ClassInfo

This is a reading course, not a workshop. There will, however, be opportunities for brief writing exercises, usually in the form of pastiches from our reading and sometimes brief personal essays related to specific reading. Class participation in discussion as well as willingness to read one's own work aloud and make brief formal presentations on the readings are key to success in the course.

Readings will include at least one novel, short fiction, memoirs and essays, as well as a rich array of poetry. Some of the readings will be from the "canonical" texts, but our focus will take us mainly to modern and contemporary writers in an effort to hear the first person as a leading voice of the age.

This course is designed for graduate students in creative writing and literature. It is an ideal reading course not only for nonfiction students but for poets and fiction writers and future literary critics and scholars who wish to focus on aspects of narration, and on what appears to be the signature voice of the age.

This is a reading course, not a workshop. There will, however, be opportunities for brief writing exercises, usually in the form of pastiches from our reading and sometimes brief personal essays related to specific reading. Class participation in discussion as well as willingness to read one's own work aloud and make brief formal presentations on the readings are key to success in the course.

Readings will include at least one novel, short fiction, memoirs and essays, as well as a rich array of poetry. Some of the readings will be from the "canonical" texts, but our focus will take us mainly to modern and contemporary writers in an effort to hear the first person as a leading voice of the age.

This course is designed for graduate students in creative writing and literature. It is an ideal reading course not only for nonfiction students but for poets and fiction writers and future literary critics and scholars who wish to focus on aspects of narration, and on what appears to be the signature voice of the age.

This course looks at the breaking of genres that creates the lyric essay—a popular, dynamic, and complex form that combines non­fiction, poetry and prose. Through close reading and discussion of key books of lyric essays, along with writing several original pieces, students will explore the methods that have made the form influential. We will find ways to use previous practices in non­fiction, fiction, and poetry to work in the lyric essay and find experimental structures from all three genres as we enter new textual territory.

Required texts:

George Albon, Aspiration—Omnidawn Publishing. Eula Biss, The Balloonists—Hanging Loose Press. Ann Carson, Plainwater—Vintage. Julio Cortazar, From the Observatory—Archipelago Books. John D’ Agata, The Next American Essay—Graywolf. Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String—Dalkey Archive. Ander Monson, Vanishing Point—Graywolf. Maggie Nelson, Bluets—Wave Books. Frances Ponge, Mute Objects of Expression—Archipelago. Lia Purpura, On Looking—Sarabande Books Alan Zieglar, Short: Five Centuries of Short­Short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms—Persea Books.