Students will live in Stanford dorms, participate in writing workshops taught by Stanford writers, and attend readings and colloquia led by writers active in the Bay Area literary community. Goals of the Institute To enable students to learn and practice the craft of fiction and poetry in a supportive environment, To develop writing skills that will help students communicate their distinctive voices on the printed page, and To give students the chance both to experience college life and to live and learn in a community of writers and readers. The Institute is run as an interdisciplinary program. All students will apply for either a Fiction Concentration or a Poetry Concentration, but everyone will have the opportunity to try their hands at both forms - students will spend two weeks studying within their field of concentration and one week in the other discipline. Our goals are to encourage students to explore different avenues of creative expression and to help them understand how different kinds of writing can inform each other.
Classes meet twice a day.
Morning sessions will emphasize assigned readings, written exercises, and discussions of craft. Students will receive careful, detailed responses to their writing from their instructors. This course will offer students an intensive introduction to literary fiction. Students will practice applying these lessons to their own work. They will leave the workshop with polished pieces of fiction and in-depth knowledge of the techniques writers use to tell their stories.