Studies in Creative Nonfiction: Between Narrative and Form – Thursday Course

In this course, we will examine the way form plays a critical role in the creation and reading of texts. We will explore the space between the structure that houses the text and the story contained within. How does the author use form to tell their story? Does the form add complexity to the narrative or simplify it to assist understanding? What role does form play in our own writing? When does form distract from the narrative, and where does it enhance it?

Using these questions as the basis for our collective inquiry, this seminar will also focus on helping you to develop skills to engage critically with the texts, speak to the relationship between your own work and the work of others, and find new ways to tell your story.

For the generative portion of this course, we will experiment with the ways form can assist in the writing process and the ways that form can, in itself, become a narrative.

This course expects an intensive reading of the assigned texts as well as avid contribution to the community of the classroom via class discussion and exercise participation.

Required Texts
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Judith Kitchen’s Half in the Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate
Elissa Washuta’s My Body is a Book of Rules
Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House
Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians

Recommended Texts
Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola’s Tell It Slant

Please note: The course requires a minimum of five students to run. If we do not reach this minimum two weeks before the course starts, you will receive a notification and a refund.