Writing Offerings: Summer 2012


Paris Then and Now: Circles of Influence

CREA S4300
June 18 - July 13, 2012
Instructors: Amy Benson & Stacey D'Erasmo

Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything. 
-- James Thurber (1918)

Come write, study, and explore the literary life in Paris this summer. The Creative Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts is pleased to announce its first summer course at Reid Hall, Paris Then and Now: Circles of Influence. During this intensive month-long program, creative writing students will focus on the mutual influences among French and English-speaking writers from Modernism to the present moment while writing their own fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, inspired by this storied cultural capital and one of the most important literary traditions in history. More > >
 
 

Fiction Writing Workshop

CREA S1001D (Section 1)
3 points
Mon & Wed, 11:00 am - 1:10 pm
May 21 - June 27
Instructor: Rachel Sherman

CREA S1001D (Section 2)
3 points
Tues & Thurs, 5:30 - 7:40 pm
May 22 - June 28
Instructor: James Hannaham

The Fiction Writing Workshop is designed for students who have little or no experience writing imaginative prose. Students are introduced to a range of craft concerns through exercises and discussions, and eventually produce their own writing for the critical analysis of the class. Outside readings supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.

 

Nonfiction Writing Workshop

CREA S1101D
3 points
Mon & Wed, 5:30 - 7:40 pm
May 21 - June 29
Instructor: Cris Beam

The Nonfiction Writing Workshop is designed for students new to the practice of such genres as reportage, criticism, biography and memoir. Various techniques are explored through exercises and other assignments. Critique of student work is supplemented by outside readings.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.
 
 

More Than Memoir

CREA S4710D
3 points
Mon & Wed, 2:00 - 4:10 pm
May 21 - June 29
Instructor: Lori Soderlind

While memoir offers a glimpse into the very private world of an individual, the best narratives also cast a light on the world around them, giving the reader a deeper understanding of a particular time and place. In this class we will explore the flexibility of the genre, particularly the opportunities to go beyond the simple confessional formula. By interweaving the personal with the political (or the social, the economic, the environmental, etc), writers will learn how to utilize first person experience to illuminate a subject beyond the self. Through both reading and writing assignments, we will study a range of craft concerns and narrative tools (construction of a narrator, scene, memory, reporting and research, dramatic tension, and of course the ever-elusive “truth”) available to the memoirist.
 
Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.
 
 
 

The Lyric Essay

CREA S4335
3 points
Tues & Thurs, 2:00 - 4:10 pm
May 22 - June 28
Instructor: Meehan Crist

While nonfiction is perhaps known for its allegiance to facts and logic in the stalwart essay form, the genre conducts its own experiments, often grouped under the term "lyric essays." Lyric essays are sometimes fragmentary, suggestive, meditative, inconclusive; they may glance only sidelong at their subject, employ the compression of poetry, and perform magic tricks in which stories slip down blind alleys, discursive arguments dissolve into ellipses, and narrators disappear altogether. Lyric essayists blend a passion for the actual with innovative forms, listening deeply to the demands of each new subject. In this course, students will map the terrain of the lyric essay, work in which writers revise nonfiction traditions such as: coherent narrative or rhetorical arcs; an identifiable, transparent, or stable narrator; and the familiar categories of memoir, personal essay, travel writing, and argument.  More > >
 
Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.
 
 

 

Fiction Writing Workshop

CREA S1001Q (Section 3)
3 points
Mon & Wed, 11:00 am - 1:10 pm
July 2 - August 8
Instructor: Merrill Feitell

The Fiction Writing Workshop is designed for students who have little or no experience writing imaginative prose. Students are introduced to a range of craft concerns through exercises and discussions, and eventually produce their own writing for the critical analysis of the class. Outside readings supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.
 
 

Advanced Fiction Workshop

CREA S2001Q
3 points
Tues & Thurs, 2:00 - 4:10 pm
July 3 - August 9
Instructor: Sonya Chung

The Advanced Fiction Workshop is intended for students with previous fiction workshop experience. The workshop presents a higher creative standard than beginning or intermediate workshops as well as increased expectations to produce finished work. Students are additionally expected to write extensive critiques of the work of their peers and to explore questions of craft with increased rigor.

Prerequisites: Previous fiction workshop experience is required. Students will be contacted by the instructor and asked to submit a 10-20 pp double-spaced writing sample (either a short story or a portion of a novel) for her evaluation before the first meeting.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.
 
 
 

Poetry Writing Workshop

CREA S1201Q
3 points
Mon & Wed, 5:30 - 7:40 pm
July 2 - August 8
Instructor: Jesse Garcés Kiley

The Poetry Writing Workshop is designed for students who have a serious interest in poetry writing but who lack a significant background in the rudiments of the craft and/or have had little or no previous poetry workshop experience. Students will be assigned weekly writing exercises emphasizing such aspects of verse composition as the poetic line, the image, rhyme and other sound devices, verse forms, repetition, tone, irony, and others. Students will also read an extensive variety of exemplary work in verse, submit brief critical analyses of poems, and critique each other's original work.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.

 

 

Short Prose Forms

CREA S4308
3 points
Tues & Thurs, 5:30 - 7:40 pm
July 3 - August 9
Instructor: Sasha Fletcher

The prose poem and its siblings the short short story and the brief personal essay are the wild cards in the writer's deck; their identities change according to the dealer. We will consider a wide range of forms, approaches, and styles, spanning centuries. In addition to works in English, we will read translations from the French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese. Seminar discussions will be complemented by frequent writing exercises (inside and outside of class) and some abbreviated workshopping of student pieces. Each student will make one brief classroom presentation. More > >

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.

 
 

Translation Seminar

CREA S4336
3 points
Mon & Wed, 2:10 - 4:00 pm
July 2 - August 8
Instructor: Stefania Heim

You don't have to be bilingual to take this course. Several years of study of another language is enough. In this introductory course to literary translation, students will learn about the art of translating prose and poetry. We will read essays on translation by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and Anne Carson, and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to the craft. Students will present their own translations for discussion and become familiar with a range of perspectives on literary translation that will inform their revision process. We'll also discuss the way works in translation are reviewed and each student will review a recent translation for the end of the semester.

Materials Fee: $15

Please note that this fee is in addition to the tuition rate and standard enrollment fees for the course. For more information, please see School of Continuing Education Summer Sessions Tuition & Fees.

 

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