English Department Fall 2008
Creative Writing Courses
For courses that require permission, application forms can be found here:
English 63S. Intro to Creative Writing. Instructor F. Fox.
Tuesday 1:15-3:45 (Restricted to freshmen/sophomores)
Thursday 1:15-3:45 (Restricted to juniors/seniors)
Permission is not required.
This course is designed to give students an opportunity to practice and explore three genres of creative writing (fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction). Part of each class will be devoted to peer critique of student work ("workshopping"), and part to discussions of craft and close-reading of published poems, fiction, and creative non-fiction. There will be weekly writing assignments (both creative and critical) and students will also submit a final story, essay, or group of poems.
100AS. Writing Fiction. Monday 2:50-5:20. Instructor C. Askounis
This is an intermediate course in writing short fiction for those with some background in creative writing. The class functions both as a seminar in which we read and analyze the work of exemplary writers past and present, and as a workshop, with students offering their stories for oral and written critique before revising and submitting a portfolio of final drafts. We will explore aspects of craft including point of view, characterization, the uses of narrative summary and scene, plot and others.
Be prepared for a good deal of reading, writing and revision: weekly responses to the reading (200+ words); a daily Writer’s Journal; written critiques of others’ work; 2-3 revised short stories; a brief reflective essay. Texts: Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 7th ed.; Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer, and an anthology of fiction, TBA.
Permission is required for this class. Please submit a writing sample (a scene from a story, a complete story, or a nonfiction narrative) with a completed creative writing form from the English Department’s website, to Carol Renegar in the Office of Undergraduate Studies, by April 1st.
100CS. Writing Poetry. Tuesday 4:25-6:40. Instructor J. Donahue
Permission is required. Applicants should submit 3-5 poems with a creative writing application – bring to 305 Allen by April 1.
This class is a poetry writing workshop with a significant reading component. We will read some of the defining works of modern poetry, and look at the history of various avant guarde movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Imagism, Futurism and Expressionism. But our main focus will be on writing poetry. We will explore various styles and techniques, collage, random procedures, simulated madness, trance writing, hyperrational nonsense, dream narratives, incantation, spells, arbitrary rules, confessions, and much else as we deepen our own understanding of the sources of human creativity in language, and write our own ever more astonishing poems.
105S. The Writing of Poetry. Wednesday 3:05-5:35. Instructor D. Pope
Permission is required. Applicants should submit 3-5 poems -- bring to 305 Allen by April 1, including a creative writing form.
109S. Literacy, Writing, and Tutoring. Mo.nday 3:05-5:35 Instructor V. Russell (this course is listed as Education 170S).
Contact Vicki Russell, Director of the Writing Studio for more information and for a permission number. Email her at vgr@duke.edu.
(please do not list this as an alternate course if you are applying for another creative writing class)
117ES. Making Light of It All: Writing Humor. Wednesday 2:50-5:20. Instructor C. Askounis
Permission is not required.
This is a writing course, with a good deal of reading, about the serious business of humor. It investigates the multiple purposes of written humor: to deflate, deflect, defuse, defy and demolish; to provide comic relief; to jolt readers with new perspectives on the paradoxes, absurdities and enduring realities of human behavior and society; and to promote reform by subverting authority.
Students in this course will read and analyze well-known humorous writers from several centuries (Swift, Twain, Thurber, Mencken, Parker, E.B. White, Nora Ephron, Fran Leibowitz, Woody Allen, David Sedaris, and others). We will also, on occasion, view examples of comedy from film and television. We will study various comic forms (parody, satire, portrait, social commentary and criticism, narrative) and comic techniques (creating comic personae, using comic structure and language), paying close attention to the structures and strategies used to produce a humorous response in readers/viewers. Students will then deploy these structural and strategical secrets in exercises and experimental sketches.
Writers will read their work in class and revise in response to oral and written critiques before submitting their final drafts in a portfolio at the end of the semester. They will also be required to submit two pieces to publications of their choice.
Writing requirements: weekly short responses to readings (1-2 pages); numerous exercises and experimental sketches; 2-3 revised projects of varying lengths.
202S. Narrative Writing. Wednesday 4:25-6:55. Instructor J. Porter
Permission is required. Applicants must submit 8-10 pages of fiction (preferred), non-fiction, or poetry. Deadline is April 1 for submissions. Must include a creative writing form available here or in 305 Allen.
Students during the semester will complete a minimum of thirty pages of finished short fiction, and have their work discussed intensively by classmates as well as by the instructor. Traditional and experimental techniques and devices will be explored. Genre fiction, such as detective, young adult, science fiction, will not as a rule be a part of the course subject matter. In addition to completing the primary writing assignment, class members will do some writing exercises, and contribute to class discussion. The class will also address such questions as how to submit fiction for publication.
271ES.05 The Art of Poetry. Thursday 4:25-7:55. Intructor J. Applewhite