English 010.301 Creative Writing: Non-fiction and Poetry Devaney R
1:30-4:30
English 010.302 Creative Writing: Writing the Personal Essay, Writing Fiction DiBartolomeo T 1:30-4:30
English 110.301 Workshop in Contemporary Writing Snead TR 10:30-12:00
English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Rile M 2:00-5:00
English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop McKinney-Whetstone R 1:30-4:30
English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Djanikian T 1:30-4:30
English 114.401 Playwriting Graham M 2:00-5:00
English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Apple T 1:30-4:30
English 115.302 Advanced Fiction Writing Cary W 2:00-5:00
English 116.401 Screenwriting Lapadula M 2:00-5:00
English 116.402 Screenwriting Lapadula M 5:00-8:00
English 120.301 Literary Translation Venuti W 2:00-5:00
English 135.301 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Cary R 1:30-4:30
English 135.302 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss M 2:00-5:00
English 135.303 Creative Non-Fiction: Writing Your Travels Kant W 2:00-5:00
English 135.601 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss M 5:00-8:00
English 145.301 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Hendrickson T 1:30-4:30
English 145.302 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Polman M 2:00-5:00
English 155.301 Documentary Writing Hendrickson W 2:00-5:00
English 412.640 The Archaeology of Fiction Watterson R 5:30-8:10
English 435.640 Writing and Remembering Watterson T 5:30-8:10
English 010.301 Creative Writing: Non-fiction and Poetry Devaney
The personal essay, the lyric essay, narrative nonfiction are parts of the evolving whole of cross-genre writing, an increasingly popular hybrid form known as creative nonfiction. In this class we will explore techniques from both fiction (characters, dialogue, and story-telling) and poetry (music, economy, and imagination) to generate new possibilities in your work. Will we also explore how creative reading informs what is called creative writing. Students will be encouraged to experiment and explore strategies for new work. The first half of the semester we will focus on creative nonfiction including writing about people, places and inventive approaches to the essay. In our section on poetry we will explore the terrain between poetry and prose, translation, and other modes of this expansive genre. This course will help you explore how to make art with words and push the boundaries of what you can do story-wise and otherwise.
The course will take the form of a reading and writing seminar; therefore, consistent class participation is essential. In class we will work on close reading and writing assignments and we will review and discuss each other's work. A final manuscript of 12-15 revised pages will be required, with dates set throughout the semester to guide the final submission.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 010.302 Creative Writing Workshop: Writing the Personal Essay, Writing Fiction DiBartolomeo
This course is for those students who are interested in writing the personal essay--which encompasses memoir, humor, travel, commentary, nature, portraiture and other forms--and fictional narrative. We'll study a number of essays and short stories selected from The Art of the Personal Essay (Philip Lopate, ed.) and The Art of the Tale, (Daniel Halpern, ed.), and in many cases note the similarities between the two forms. The published essays and stories will serve as base lines during our workshop discussions of student work. Student work will go through the workshop process at least twice during the term, there will be a number of brief writing assignments, and a single longer assignment of 13 pages will be due at the end of the term. Class participation, of course, is vital and expected.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
top
English 110.301 Kelly Writers House Workshop Snead
Linked to the Kelly Writers House calendar of events and programs, this unusual course will cover a diverse range of contemporary writers, styles, and genres. Throughout the semester, we'll read and respond (in our class discussions and writing assignments) to the broad variety of writers who will be visiting and reading at the Writers House, with plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with the writers themselves. The class will be run as a writing workshop--students are expected to read and respond to each other's work on a weekly basis with the same attention and care that they respond to the assigned readings and events on the syllabus. The writing assignments themselves will encourage class participants to experiment with merging critical and creative approaches in prose, exploring the boundaries between the personal and the expository, between the individual and the community. The writers we'll read and meet include but are not limited to Adrienne Rich, Alice Sebold, Eleni Sikelianos, Lyn Hejinian, E.L. Doctorow, Mark McMorris. The class will require weekly reading and writing assignments, and attendance at selected Writers House events and programs. A willingness to experiment and explore unexpected connections and conjunctions is a mandatory prerequisite for this course. Final grades will be based on class participation, weekly writings, and a final portfolio. Permission of instructor is required for enrollment.
Time: TR 10:30-12:00
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English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Rile
This class is a workshop, which means that most of what you produce will be considered work-in-progress, and that your active participation is essential. Come prepared to roll up your sleeves and work!
Each week will bring a new technical topic and a writing prompt designed to illuminate it. You will write every week and present your writing to the workshop for group critique many times throughout the semester. Readings from selected contemporary short stories will be discussed over the class email list and, as necessary, during class. In addition to assigned writing prompts, each student writer will have at least one opportunity to present a complete, independently-conceived short story to the workshop for detailed critique.
The most important reading assignments will be the work submitted by your fellow students. In this course, the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of your criticism is as crucial as the quality of the written work you produce.
Admission to this class is by instructor permit. Please email work samples to: krile@writing.upenn.edu.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop McKinney-Whetstone
Text: Not yet determined for this semester
This is a course for students interested in serious fiction writing--literary or genre or somewhere in between--but always seriously and always with a mind to perfecting the work at hand. To that end, we will read short fiction from an anthology and some--very little--"instructional" material. We will discuss the fiction primarily as writers, as opposed to literary "analyzers." We will talk about why the stories engage us and why not. We will identify their "prime movers," that is, the elements in a narrative that urge us--or not--through them. Are the characters interesting and consistent (where this question applies, usually to conventional, realistic fiction as opposed to metafiction, where the question is often irrelevant)? Is there sufficient movement (action, plot, story)? Can we appreciate the art of the narration's technique? Is there a discernable style that we can appreciate?
We will ask the same questions of student work during workshops, which will begin early in the term. Workshop pieces can be revised--you are expected to revise everything, particularly your major assignments--and then submitted as your graded writing assignments. Every student will take at least one turn at serving as an editor for the workshop piece under discussion, and the editor will write an informal "response" to the work to be given to the writer and to the instructor.
There is one major writing assignment of 20 pages. Ideally, this should be a single story. If, however, you must "write short," two or perhaps even three fictions of shorter length and totaling 20 pages will do.
Throughout the term, students will be required to write three brief scenes, length open, all of which can be used--reworked, let's hope--in the longer requirements. These are due: 4th week, 7th week, and 10th week. Naturally, a scene can be dialogue-driven (almost all dialogue) or, at the other extreme, completely exposition (no dialogue). If the scene does not come at the beginning of a narrative, then you will need to write a brief set-up as an introduction to the scene.
Class participation is vital and expected.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Djanikian
A course for students who have had some experience writing poetry but who wish to improve the rhythm and expressiveness of their language, and who may want to see the things of this world in new relationships and, perhaps, with a broader vision. Students will be asked to write every week, and to discuss and respond to the works of classmates and established poets. A final portfolio of revised poems will be required at the end of the course. Students interested in taking the class should submit three poems to Greg Djanikian via email at djanikia@writing.upenn.edu. Permit is required from the instructor.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English114.401 Playwriting Graham
This class is designed to introduce students to the basic components required for the creation of a play. By the end of the course students will show an ability to recognize and apply the following: dramatic tension, characterization, exposition, and rhythms. Students will also be exposed to the realities behind writing for the theater, which include stage time vs. real time, the differences between writing for theater and writing for film, realistic expectations for actors, and the working relationship between playwright and director.
M 2:00-5:00
English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Apple
The class will be conducted as a seminar. Every student will write three stories during the semester; each story will be discussed by the group. The instructor will, from time to time, suggest works of fiction that he hopes will be illustrative and inspirational but there will be no required books. Attendance and active class participation are essential. Please submit a brief writing sample to: maxapple1@comcast.net
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 115.302 Advanced Fiction Writing Cary
This is a workshop in which students will be required to write forty pages of fiction--short stories or part of a novel or novella--and submit at least one story or chapter for publication. Through first drafts and much rewriting, students will learn techniques for plotting; get to know characters and coax them to reveal themselves dramatically, efficiently; create dialogue and settings; and avoiding common errors. Through discussion of each others' work, students will help one another learn better how to accomplish the two very different tasks of serious fiction writers: relaxing, falling, diving into, exploring, eavesdropping on an imagined world to create a story, and then analyzing, cutting, fixing, and revising that story so that self-expression grows into art.
If you would like to register for this class, please submit a 5-page fiction writing sample, along with a completed permit slip, to Lorene Cary's mail box in the English Office, 3600 Market St., Suite 501A.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 116.401 Screenwriting Lapadula
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (i.e. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, CHINATOWN, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
"Students interested in taking the class should submit a brief writing sample to Professor Marc Lapadula, Department of English, 3600 Market St. Suite 501A/6273. Also, include your name, last four digits of your social security number, E-mail, address where you can be reached. Permit is required from the instructor."
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 116.402 Screenwriting Lapadula
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (i.e. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, CHINATOWN, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
"Students interested in taking the class should submit a brief writing sample to Professor Marc Lapadula, Department of English, 3600 Market St., Suite 501A/6273. Also, include your name, last four digits of your social security number, E-mail, address where you can be reached. Permit is required from the instructor."
Time: M 5:00-8:00
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English 120.301 Literary Translation Venuti
Too often translators are stigmatized for inflicting a loss on the foreign text. Yet far too little attention is paid to the gain of translation, not just how it enables communication between languages and cultures, but how the translator produces literary effects that look squint-eyed in two directions at once, both foreign and domestic. If translation can't ever bring it all back home, the translator can nonetheless send the reader abroad by unsettling the sort of literary taste that takes "home" for granted. Translation offers a unique literary experience that tests the limits of the receiving culture, inspiring new forms of writing that bend the translating language into strange and beautiful shapes. Are you ready to travel?
In this workshop we'll construe "literary" with enough latitude to encompass not only prose fiction, poetry, and drama, but such other genres as memoirs and film soundtracks, song lyrics and philosophy. You'll pick your own foreign texts for translation, and the class will form your first audience, offering comments and suggestions, a sense of what works and what needs work.
The aim is not just to translate, however, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory. We'll examine some innovative translations written by professionals and consider theoretical statements that have made a difference in the history of translation. "A translator without a historical consciousness," wrote the French translator Antoine Berman, remains "a prisoner to the dominant representation of translating." Inevitably, this workshop will lead you to interrogate your own ideas about what a translation is.
Reading proficiency in a foreign language is the ideal prerequisite, but a translator can go far with a basic knowledge of a language powered by a stubborn willingness to pore over dictionaries and grammars. Admission to the workshop is contingent on an interview with the instructor via e-mail: Lvenuti@temple.edu
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 135.301 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Cary
Each student will write three essays and the class will offer criticism and appreciation of each. There will be some discussion of and instruction in the form, but the course will be based on the student writing. Attendance and participation required.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 135.302 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss
Do you feel you have a fresh perspective on life's goings-on? Did you look at a building today and wonder what's going on inside? Is there an event, a person, an idea that you think has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, under-appreciated? If so, come and investigate with me. We will spend the semester doing our best to write out of that paper bag that is made up of our curiosity, our observations and our prejudices. The best creative non-fiction explains, but it also makes us run to learn more about the subject. We will have a special emphasis on humor, perhaps the most difficult type of writing to pull off. We'll look at different definitions and styles of humor, from Woody Allen's to Mark Twain's to, with good fortune, your own. We will be reading some of the best magazine and newspaper writing of the last century, and hopefully be writing some stuff like it as well. We will talk about essays, arts reviews, general features and even sportswriting. Students will be required to write at least two pieces of magazine length (2000 words or so) and several shorter pieces. The longer pieces will be presented to the class for workshop criticism.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 135.303 Creative Non-Fiction: Writing Your Travels. The Journey, the Traveler, and Travel Writing Kant
In this course students will learn to ovserve and record what they see when they travel. They will explore a popular form of writing and practice it in their own daily activities. The familiar will become strange and new as they return home, walk through the campus, visit Center City or explore an ethnic community in order to write accounts of what they see. They will, in the process, learn about themselves but without that preoccupation with the self alone that marks much student writing. They will see themselves in the mirror of "the other". The course will explore famous works by travelers who visited the USA as a means to see the familiar through foreign eyes, such works as Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (1835), Charles Dickens' "On America and the Americans" (ed. Michael Slater), G.K. Chesterton's "What I Saw in America" (1922). Jonathan Raban's "Old Glory: An American Voyage" (1981) and the expatriate who returns like Bill Bryson's "I am a Stranger here myself: Notes on returning to America after twenty years" (1999).
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 135.601 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss
Do you feel you have a fresh perspective on life's goings-on? Did you look at a building today and wonder what's going on inside? Is there an event, a person, an idea that you think has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, under-appreciated? If so, come and investigate with me. We will spend the semester doing our best to write out of that paper bag that is made up of our curiosity, our observations and our prejudices. The best creative non-fiction explains, but it also makes us run to learn more about the subject. We will have a special emphasis on humor, perhaps the most difficult type of writing to pull off. We'll look at different definitions and styles of humor, from Woody Allen's to Mark Twain's to, with good fortune, your own. We will be reading some of the best magazine and newspaper writing of the last century, and hopefully be writing some stuff like it as well. We will talk about essays, arts reviews, general features and even sportswriting. Students will be required to write at least two pieces of magazine length (2000 words or so) and several shorter pieces. The longer pieces will be presented to the class for workshop criticism.
Time: M 5:00-8:00
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English 145.301 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Hendrickson
This is an intensive course in creative nonfiction--both the reading and practice of it. It's seeking to look at fact as literature. Think of it as the art of fact: using reportage and some of the literary techniques of fiction in the service of compelling, true, real-life stories--sometimes your own story. The core goal is to get a circle of student writers writing, and have them willing to share the work aloud in class. Implicit in this is the willingness to suffer some gentle slings of criticism. We will be examining models of nonfiction from present and past word masters: Annie Dillard, E.B. White, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien, John Hersey, James Agee, George Orwell, Thomas Lynch. Ever heard this last name? Lynch is a Michigan undertaker. He writes like a dream. Good writing is where you find it; sometimes it will be about the art of taking folks under.
We will attempt different forms of creative nonfiction, starting with the personal essay or family memoir. Then we'll move on to something deeply reported and/or researched--something that's essentially outside oneself. For this piece it's likely a student will travel into the nearby world and observe something: or interview someone (or several someones). The piece--and these are always to be thought of as "pieces," not as "papers"--could be a profile of a local personality or athlete. It could be an extended scene, say, of a jazz club, or of a hospital emergency room, or of a homeless shelter, or of the Reading Terminal Market. The student will have the primary say in what he or she wishes to tackle. But the instructor will approve the story idea and will monitor and help guide its development. Although not a direct aim of the workshop, it's slimly possible someone will emerge with a piece of nonfiction that any professional magazine or newspaper editor in his or her right mind would be proud to publish. This has happened in previous workshops.
Those interested in taking the course should submit as soon as possible one or two samples of their best prose (paper copies only, no electronic submissions will be accepted) to Paul Hendrickson, Department of English 3600 Market St., Suite 501A/6273. Also include your name, last four digits of SS#, undergraduate class, e-mail address and telephone number where you can be reached. Permit is required by the instructor. Those chosen for the course will be notified by the end of the current term.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 145.302 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Polman
Come celebrate the printed word. Even in the Internet era, all kinds of writers are telling powerful true-life stories - and this course will help student writers recognize the creative elements and narrative techniques that make these pieces come alive. The aim is to inspire student writers to tap their own raw talents, gain fresh insights, and feel comfortable enough to share their assigned work - both short and long-form pieces - with others in the class over the span of the semester.
Even though students will read some terrific practitioners of non-fiction writing - among them, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Truman Capote and Richard Ben Cramer - along with contemporary newspaper storytellers that include the instructor (a national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer), these are intended to inspire, not to intimidate. All writers have fragile egos; bring yours to class, no embarrassment.
Students will write all kinds of non-fiction pieces, from personal memoirs to long-form features about Philadelphia people, and campus issues and events. The topics are less important than the craftsmanship; anything can be a great read if it's written well.
Most importantly, this course will offer practical advice, not theoretical abstractions, about how to write well in the real world, from an instuctor who remains a working full-time journalist. Several guest speakers, with similar credentials, will also stop by.
Interested students should submit several writings, along with a thoughtful message explaining their interest - and email these submissions to the instructor at dpolman@phillynews.com. If the materials can't be emailed, the English Department will send them via snail mail.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 155.301 Documentary Writing Hendrickson
This is a relatively new offering in advanced nonfiction writing. It will function as a workshop, with a select group of students. It's a course that will honor the spirit and tradition of "documentary" writing. The word "documentary" has meant many things over time. Here, it means a kind of nose-close observation and reportage. It means a level of being with one's subject matter in a way that other creative writing courses don't allow because of their format and structure. In English 155, a student writer at Penn will dare to "hang" with his topic--a girl's high-school basketball team; a medical intern in a HUP emergency room; a cleaning lady doing the graveyard shift in a classroom building; a food-truck operator crowding the noontime avenues; a client-patient in the Ronald McDonald House near campus; a parish priest making his solitary and dreary and yet redemptive rounds of the sick and the dying in the hospital--for the entire term.
Yes, the whole term. And at term's end, each writer in the course will have produced one extended prose work: a documentary piece of high creative caliber. This is our goal and inspiration. The piece will be 30 to 35 pages long.
Some people tend to think of the "documentary" genre (whether on film or in words) as work devoid of emotion--just the facts ma'am. But in truth, emotion and deep sensitivity are prerequisites for any lasting documentary work. The nature of documentary, true documentary, implies moral and social scrutiny; means detailed fact-based reporting, depends on personal response to that factuality. This course will draw on specific literary and journalistic interests of the instructor that go back about 30 years.
The core reading models will be James Agee and George Orwell--Specifically, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Agee and The Road to Wigan Pier by Orwell. Separately, across oceans, in 1936, in the belly of the Depression, these two incomparably gifted journalist/authors--one an American, one an Englishman--entered some damaged lower-class lives and proceeded to produce literary classics of the form. Agee went to Hale County, Alabama, to live with sharecroppers. Orwell traveled to the industrial grit of north England to observe coal miners.
Under the instructor's guidance, the students will choose within the first three weeks. Choosing the subject is crucial. Access will have to be gained, cooperation assured. Within five weeks, rough drafts will begin to be produced--scenes, sketches, captured moments--and these will then be brought in to be read aloud to the group. This will be a way of finding the piece's eventual form as well as making sure all participants are working at a level of continual intensity. The final product will be due at the 13th or 14th week of the term. Throughout the term we will constantly be consulting the various documentary reading models, even as we are concentrating on our own work. Candidates for this course are asked to submit as soon as possible one or two samples of nonfiction prose (paper copies only, no electronic submissions will be accepted). Give them to the department administrative assistants who will then get them to the instructor. When submitting writing samples please include name, phone number, e-mail address and last four digits of your social security number. A brief interview with the instructor is required before a permission to enroll can be granted. Those chosen for the course will be notified by the end of the current term.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 412.640 The Archaeology of Fiction Watterson
This workshop will help both new and experienced writers dig for the layers of experience buried in their own stories and uncovered through exercises that tap into sensory and visual memory and imagination. We will explore the elements of fiction, from a focus on details to reveal the larger world of the story, to character development, dialogue, point of view, style and voice. We will mine a deeper understanding of the craft by reading short stories and excerpts from a wide range of writers, including Raymond Carver, John Edgar Wideman, Robertson Davis, Flannery O'Conner, Nadine Gordimer, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, and Ursula Hegi. In addition to in-class writing, students will be asked to maintain writing journals, participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise work on a weekly basis.
Time: R 5:30-8:10
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English 435.640 Writing and Remembering Watterson
This workshop will help both new and experienced writers explore the elements that go into creating an effective memoir-the storytelling that recreates for readers events that helped shape the writer's inner life and sense of self. Through exercises and assignments, students will tap into their memories and imagination and learn how not only to validate the stories and the themes of their own lives, but how to write vividly about them. We will focus on details, pace, and tone, as well as on revision and on the ethics of how to write "truth" when it may have an impact other people's lives. We will also mine a deeper understanding of the craft by reading from a wide range of writers, including Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Barbara Kingsolver, John Edgar Wideman, William Zinnser, Tobias Wolfe, James Baldwin, and Jamaica Kincaid. In addition to in-class writing, students will be asked to maintain writing journals, participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise work on a weekly basis.
Time: T 5:30-8:10
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English 010.302 Creative Writing: Writing the Personal Essay, Writing Fiction DiBartolomeo T 1:30-4:30
English 110.301 Workshop in Contemporary Writing Snead TR 10:30-12:00
English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Rile M 2:00-5:00
English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop McKinney-Whetstone R 1:30-4:30
English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Djanikian T 1:30-4:30
English 114.401 Playwriting Graham M 2:00-5:00
English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Apple T 1:30-4:30
English 115.302 Advanced Fiction Writing Cary W 2:00-5:00
English 116.401 Screenwriting Lapadula M 2:00-5:00
English 116.402 Screenwriting Lapadula M 5:00-8:00
English 120.301 Literary Translation Venuti W 2:00-5:00
English 135.301 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Cary R 1:30-4:30
English 135.302 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss M 2:00-5:00
English 135.303 Creative Non-Fiction: Writing Your Travels Kant W 2:00-5:00
English 135.601 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss M 5:00-8:00
English 145.301 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Hendrickson T 1:30-4:30
English 145.302 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Polman M 2:00-5:00
English 155.301 Documentary Writing Hendrickson W 2:00-5:00
English 412.640 The Archaeology of Fiction Watterson R 5:30-8:10
English 435.640 Writing and Remembering Watterson T 5:30-8:10
English 010.301 Creative Writing: Non-fiction and Poetry Devaney
The personal essay, the lyric essay, narrative nonfiction are parts of the evolving whole of cross-genre writing, an increasingly popular hybrid form known as creative nonfiction. In this class we will explore techniques from both fiction (characters, dialogue, and story-telling) and poetry (music, economy, and imagination) to generate new possibilities in your work. Will we also explore how creative reading informs what is called creative writing. Students will be encouraged to experiment and explore strategies for new work. The first half of the semester we will focus on creative nonfiction including writing about people, places and inventive approaches to the essay. In our section on poetry we will explore the terrain between poetry and prose, translation, and other modes of this expansive genre. This course will help you explore how to make art with words and push the boundaries of what you can do story-wise and otherwise.
The course will take the form of a reading and writing seminar; therefore, consistent class participation is essential. In class we will work on close reading and writing assignments and we will review and discuss each other's work. A final manuscript of 12-15 revised pages will be required, with dates set throughout the semester to guide the final submission.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
top
English 010.302 Creative Writing Workshop: Writing the Personal Essay, Writing Fiction DiBartolomeo
This course is for those students who are interested in writing the personal essay--which encompasses memoir, humor, travel, commentary, nature, portraiture and other forms--and fictional narrative. We'll study a number of essays and short stories selected from The Art of the Personal Essay (Philip Lopate, ed.) and The Art of the Tale, (Daniel Halpern, ed.), and in many cases note the similarities between the two forms. The published essays and stories will serve as base lines during our workshop discussions of student work. Student work will go through the workshop process at least twice during the term, there will be a number of brief writing assignments, and a single longer assignment of 13 pages will be due at the end of the term. Class participation, of course, is vital and expected.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
top
English 110.301 Kelly Writers House Workshop Snead
Linked to the Kelly Writers House calendar of events and programs, this unusual course will cover a diverse range of contemporary writers, styles, and genres. Throughout the semester, we'll read and respond (in our class discussions and writing assignments) to the broad variety of writers who will be visiting and reading at the Writers House, with plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with the writers themselves. The class will be run as a writing workshop--students are expected to read and respond to each other's work on a weekly basis with the same attention and care that they respond to the assigned readings and events on the syllabus. The writing assignments themselves will encourage class participants to experiment with merging critical and creative approaches in prose, exploring the boundaries between the personal and the expository, between the individual and the community. The writers we'll read and meet include but are not limited to Adrienne Rich, Alice Sebold, Eleni Sikelianos, Lyn Hejinian, E.L. Doctorow, Mark McMorris. The class will require weekly reading and writing assignments, and attendance at selected Writers House events and programs. A willingness to experiment and explore unexpected connections and conjunctions is a mandatory prerequisite for this course. Final grades will be based on class participation, weekly writings, and a final portfolio. Permission of instructor is required for enrollment.
Time: TR 10:30-12:00
top
English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Rile
This class is a workshop, which means that most of what you produce will be considered work-in-progress, and that your active participation is essential. Come prepared to roll up your sleeves and work!
Each week will bring a new technical topic and a writing prompt designed to illuminate it. You will write every week and present your writing to the workshop for group critique many times throughout the semester. Readings from selected contemporary short stories will be discussed over the class email list and, as necessary, during class. In addition to assigned writing prompts, each student writer will have at least one opportunity to present a complete, independently-conceived short story to the workshop for detailed critique.
The most important reading assignments will be the work submitted by your fellow students. In this course, the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of your criticism is as crucial as the quality of the written work you produce.
Admission to this class is by instructor permit. Please email work samples to: krile@writing.upenn.edu.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
top
English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop McKinney-Whetstone
Text: Not yet determined for this semester
This is a course for students interested in serious fiction writing--literary or genre or somewhere in between--but always seriously and always with a mind to perfecting the work at hand. To that end, we will read short fiction from an anthology and some--very little--"instructional" material. We will discuss the fiction primarily as writers, as opposed to literary "analyzers." We will talk about why the stories engage us and why not. We will identify their "prime movers," that is, the elements in a narrative that urge us--or not--through them. Are the characters interesting and consistent (where this question applies, usually to conventional, realistic fiction as opposed to metafiction, where the question is often irrelevant)? Is there sufficient movement (action, plot, story)? Can we appreciate the art of the narration's technique? Is there a discernable style that we can appreciate?
We will ask the same questions of student work during workshops, which will begin early in the term. Workshop pieces can be revised--you are expected to revise everything, particularly your major assignments--and then submitted as your graded writing assignments. Every student will take at least one turn at serving as an editor for the workshop piece under discussion, and the editor will write an informal "response" to the work to be given to the writer and to the instructor.
There is one major writing assignment of 20 pages. Ideally, this should be a single story. If, however, you must "write short," two or perhaps even three fictions of shorter length and totaling 20 pages will do.
Throughout the term, students will be required to write three brief scenes, length open, all of which can be used--reworked, let's hope--in the longer requirements. These are due: 4th week, 7th week, and 10th week. Naturally, a scene can be dialogue-driven (almost all dialogue) or, at the other extreme, completely exposition (no dialogue). If the scene does not come at the beginning of a narrative, then you will need to write a brief set-up as an introduction to the scene.
Class participation is vital and expected.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Djanikian
A course for students who have had some experience writing poetry but who wish to improve the rhythm and expressiveness of their language, and who may want to see the things of this world in new relationships and, perhaps, with a broader vision. Students will be asked to write every week, and to discuss and respond to the works of classmates and established poets. A final portfolio of revised poems will be required at the end of the course. Students interested in taking the class should submit three poems to Greg Djanikian via email at djanikia@writing.upenn.edu. Permit is required from the instructor.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English114.401 Playwriting Graham
This class is designed to introduce students to the basic components required for the creation of a play. By the end of the course students will show an ability to recognize and apply the following: dramatic tension, characterization, exposition, and rhythms. Students will also be exposed to the realities behind writing for the theater, which include stage time vs. real time, the differences between writing for theater and writing for film, realistic expectations for actors, and the working relationship between playwright and director.
M 2:00-5:00
English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Apple
The class will be conducted as a seminar. Every student will write three stories during the semester; each story will be discussed by the group. The instructor will, from time to time, suggest works of fiction that he hopes will be illustrative and inspirational but there will be no required books. Attendance and active class participation are essential. Please submit a brief writing sample to: maxapple1@comcast.net
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 115.302 Advanced Fiction Writing Cary
This is a workshop in which students will be required to write forty pages of fiction--short stories or part of a novel or novella--and submit at least one story or chapter for publication. Through first drafts and much rewriting, students will learn techniques for plotting; get to know characters and coax them to reveal themselves dramatically, efficiently; create dialogue and settings; and avoiding common errors. Through discussion of each others' work, students will help one another learn better how to accomplish the two very different tasks of serious fiction writers: relaxing, falling, diving into, exploring, eavesdropping on an imagined world to create a story, and then analyzing, cutting, fixing, and revising that story so that self-expression grows into art.
If you would like to register for this class, please submit a 5-page fiction writing sample, along with a completed permit slip, to Lorene Cary's mail box in the English Office, 3600 Market St., Suite 501A.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 116.401 Screenwriting Lapadula
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (i.e. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, CHINATOWN, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
"Students interested in taking the class should submit a brief writing sample to Professor Marc Lapadula, Department of English, 3600 Market St. Suite 501A/6273. Also, include your name, last four digits of your social security number, E-mail, address where you can be reached. Permit is required from the instructor."
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 116.402 Screenwriting Lapadula
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (i.e. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, CHINATOWN, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
"Students interested in taking the class should submit a brief writing sample to Professor Marc Lapadula, Department of English, 3600 Market St., Suite 501A/6273. Also, include your name, last four digits of your social security number, E-mail, address where you can be reached. Permit is required from the instructor."
Time: M 5:00-8:00
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English 120.301 Literary Translation Venuti
Too often translators are stigmatized for inflicting a loss on the foreign text. Yet far too little attention is paid to the gain of translation, not just how it enables communication between languages and cultures, but how the translator produces literary effects that look squint-eyed in two directions at once, both foreign and domestic. If translation can't ever bring it all back home, the translator can nonetheless send the reader abroad by unsettling the sort of literary taste that takes "home" for granted. Translation offers a unique literary experience that tests the limits of the receiving culture, inspiring new forms of writing that bend the translating language into strange and beautiful shapes. Are you ready to travel?
In this workshop we'll construe "literary" with enough latitude to encompass not only prose fiction, poetry, and drama, but such other genres as memoirs and film soundtracks, song lyrics and philosophy. You'll pick your own foreign texts for translation, and the class will form your first audience, offering comments and suggestions, a sense of what works and what needs work.
The aim is not just to translate, however, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory. We'll examine some innovative translations written by professionals and consider theoretical statements that have made a difference in the history of translation. "A translator without a historical consciousness," wrote the French translator Antoine Berman, remains "a prisoner to the dominant representation of translating." Inevitably, this workshop will lead you to interrogate your own ideas about what a translation is.
Reading proficiency in a foreign language is the ideal prerequisite, but a translator can go far with a basic knowledge of a language powered by a stubborn willingness to pore over dictionaries and grammars. Admission to the workshop is contingent on an interview with the instructor via e-mail: Lvenuti@temple.edu
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 135.301 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Cary
Each student will write three essays and the class will offer criticism and appreciation of each. There will be some discussion of and instruction in the form, but the course will be based on the student writing. Attendance and participation required.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 135.302 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss
Do you feel you have a fresh perspective on life's goings-on? Did you look at a building today and wonder what's going on inside? Is there an event, a person, an idea that you think has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, under-appreciated? If so, come and investigate with me. We will spend the semester doing our best to write out of that paper bag that is made up of our curiosity, our observations and our prejudices. The best creative non-fiction explains, but it also makes us run to learn more about the subject. We will have a special emphasis on humor, perhaps the most difficult type of writing to pull off. We'll look at different definitions and styles of humor, from Woody Allen's to Mark Twain's to, with good fortune, your own. We will be reading some of the best magazine and newspaper writing of the last century, and hopefully be writing some stuff like it as well. We will talk about essays, arts reviews, general features and even sportswriting. Students will be required to write at least two pieces of magazine length (2000 words or so) and several shorter pieces. The longer pieces will be presented to the class for workshop criticism.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 135.303 Creative Non-Fiction: Writing Your Travels. The Journey, the Traveler, and Travel Writing Kant
In this course students will learn to ovserve and record what they see when they travel. They will explore a popular form of writing and practice it in their own daily activities. The familiar will become strange and new as they return home, walk through the campus, visit Center City or explore an ethnic community in order to write accounts of what they see. They will, in the process, learn about themselves but without that preoccupation with the self alone that marks much student writing. They will see themselves in the mirror of "the other". The course will explore famous works by travelers who visited the USA as a means to see the familiar through foreign eyes, such works as Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (1835), Charles Dickens' "On America and the Americans" (ed. Michael Slater), G.K. Chesterton's "What I Saw in America" (1922). Jonathan Raban's "Old Glory: An American Voyage" (1981) and the expatriate who returns like Bill Bryson's "I am a Stranger here myself: Notes on returning to America after twenty years" (1999).
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 135.601 Creative Non-Fiction Writing Strauss
Do you feel you have a fresh perspective on life's goings-on? Did you look at a building today and wonder what's going on inside? Is there an event, a person, an idea that you think has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, under-appreciated? If so, come and investigate with me. We will spend the semester doing our best to write out of that paper bag that is made up of our curiosity, our observations and our prejudices. The best creative non-fiction explains, but it also makes us run to learn more about the subject. We will have a special emphasis on humor, perhaps the most difficult type of writing to pull off. We'll look at different definitions and styles of humor, from Woody Allen's to Mark Twain's to, with good fortune, your own. We will be reading some of the best magazine and newspaper writing of the last century, and hopefully be writing some stuff like it as well. We will talk about essays, arts reviews, general features and even sportswriting. Students will be required to write at least two pieces of magazine length (2000 words or so) and several shorter pieces. The longer pieces will be presented to the class for workshop criticism.
Time: M 5:00-8:00
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English 145.301 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Hendrickson
This is an intensive course in creative nonfiction--both the reading and practice of it. It's seeking to look at fact as literature. Think of it as the art of fact: using reportage and some of the literary techniques of fiction in the service of compelling, true, real-life stories--sometimes your own story. The core goal is to get a circle of student writers writing, and have them willing to share the work aloud in class. Implicit in this is the willingness to suffer some gentle slings of criticism. We will be examining models of nonfiction from present and past word masters: Annie Dillard, E.B. White, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien, John Hersey, James Agee, George Orwell, Thomas Lynch. Ever heard this last name? Lynch is a Michigan undertaker. He writes like a dream. Good writing is where you find it; sometimes it will be about the art of taking folks under.
We will attempt different forms of creative nonfiction, starting with the personal essay or family memoir. Then we'll move on to something deeply reported and/or researched--something that's essentially outside oneself. For this piece it's likely a student will travel into the nearby world and observe something: or interview someone (or several someones). The piece--and these are always to be thought of as "pieces," not as "papers"--could be a profile of a local personality or athlete. It could be an extended scene, say, of a jazz club, or of a hospital emergency room, or of a homeless shelter, or of the Reading Terminal Market. The student will have the primary say in what he or she wishes to tackle. But the instructor will approve the story idea and will monitor and help guide its development. Although not a direct aim of the workshop, it's slimly possible someone will emerge with a piece of nonfiction that any professional magazine or newspaper editor in his or her right mind would be proud to publish. This has happened in previous workshops.
Those interested in taking the course should submit as soon as possible one or two samples of their best prose (paper copies only, no electronic submissions will be accepted) to Paul Hendrickson, Department of English 3600 Market St., Suite 501A/6273. Also include your name, last four digits of SS#, undergraduate class, e-mail address and telephone number where you can be reached. Permit is required by the instructor. Those chosen for the course will be notified by the end of the current term.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 145.302 Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Polman
Come celebrate the printed word. Even in the Internet era, all kinds of writers are telling powerful true-life stories - and this course will help student writers recognize the creative elements and narrative techniques that make these pieces come alive. The aim is to inspire student writers to tap their own raw talents, gain fresh insights, and feel comfortable enough to share their assigned work - both short and long-form pieces - with others in the class over the span of the semester.
Even though students will read some terrific practitioners of non-fiction writing - among them, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Truman Capote and Richard Ben Cramer - along with contemporary newspaper storytellers that include the instructor (a national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer), these are intended to inspire, not to intimidate. All writers have fragile egos; bring yours to class, no embarrassment.
Students will write all kinds of non-fiction pieces, from personal memoirs to long-form features about Philadelphia people, and campus issues and events. The topics are less important than the craftsmanship; anything can be a great read if it's written well.
Most importantly, this course will offer practical advice, not theoretical abstractions, about how to write well in the real world, from an instuctor who remains a working full-time journalist. Several guest speakers, with similar credentials, will also stop by.
Interested students should submit several writings, along with a thoughtful message explaining their interest - and email these submissions to the instructor at dpolman@phillynews.com. If the materials can't be emailed, the English Department will send them via snail mail.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 155.301 Documentary Writing Hendrickson
This is a relatively new offering in advanced nonfiction writing. It will function as a workshop, with a select group of students. It's a course that will honor the spirit and tradition of "documentary" writing. The word "documentary" has meant many things over time. Here, it means a kind of nose-close observation and reportage. It means a level of being with one's subject matter in a way that other creative writing courses don't allow because of their format and structure. In English 155, a student writer at Penn will dare to "hang" with his topic--a girl's high-school basketball team; a medical intern in a HUP emergency room; a cleaning lady doing the graveyard shift in a classroom building; a food-truck operator crowding the noontime avenues; a client-patient in the Ronald McDonald House near campus; a parish priest making his solitary and dreary and yet redemptive rounds of the sick and the dying in the hospital--for the entire term.
Yes, the whole term. And at term's end, each writer in the course will have produced one extended prose work: a documentary piece of high creative caliber. This is our goal and inspiration. The piece will be 30 to 35 pages long.
Some people tend to think of the "documentary" genre (whether on film or in words) as work devoid of emotion--just the facts ma'am. But in truth, emotion and deep sensitivity are prerequisites for any lasting documentary work. The nature of documentary, true documentary, implies moral and social scrutiny; means detailed fact-based reporting, depends on personal response to that factuality. This course will draw on specific literary and journalistic interests of the instructor that go back about 30 years.
The core reading models will be James Agee and George Orwell--Specifically, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Agee and The Road to Wigan Pier by Orwell. Separately, across oceans, in 1936, in the belly of the Depression, these two incomparably gifted journalist/authors--one an American, one an Englishman--entered some damaged lower-class lives and proceeded to produce literary classics of the form. Agee went to Hale County, Alabama, to live with sharecroppers. Orwell traveled to the industrial grit of north England to observe coal miners.
Under the instructor's guidance, the students will choose within the first three weeks. Choosing the subject is crucial. Access will have to be gained, cooperation assured. Within five weeks, rough drafts will begin to be produced--scenes, sketches, captured moments--and these will then be brought in to be read aloud to the group. This will be a way of finding the piece's eventual form as well as making sure all participants are working at a level of continual intensity. The final product will be due at the 13th or 14th week of the term. Throughout the term we will constantly be consulting the various documentary reading models, even as we are concentrating on our own work. Candidates for this course are asked to submit as soon as possible one or two samples of nonfiction prose (paper copies only, no electronic submissions will be accepted). Give them to the department administrative assistants who will then get them to the instructor. When submitting writing samples please include name, phone number, e-mail address and last four digits of your social security number. A brief interview with the instructor is required before a permission to enroll can be granted. Those chosen for the course will be notified by the end of the current term.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 412.640 The Archaeology of Fiction Watterson
This workshop will help both new and experienced writers dig for the layers of experience buried in their own stories and uncovered through exercises that tap into sensory and visual memory and imagination. We will explore the elements of fiction, from a focus on details to reveal the larger world of the story, to character development, dialogue, point of view, style and voice. We will mine a deeper understanding of the craft by reading short stories and excerpts from a wide range of writers, including Raymond Carver, John Edgar Wideman, Robertson Davis, Flannery O'Conner, Nadine Gordimer, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, and Ursula Hegi. In addition to in-class writing, students will be asked to maintain writing journals, participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise work on a weekly basis.
Time: R 5:30-8:10
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English 435.640 Writing and Remembering Watterson
This workshop will help both new and experienced writers explore the elements that go into creating an effective memoir-the storytelling that recreates for readers events that helped shape the writer's inner life and sense of self. Through exercises and assignments, students will tap into their memories and imagination and learn how not only to validate the stories and the themes of their own lives, but how to write vividly about them. We will focus on details, pace, and tone, as well as on revision and on the ethics of how to write "truth" when it may have an impact other people's lives. We will also mine a deeper understanding of the craft by reading from a wide range of writers, including Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Barbara Kingsolver, John Edgar Wideman, William Zinnser, Tobias Wolfe, James Baldwin, and Jamaica Kincaid. In addition to in-class writing, students will be asked to maintain writing journals, participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise work on a weekly basis.
Time: T 5:30-8:10
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