Creative Writing: Personal Essays and Poetics

Creative Writing: Personal Essays and Poetics is a course designed to journey through the process of writing the self onto the page. Personal essays, memoirs, narrative poetics, and hybrid models of writing about the self are increasingly prominent in the literati world. Lived experiences, cultures, and identities are a foundation of story and literature: autobiographies, biographies, ethno-autobiographies, confessional poetry movement, memoir through essays, non-fiction novels, and poetics. This course is reading and writing intensive with a focus on completing a project of creative works based on the self. By closely working with Melissa Febos' craft book, BODY WORK: THE RADICAL POWER OF THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE, we will examine our own stories and practice, practice, practice putting thoughts onto the page. This course is appropriate for beginning to advanced writers who want to learn and expand their creative writing process and portfolio through the personal narrative. Assignments include reading reflections, discussion forums, in-class writing prompts, peer workshop and/or seminar leading, and a final culminating project. Learning will be hybrid, with synchronous zoom class times for in-class exercises and seminar, asynchronous peer workshop and Canvas Discussion forums, as well as non-mandatory in person meetings for readings (2-4) per quarter. Credit equivalencies 4 Creative Writing: Non-fiction and Poetics.