The aim is for students to leave the course with an increased understanding of how various aspects of craft are central to the meaning of every book, and how they operate in the ongoing writing of class members. The group works to form a responsive, critical audience for one another's work. Though our primary text is student writing, we also read the work of contemporary American poets and essays in poetics. We divide our time among discussing readings, occasional writing exercises, and much discussion of student poems. This is a forum in which to explore openly matters of aesthetics and fundamental beliefs about writing, without which technical and critical abilities would seem superfluous.
Emphasis is on assigned readings and engaged class participation.
Ever since Tom Wolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, creative nonfiction has been gaining credibility as a serious literary genre. And more and more poets and novelists are writing works of creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction can offer a writer both a new creative outlet and help with the practical matter of earning a living. This is not be a class that deals with such journalism forms as investigative reporting and feature writing per se, though these could be extensions of the student's own work. The goal with creative nonfiction, as with fiction, is to help the student find his or her own subject matter and learn how best to explore it.