Courses: Fall 2023

All CWL courses 4 credits unless noted otherwise. FLM courses 2-3 credits.

NB: Fall semester begins Monday, August 28. Last day of regularly scheduled classes is Monday, December 11. Official end of term is Thursday, December 21.

CWL 500 Virtual (online):

CWL 500.S30 #94049 Introduction to Graduate Writing: MULTI-GENRE WRITING WORKSHOP, 4 cr. Molly Gaudry, Wednesdays, 5:20-8:10 (ONLINE)

This workshop serves as an ice-breaking, cohort-building introduction to our multi-genre MFA program. As such, we’ll read and workshop anything and everything you’re working on—whether individual poems, stories, and essays, or longer poetic sequences and excerpts from novels, memoirs, and even hybrid forms like verse novels or speculative nonfiction, etc. We’ll meet online to serve students on all three campus locations; and we’ll utilize a Q&A workshop model designed to ensure that you’ll leave with your own ideas for your own revisions. Please note that CWL 500 is a requirement and we encourage you to take this course in your first year.

Southampton (in-person):

CWL 510.S03 #94106 Forms of Fiction: THE LONG ARC, 4 cr. Susan Merrell, Tuesday, 2:20-5:10

The Long Arc:

This class will look at your book-in-progress from beginning to end. A group of writers, each of whom is already embarked on a longer work, will come together as a team of crack investigators to examine structure, arc and character, with an eye to creating whole and cohesive literary works. Full first draft preferred but open to anyone with 100 pages and a view of the entire scope of the work.

CWL 520.S01 #94014 Forms of Poetry: THE ART OF VOICE / 50 POEMS, 4 cr. Molly Gaudry, Thursday, 2:20-5:10PM

In this course, we’ll read four full-length collections by contemporary poets and discuss the variety of techniques they utilize for crafting compelling, distinctive, and memorable speaking selves/personas/poetic voices. Plan to produce at least 50 poems of your own by the end of the semester, many of which you’ll begin in class. As this course privileges generation over revision there are no formal workshops, but you will have time in class to share poems-in-progress and receive substantial feedback throughout the semester. Required textbook: Tony Hoagland's The Art of Voice. During our first meeting we'll choose as a class which four collections we'll study, from a list of poets that includes but is not limited to: Ross Gay, Chen Chen, E. Briskin, Kim Addonizio, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Matthew Olzmann, Hayan Charara, Kien Lam, Rachel Wiley, and more.

CWL 535.S01 #96871 Writing in Multiple Genres: Fact, Fiction & The Heart of the Story, 4 cr. Lou Ann Walker, Monday, 2:20 - 5:10, In person/Hybrid: Southampton

When should a story be told in memoir form? As a short story? Do the series of events deserve to be a novel? During this course we will look at the ways in which other writers have told the same story via nonfiction and fiction. Which approach works better for which events? From memoir to novel. From essay to memoir. From novel to memoir. And we won’t be ignoring the Dystopian in fact and fiction—from Kurt Vonnegut’s depiction of the bombing of Dresden to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Some of the other works from which we’ll be choosing our readings? Cheryl Strayed, Melissa Bank, Jesmyn Ward, Rachel Cusk, Jeanette Winterson, Tobias Wolff, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Annie Ernaux (winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature). Of course we’ll include poets such as Mary Karr and Natasha Trethewey, twice the U.S. Poet Laureate. We’ll be discussing structure, style, and substance as students attack your stories from your unique points of entry.

CWL 535.S02 #96872 Writing in Multiple Genres: Assembling the Narrative, 4 cr. Amy Hempel, Tuesday, 5:20-8:10

Assembling a story through vignettes instead of a linear narrative—this workshop will encourage writing from real experience, reportage, or imagination, using the fractured form successfully deployed in works such as Mary Robison’s novel Why Did I Ever, Abigail Thomas’s memoir Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, and stories by Renee Gladman, Maggie Nelson, Ayse Papatya Bucak, Bret Anthony Johnston, Rick Moody, and Christine Schutt. Plan to write a lot, in short takes.

CWL 560.S02 94107 Topics in Literature for Writers: Shakespeare, 4 cr. Paul Harding, Monday, 5:20 – 8:10 pm

(This class will be hybrid; students may attend in-person or online)
We will give close readings to 3 or 4 or 5 (give or take) of William Shakespeare’s plays. The plays will be considered in their historical and religious contexts, their place in the emergence of modern literary English, but most of all for their sheer artistry. We will read as writers studying a master. (Shakespeare is, after all, perhaps the greatest of writers, even though everyone says he is.) With Hamlet as a kind of given centerpiece, we will decide as a class what other plays we might like to read from a list of likely and less likely candidates, such as King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, Othello, The Tempest, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Richard II (or III), Pericles, etc. Depending on our collective disposition, we can delve more deeply into fewer plays, or look to broaden our repertoire with a larger number of titles.We will also consider other period works such as William Tyndale’s English translations of the Bible and John Foxe’s Acts & Monuments.

CWL 565.S01 #94050 Special Topics in Writing: Dystopian Fiction, 4 cr. Kaylie Jones, Thursday, 5:20-8:10 PM

(This class will be hybrid; students may attend in-person or online)

Dystopian novels present a grim view of the world’s possible futures, holding up a mirror to society and forcing us to reflect on the issues that plague the world today and throughout history. We will be reading several dystopian novels written throughout the last two centuries, with a focus on the writer’s craft (world-building, tension-building, character development) as well as ways in which the authors explore contemporary themes in their work. Students will also be given an opportunity to write their own dystopian fiction, which will be workshopped in class. For some students, this will be an attempt at exploring an entirely new genre, and you are invited to let your imaginations run wild.

CWL 580.S01 #96873 Practicum in Arts Administration, 1 – 4 cr. Christian McLean, Wednesday, 11 am – 12:30 pm

This course teaches important skills in arts/event management. It provides education in marketing, design and software that will boost your résumé and increase your workplace skill set. We’ll examine work/volunteer opportunities in local arts organizations and you will design an MFA event from the ground up. Learn the basics in Photoshop, Mailmerge, Google Docs/Sheets, Constant Contact, plus Facebook and Twitter ads. Completion of at least 6 program credits or permission of instructor required.

CWL 582.S01 #940181 Practicum in Publishing & Editing, 1 – 4 cr. Lou Ann Walker & Scott Sullivan, Tuesdays, 11:00am – 1:40pm
Note: One instructor will be in Southampton and the other in Manhattan

(Hybrid: This course will be taught jointly. You may take this course in either location, or online. )
Under the guidance of editors and advisors, students will be exposed to the hands-on process of editing and publishing TSR: The Southampton Review. Yes, the P& E Practicum is designed to give you experience in editing a literary and arts review. But here’s the secret: This practicum also provides an excellent means for you to build your skills as a writer. For example, as you read submissions in Submittable, you’ll be seeing what works and doesn’t work in cover letters. You’ll be examining successful structures in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry. You’ll be acquiring editing diagnostic tools. And you’ll be drilling down to what works line by line throughout a creative piece. We’ll discuss word choices, juxtapositions, imagery, symbolism, all that good stuff.

Manhattan (In Person)

CWL 510.S60 #94019 Forms of Fiction: Short Story, 4 cr. Susan Minot, Monday, 6:05 – 8:55P pm

The Greatness of the Short Story. Jorge Luis Borges said, “I find that in a short story you get just as much complexity and you get it in a more pleasurable way than you get out of a long novel.” In this seminar we will read the masters of today and yesterday, examining how each story achieve its success, with a variety of different stories to sample. Attention will focus on the main elements: style, structure and content and how they are handled differently by each artist. In class readings will include short shorts and poetry (among them Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Carson, Edward Thomas, Natalie Diaz, Wendy Cope, Nick Laird.) Students will be asked to write occasional assessments of the work read, but most important is the careful reading--and potential rereading --of the stories and class participation. Reading will include work by: Anton Chekhov, Flannery O'Conner, Georges Saunders, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Samantha Hunt, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Raymond Carver, Gina Berriault, Leo Tolstoy, Claire Keegan, David Foster Wallace, Elizabeth Strout, Franz Kafka, Amy Hempel and Alice Munro who demonstrated why she called the short story “an important art.” the novella: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Karen Russell, Claire Keegan, Agatha Christie Absent in the Spring, Jorge Luis Borges, Lydia Davis, Samuel Beckett.

CWL 535.S60 #94023 Writing in Multiple Genres: From Fact to Fiction, 4 cr. Karen Bender, Thursday, 5:20 - 8:10, in person Manhattan

How do writers transform material from their lives into fiction? In this class we'll track this process, examining nonfiction and fiction by the same writers side by side and watching this process at work. We'll be reading The Journals of John Cheever with some of Cheever's Collected stories, Paula Fox's memoir Borrowed Finery and her novel The Widow's Children, some of James Baldwin's essays and his novel Giovanni's Room, The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, and watching the movie Adaptation. Students will keep a private journal during the class and transform some element of their journal into a work of fiction to workshop during the class.

CWL 535.S61 #94113 Writing in Multiple Genres: Make it Strange, Make it New, Make it Yours, 4 cr. Robert Lopez, Wednesday, 2:20-5:10pm
Writing is a risky endeavor and it should feel dangerous. How can we push ourselves to tell the stories we need to tell, to cultivate our own unique strangeness and exploit it on the page? We will aim to risk emotion and language and content in equal measure. We'll read writers like Justin Torres, Lindsay Hunter, Carmen Maria Machado, Nana Adjei-Brenyah, Sarah Rose Etter, and others.

CWL 565.S60 #96873 Special Topics in Writing: The Whole Book, 4 cr. Casey Plett, Tuesday, 5:20-8:10PM

A class for students of any genre to learn how to structure a whole book. How do short pieces of writing (or even just short bursts) turn into something larger, more than the sum of their parts? How does a writer begin to think of eventually writing a whole book? In this class, we will read short story, essay, and poetry collections with an eye to how individual selections gel into a larger whole, and we will also look under the hood of the publishing world and examine the nitty-gritty real-life stories of how these collections came to be. This is an ideal course for writers looking to generate ideas for a larger body of work. And how the arrangement of those ideas generates deeper meanings. There will also be a workshop component where we discuss student work with these ideas in mind.

FLM 550.S60 #94040 (Substitution with CWL 581): Teaching Practicum, 3 cr. Karen Offitzer, Thursdays, 2:20 - 5:10 pm

Prerequisite: Six credits of writing workshops or permission of program/instructor.

This is a weekly seminar in teaching at the University level, with special emphasis on teaching in the creative arts, specifically creative writing and filmmaking. This course plunges into the basics of pedagogy, exploring learning styles, discovering a teaching philosophy, designing syllabi for undergraduate courses, creating assignments and rubrics for grading assignments, and practicing these skills in a classroom setting. You’ll get hands-on experience and mentoring through visits to undergraduate classes and teaching opportunities, and will gain an understanding of what works best for helping undergraduate students learn. Particular focus will be on discussing issues that arise when teaching creative endeavors such as writing and filmmaking.