of this often wily and elusive genre—from EB White to Joseph Mitchell, George Orwell to David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers to David Sedaris—in the interest of understanding not just how their work has developed, but how it can help us in creating nonfiction work of our own.
Students will turn in writing exercises each week, and will have completed a number of pieces of Creative Nonfiction by semester's end. One substantial revision also will be required, as well as a final portfolio demonstrating students' work and progress from the semester. Students will meet with the instructor regularly in individual conferences. Enrollment limited to fifteen students
ARTW 269: Writing for Children
Elizabeth Mosier
Spring 2010
W 1--4:00 PM
In this course, students have the opportunity to write imaginatively for children and young adults. Through reading and in-class discussion, we will examine the specific requirements of the picture book, the chapter book and the young adult novel. This analytical study of classic and contemporary literature will inspire and inform students’ creative work through the discoveries they make about style and structure, creating compelling characters, the roles of illustration and page composition in story narration, and the ever-evolving fairy tale. Students will receive guidance for the unique exploration of their creative work through in-class exercises, peer review and private conferences with the instructor.
Readings include renowned author-illustrators Maurice Sendak, Leo Lionni, Robert McClosky, James Marshall, and Tomie dePaolo; chapter books Charlotte’s Web, Tuck Everlasting, A Year Down Yonder, and Because of Winn-Dixie; and YA novels Undercover, Paper Towns, Thirteen Reasons Why, and My Life As a Girl. In addition to weekly writing exercises and reader responses, students will write and illustrate (stick figures sufficient) a fairy tale, and for a final project write either a picture book or up to 6000 words of a chapter book or novel. Enrollment limited to fifteen students.
ARTW 360: Writing Short Fiction II
Daniel Torday
Spring 2010
Tuesday/Thursday, 1-2:30 PM
This course is designed for experienced, committed writers who are seeking to improve their craft as writers of short fiction and who are prepared to tackle longer, sustained narratives. Students will read and write extensively, strengthening their skills as writers, and as critics with writerly proclivities. In addition to writing, and reading from the short fiction of Saul Bellow, Aimee Bender, Lydia Davis, Philip Roth, JD Salinger, and David Foster Wallace, among many others, students will read essays by and interviews with various writers, in an effort better to understand the craft and process of writing. Students will examine how these writers have worked within and against short fiction's confines—crafting realist stories, employing metafictional techniques, writing short-shorts—and how they have approached longer narratives as well. And, of course, students will work concurrently to improve their own creative efforts, while focusing overtly and painstakingly on the fine art of revision. Each week students will be expected to read and discuss several stories, interviews and essays, to write an average of five pages of original fiction, and to read and comment in depth on classmates' work. In addition to their weekly writing, students will be expected to write one longer story that incorporates demonstrated library—or primary—research. Throughout the semester students will offer their writing for group discussion, and regularly will engage in private conference with the professor.
Enrollment is limited to 15 students. All students wishing to be considered for this course should submit a writing sample (6-10 pages of prose fiction) to Daniel Torday in the Bryn Mawr College Creative Writing Program (English House) by the last day of classes in the fall semester, 2008. Enrollment limited to twelve students.
ARTW 361: Writing Poetry II
Karl Kirchwey
Spring 2010
Tuesday/Thursday, 2:30-4:00 PM
This course will continue the survey of the forms of English and American poetry (including free verse) begun in ART W 261 (Writing Poetry I) and will include exercises in writing several of the following: sestinas, villanelles, ballads, sapphics, ghazals, and dramatic monologues. In addition, each student will be responsible for at least one work of literary translation, rendering into English a poem from a foreign language with which s/he is familiar, and an additional unit of the course will consider ekphrastic poems, that is, poems which address or respond to a work of visual art. The basic text for this course will be a course packet supplemented by further occasional photocopies. Part of this class will involve a “Favorite Poem Project” in which students will choose the work of a poet they admire and lead the class in discussing it.
Students in this course will also study several complete books of contemporary poetry as a guide to their own thinking, both about the forms/voices/subjects of poetry available to them and about how to structure a longer sequence of poems. Representative texts have included Louise Glück’s Meadowlands, Robert Pinsky’s Jersey Rain, and Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound. Contemporary American poet and United States Poet Laureate Mark Strand will be on campus to read from his work in the spring of 2010 and will visit this class.
Half of each week’s class will be devoted to the discussion of syllabus reading. The other half of each week’s class will be devoted to a workshop discussion of student poems. This course is writing-intensive, which means that every student will write more or less every week (either a new poem or a revision of a poem). Workshop critiques of student poems will be supplemented by regular individual conferences with the instructor. Students in this course are expected to become, not only better writers, but also better critics of their own and each other’s work, and the term grade is determined partly by written work and partly by in-class participation during discussions of syllabus reading and student poems.
Enrollment in this course is limited to twelve students. The prerequisite for this course is successful completion of ART W 261 (Writing Poetry I), or an equivalent beginning/intermediate level poetry workshop at Haverford or Swarthmore, or else written work demonstrating equivalent familiarity with the basic forms of print-based poetry in English. Enrollment limited to twelve students.
ARTW 364: Longer Fictional Forms
Daniel Torday
Fall 2009
Monday 7-10:00 PM
This course is designed advanced workshop for students with a strong background in fiction writing who want to write longer works: the long short story, novella and novel draft. Students are expected to write intensively, taking advantage of the structure and support of the class to complete the first draft of a long story, novel or novella (or combination thereof) totaling up to 20,000 words (approximately 80pp). Each week we will discuss both drafts of student work and published novels and novellas in class, considering aspects of the craft of writing fiction—character, point of view, physical description, narrative logic—from a writerly perspective.
Students will turn in portions of a longer work and exercises intended to build up to a longer work each week, and will have completed a number of drafts of a longer work by semester's end. Students will meet with the instructor regularly in individual conferences. Readings will include novels and novellas by Anton Chekhov, Jeffrey Eugenides, Marilynne Robinson, Saul Bellow, James Joyce and Philip Roth, among many others. Enrollment limited to twelve students. Prerequisite: ARTW 260 or proof of interest and ability. (Torday, Division III).