Creative Writing: Indigenous Speculative Fiction

Creative Writing: Indigenous Speculative Fiction  is designed to explore our own identities, worldviews and writing styles, those stories we come back to again and again, and how writing fiction help explain the world around us. Students will gain writing tools for process, editing, and revision and an understanding of fictional elements such as plot, character, story arc, tone, voice, diction, POV, metaphor, and structure. Analyzing works from  Walking The Clouds  anthology and other selected readings through weekly written reflections will lead to thoughtful articulation of your findings in student-led seminars. This is a critical reading and writing course focused on exploring Indigenous speculative fiction--what speculative fiction is, as well as how the Indigenous worldview and Indigenous storyteller/writer creates a  connected cultural and historical vantage point. By examining the methods and themes that Indigenous writers employ to write about the “future” world,  students will craft their own creative speculative fiction, based on their identity and worldview. The culmination of the course is to create an artifact from the works completed that will be made into an anthology (a collaborative class project). This is an inclusive course for all students of all creative writing levels to explore, learn, and create. As a hybrid course, work will be in person, via zoom, and asynchronously via Canvas.