This required plenary course addresses important historical and contemporary perspectives on creative writing as an art, a practice, and a profession. Readings, discussion and visits from writers and other literary professionals will help students to articulate effectively their own literary aesthetic and to develop professional skills.

This required plenary course addresses changing and conflicting ideas about the responsibilities of the writer in the world. Readings, discussion, and visits from writers and other literary professionals will help students to articulate effectively their own positions and to develop professional skills.

The Poetry Workshop engages students in an intensive program of reading and writing work. The workshops will be strongly focused on writing and on responding to the work of students in the course with productive, constructive criticism. Students will have the opportunity to work closely with a nationally recognized poet to develop their own skills as poets and editors. Students are expected to read widely and to develop their understanding of the technical aspects of their craft.

This is a course of study and creation focused on varied approaches to contemporary experimental poetry and poetics for MFA students interested in expanding an engaged writing practice. Most classes include experiential compositional engagements, inviting solo, small group and whole class activities. Through readings of published work, instructor talks, and group discussions, we ask questions about the conceptual, sociopolitical and critical underpinnings poets propose when approaching poetry with innovative intentions. We inquire into examples of how poets have experimented with alphabet, language, asemics, concrete poetics, procedural constraints (i.e. erasure/palimpsest), listening, sounding and orality, improvisation, polyvocality, digital media, and other text/image/material explorations, while cultivating individual new poetry from all class participants. Final projects might include a reading of new work, a class performance, as well as a constructed language object.

The Fiction Workshop engages students in an intensive program of reading and writing work. The workshops will be strongly focused on writing and on responding to the work of students in the course with productive, constructive criticism. Students will have the opportunity to work closely with a nationally recognized author to develop their skills as writers and editors. Students are expected to read widely and to develop their understanding of the technical aspects of their craft.

This course teaches writers to approach writing as a conscious engagement with social and political worlds. Students will pay close critical attention to questions of Decolonial thought and race as they are expressed in the structure, narrative arc, character, voice and geographies of writing.

This course focuses on narrative that experiments with generic boundaries and received forms. Students will examine the use of multiple narrative lines and blended modes (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, graphic narrative) to deepen meaning and amplify personal-social intersections, including with the natural world.

The Drama Workshop engages students in an intensive program of writing and reading work. Students will produce a substantial amount of dramatic writing and will also provide constructive criticism of the work of other workshop participants. Required reading will cover a wide range of dramatic literature and the study of dramatic forms and techniques.

This course takes Creative Writing MFA students through the process of writing a feature-length screenplay. Classes include workshops, short lectures on screenwriting tools such as Character synthesis, editing through theme, and popular story structures. Students participate in a simulated story development room with the aim to create a work for television. Through an examination of Hollywood screenplays, scenes from produced films, pitch packages and season arcs, questions of cinematic production and authorship are addressed. Workshops engage writers in reading from their own and others' works, while students are expected to provide supportive and meaningful feedback. Course materials focus on workshop loglines, synopses, thematic statements/pitches, and beat sheets, as well as some select scenes from student work-in-progress. Outlines and first draft feature-length scripts are to be made available for peer and instructor feedback. The course concludes with readings of the first act of each student screenplay.

In this course of guided study, the student will work on a creative project with a mentor who is a recognized member of the professional writing community.

The Non-Fiction Workshop engages students in a reading and writing intensive program of creative non-fiction. The workshops will be strongly focused on writing and will involve the creation and revision of a substantial body of new work in the genre, as well as critiquing the work of other students in the course. The reading component will focus on texts from a varied social and cultural range (e.g. family memoir, travel narrative, cultural memoir, themed meditation).

A variable-content course focusing on a particular issue or approach to writing within one genre of creative writing (fiction, poetry, drama, etc.) or a particular issue or approach to writing that is at work across multiple genres.