Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

Fall 2024 Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

C W 101 1 Introduction to Creative Writing ONLINE Matthew Davison
C W 101 2 Introduction to Creative Writing   ONLINE Matthew Davison
C W 101 3 Introduction to Creative Writing   Tuesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA
C W 101 4 Introduction to Creative Writing   Wednesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA

This introductory course focuses on the creative writing process of generating material through writing exercises in poetry, fiction and playwriting. It also examines for craft selected readings of exemplary stories, poems and plays. Open to all students. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 301 1 Fundamentals of Creative Writing Thursday 4:00 – 6:45. PM TBA

Prerequisite: English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to Creative Writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Instruction and extensive practice in writing poetry, fiction and plays, with selected readings of exemplary stories, poems and plays. This course is the prerequisite to Short Story Writing, Poetry Writing and Playwriting. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 302 2 Fundamentals of Creative Reading Tuesday 12:30-3:15 PM TBA

Prerequisite: English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to Creative Writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Students learn to read like writers through lecture-discussion and reading assignments. Submerges the student in literature and asserts the importance of reading.

C W 511GW 1 Craft Of Poetry - GWAR ONLINE Monday 4:00-5:40 PM Paul Hoover

Prerequisites: Restricted to Creative Writing majors; GE Area A2; C W 301 or equivalent. Focus on basic craft elements of poetry: diction, imagery, rhythm, voice and form. Close readings of published poetry. Creative and critical writing. (ABC/NC only)

C W 512GW 1 Craft Of Fiction - GWAR ONLINE Tuesday 12:30-2:00 PM Matthew Davison

Prerequisites: C W 301; ENG 114; ENG 214; Restricted to Creative Writing majors. Focus on basic craft elements of fiction: plot, dialogue, character, point of view, and place. Discussion of student and professional writing. (ABC/NC only)

C W 520 1 Writers on Writing Thursday 7-9:45 PM Caro De Robertis

Prerequisite for C W 520: Upper-division standing; GPA of 3.0 or higher; or permission of the instructor. Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 820. Note: this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the “creative process” requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 820 may not take C W 520 for credit. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 550 1 Poetry Center Workshop ONLINE Wednesday 12:30-3 PM Tonya Foster

Prerequisite for C W 550: Upper-division standing; GE Area A2; GPA of 3.0 or higher; or permission of the instructor. A poetry writing and study course aligned with The Poetry Center Reading Series. Features guest performances throughout the semester by outstanding local, national, and international poets, writers, musicians, and related artists. C W 850/C W 550 is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.

C W 601 1 Work In Progress ONLINE Monday 4-5:40 PM Andrew Joron

Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.

Capstone course for seniors in which undergraduate final project is completed.

C W 606 Art of Revision Thursday 12:30-3:15 PM Matthew Davison

Prerequisites: C W 101 or C W 301; C W 302; C W 512GW or C W 603 Examine and experiment with the artistic processes of published writers (and a variety of other artists) who've taken a project from idea to completion. Study interviews, process notes, and "middle drafts" of these artists. Include analyses of the draft process, genre across artistic and literary forms, and creation and revision of student work. CROSS GENRE COURSE

C W 640 1 Transfer Literary Magazine Wednesday 4-6:45 PM Junse Kim

Prerequisite: C W 301; C W 302; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW; or consent of instructor. This course will provide you with practical experience in literary publishing through work on Transfer, SFSU’s undergrad literary journal. Students will solicit and evaluate work for publication, gaining practical experience in editing, layout, and production of the journal, as well as in publicizing and promoting the finished product, and taking an active role in Transfer’s social media presence. In addition, we will address various approaches to editing and aesthetics, as well as the politics of representation. You will investigate your own editorial sensibility through exploratory essays and the creation of a hypothetical literary magazine. Transfer Magazine provides you with the opportunity to consider what’s currently being published in literary magazines and what you would add to that culture.

This is a process course (not a lab) and can be used to fulfill 3 units of the Creative Process requirement. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 675 1 Community Projects-Literature Tuesday 7-9:45 PM Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads at https://creativewriting.sfsu.edu/content/communityprojects-0. Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships at http://icce.sfsu.edu. These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions, please contact Michael David Lukas at mdlukas@sfsu.edu . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.

C W 699 Independent Study By Arrangement

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor and a 3.0 GPA. Upper division students may enroll in a course of Independent Study under the supervision of a member of the Creative Writing department, with whom the course is planned, developed, and completed. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Petition for Individual Study forms are available online https://registrar.sfsu.edu/sites/default/files/indstudyi.pdf. This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair. Your instructor will give you the schedule and permit numbers to add the course during the first week of the semester.

GRADUATE CLASSES:

Note: Preference in all Creative Writing graduate courses will be given to students admitted to either the M.A. or the M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing. Preference in M.F.A. level courses will be given to students admitted to the M.F.A. program. Priority in M.A. and M.F.A. writing workshops and creative process courses will be given to students admitted in the genre of the course. Other Creative Writing M.A./M.F.A. students may enroll in these courses only with the permission of the instructor.

C W 803 1 Advanced Short Story Writing Thursday 4-6:45 PM Junse Kim

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Priority enrollment given to graduate Creative Writing fiction students; open to Creative Writing students in other genres only on a space available basis, to be determined at the first class meeting. In this seminar/workshop we will dissect the intricacies of fiction craft in Short Stories through discussions of assigned readings, students’ work and in-class exercises. We will analyze character, conflict, narrative structure, plot development as well as other aspects of craft and consider how they all work together in fulfilling a story’s dramatic intent. There will be an emphasis on integrating this knowledge into your own writing process, from initial draft to revision, in order to make your work fully realized.

C W 809 Directed Writing for Graduate Students By Arrangement

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Permission of the instructor is required to take this course; you will be dropped without prior consent of the instructor. The semester before you plan to enroll in Directed Writing, submit a sample of your writing in the instructor’s mailbox along with a note explaining that you want to take their Directed Writing class. Be sure you include your name, address, phone number and email. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.

C W 809 1 Directed Writing BA Students ARR Michelle Carter mcarter@sfsu.edu

C W 809 2 Directed Writing BA Students ARR Caro De Robertis caro@sfsu.edu

C W 809 3 Directed Writing BA Students ARR Paul Hoover viridian@sfsu.edu

C W 809 4 Directed Writing BA Students ARR Chanan Tigay tigay@sfsu.edu

C W 810 1 Documentary Poetics, Lighting Up: Seeing Things, Feeling Spirit (an Image-Text Documentary Poetics Workshop) ONLINE Tuesday 4-5:40 PM Tonya Foster

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in creative writing or consent of instructor. In a conversation with cultural critic and musician Greg Tate, cinematographer and filmmaker Arthur Jafa asserted that “rhythm in black art illuminates the spirit.” Jafa went on to explain that rhythm may be understood as the “least material but the most felt.” Spirit occupies that rhythmic territory in that it is on the outer edges of the material, and at the center of feeling. In music, it is the rhythm which holds us and moves us emotionally and intellectually. What are the textual and visual analogues for how music moves us—both crowds of us and the crowds within us? This is a writing workshop in which we'll explore what it is to witness and document what is and register possibilities of what may yet be. May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

C W 810 2 Speculative Fiction Thursday 4-6:45 PM Andrew Joron

Prerequisite: classified graduate status, M.A. or M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Speculative fiction is a genre that gives priority to “cognitive estrangement,” using narrative prose to push beyond ordinary reality into a zone where the familiar becomes strange and the strange familiar. This course will survey various modes of modern speculative fiction, including science fiction and fantasy, dystopian and Gothic literature, surrealism and magical realism. Students will utilize readings in these modes as points of departure for their own creative writing. The assigned readings will include works by Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang and Nnedi Okorafor.

C W 820 1 Writers on Writing Thursday 7:00-9:45 PM Caro De Robertis

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor. Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 520. Note: this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the C W 810 (creative process) requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 520 may not take C W 820 for credit. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 840 1 14 Hills Literary Magazine Tuesday 4-6:45 PM Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Fourteen Hills is a working small press as well as a graduate course in editing, publishing, and other skills essential to thriving and leading in the contemporary literary world. Each year, we publish one issue of Fourteen Hills: the SFSU Review, a nationally recognized literary print magazine, as well as the Michael Rubin Book Award (MRBA) winner, a book-length work by an SF State student or recent graduate. Fourteen Hills is run entirely by students with support from our Faculty Advisor and the Department of Creative Writing. The course, taught primarily by the Editor-in-Chief, is designed to give students an opportunity to observe and engage in many aspects of running a literary magazine, from editorial decisions to distribution logistics, from public relations and author interviews to curating a literary prize, from aesthetic considerations to the dynamics of equity and narrative justice in the broader publishing field. Students in the class serve as staff for the journal, working closely with the editors to consider and evaluate work for publication as well as learning about the copy-editing process, visual art selection, cover design, distribution, sales, and promotion. This is a class designed to merge real-world, hands-on publishing experience with the honing of skills that can ignite, inspire, and empower us in all our literary endeavors. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 850 1 Poetry Center Workshop ONLINE Wednesday 12:30-3 PM Tonya Foster

Prerequisite for C W 850: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor. A poetry writing and study course aligned with The Poetry Center Reading Series and with re-imagining the 70-year old Poetry Center as a Center for Poetry and Poetics. Graduate student writers will, in addition to writing their own poetry and short lyric essays, be asked to think through parts of the Poetry Center archives and propose PC multi-disciplinary futures. Features guest performances throughout the semester by outstanding local, national, and international poets, writers, musicians, and related artists. C W 850/C W 550 is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.

C W 853 1 Workshop in Fiction Wednesday 4-6:45 PM Nona Caspers

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Every work of art has its own consciousness and subtext waiting to be explored—its own demands and invitations. In this graduate workshop course, we will strive to recognize what is alive and compelling in each other’s material, the invitations—and to help each other follow our own intuitive and intellectual impulses in developing the material. The following opening questions may help: what experience is being offered, on its own terms? And what’s strong and in motion? We’ll practice locating the heat, delights, surprises, intrigues. (These passages point to your subtext and once located can be further explored/crafted). We’ll locate possibilities for development and offer targeted writing experiments intended to unearth the real thing in the work-in-progress. The intention is that the feedback discussions will stir up the writer’s (and everybody else’s) imagination in concrete ways, so they can further commit to and participate with the text’s deepest currents—on the text’s own terms. Students can submit fresh work or significantly revised works-in-progress twice in semester (up to 25 pages)—projects that may already be in motion. Students will also have opportunities to show brief experiments. We will together create our class MFA Fiction Course Reader—to accompany each week’s discussion and inspire us toward the art of language and crafting possibilities. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

C W 854 1 Workshop in Poetry Wednesday 12:30-3:15 PM Paul Hoover

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in MFA in Creative Writing, the MA in English; Creative Writing, or the new MA in Creative Writing. Students will concentrate on the creation and revision of their poetry. The class format will include discussion of reading assignments, group discussion of student work, and in-class and at-home writing assignments.

C W 855 1 Workshop in Playwriting Tuesday 4-6:45 PM TBA

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Students are expected to concentrate on the revision of a play, on bringing work to a finished state, ready for production. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

C W 859 1 Practicum in Teaching Tuesday 4-6:45 PM Michelle Carter

Open to both MA and MFA Creative Writing students. Repeatable once for credit. Students working for the first time as Pedagogical Apprentices to instructors of undergraduate Creative Writing courses are required to take this Practicum course concurrent with their work with a teacher of record. Students meet as a group once every three weeks in tandem with asynchronous work on Canvas, posting teaching journals and case studies on a weekly basis. This course provides pedagogical grounding for pragmatic classroom teaching work and offers students a structured forum in which to discuss their teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher and in collaboration with other Pedagogical Apprentices. NB: Each student must make arrangements with an instructor to serve as a Pedagogical Apprentice.

C W 860 1 Teaching Creative Writing Monday 4-6:45 PM Nona Caspers

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. This course introduces advanced graduate students to the art and practice of teaching creative writing. Creative Writing 301 will serve as our prototype. We’ll be reading essays and interviews, discussing aspects of creative writing pedagogy and performing a variety of rigorous teaching activities. We’ll discuss giving useful feedback for student writers; designing effective writing assignments; use of texts and craft models; strategies for leading discussions of literary works and student works-in-progress. Students will also prepare and execute mini-lectures on a range of craft and process topics and develop a detailed syllabus for an introductory creative writing course. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 866 1 Craft of Translation Tuesday 4-6:45 PM Caro De Robertis

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in creative writing or consent of instructor. In this course, we will delve into the rich, nuanced, ever-evolving world of literary translation—which is a creative act of its own, one that draws not only on one’s knowledge of language, but on one’s sensitivity to its music, shades of meaning, culture, aesthetics, and language. To unfurl these themes, we will engage in comparative translation, taking a global tour of international literature through the centuries and exploring the vast range of choices made by translators in bringing them to life in English. A core component of this class will be your own original work as a translator, and workshop discussions where the rubber meets the road. Fluency in the language you’ll be translating from is wonderful, but not required. Literary translation is an exquisite training ground for creative writers of all genres; in this class, you are invited to intensify your love affair with language, and your capacity to wield it with precision and power.

C W 875 1 Community Projects-Literature Tuesday 7-9:45 PM Michael David Lukas

C W 880 1 Vampires, Androids, Detectives Tuesday 12:30–3:15 PM Michael David Lukas

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing M.F.A. C W or consent of instructor. Over the past two decades, the field of creative writing has undergone a number of significant developments. One of the most exciting and far-reaching is literary fiction’s cross-pollination with what has been called “the more speculative genres.” Authors as stylistically diverse as Kazou Ishiguro, Karen Russell, Marlon James and Michael Chabon have used the tropes of science fiction, fantasy, detective novels and comic books to help revitalize literary fiction in an age of hybridity and interconnection, while at the same time helping to redefine the very idea of realism. In this course we will map the “genre borderlands” exploring the idea of genre fiction, how various genres have changes in the past fifty years and how writers of all stripes have used genre tropes to push the boundaries of both literary and genre fiction. Concurrent with these discussions, we will also try our hand at writing in various generic styles, pushing our own work to new and exciting places.

C W 882 1 The Comedic Play Monday 4-6:45 PM Michelle Carter

The centuries-old comedic genres aren't going anywhere--satire, farce, burlesque, comedy of manners, parody. Nor is our pleasure in laughter, "that sudden glory," ever likely to wane. It's hard to imagine a time in which comedy could feel more urgent, more necessary, or more impossible than our own. We turn to comedy, as ever, to entertain and amuse. We also treasure it as a force of disturbance, of disruption. We look to comedy "to comfort the afflicted." We also cherish its power "to afflict the comfortable." It can be a howl of pain, or an eruption of joy. It can interrogate or comfort. We hold dear its power to transgress, and at the same time, we fear its power to offend. And often struggle over the distinction.

In this course, we'll read and view contemporary comedic works with a wide range of intentions. We'll analyze the aims of these works and the theatrical strategies their creators have employed, responding to creative prompts each week in search of our own discoveries. In the final weeks of the semester, each student will share a draft of all or part of a comedic play of their own.

C W 893 Written M.A. Creative Project (3 units) By Arrangement

Prerequisite: advancement to M.A. candidacy in Creative Writing. Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 3 units M.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which may be a collection of short stories, a group of poems, a novel or a play. To enroll: contact your thesis/written creative work committee chair the first week of the semester for the schedule and permit numbers to add the class. You must enroll in this course or you will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 893 Written M.F.A. Creative Work (6 units) By Arrangement

Prerequisite: advancement to M.F.A. candidacy in Creative Writing; Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 6 units M.F.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which is expected to be a book length collection of short stories, or poems, or a novel or a play of publishable quality. Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or you will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 899 Independent Study By Arrangement

Prerequisite: consent of instructor and a minimum GPA of 3.25. A special study is planned, developed, and completed under the direction of a faculty member. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Petition Individual Study forms are available online http://registrar.sfsu.edu/sites/default/files/indstudyi.pdf (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with and brought with an unofficial transcript for the department chair signature. Your instructor will give you the schedule and permit numbers to add the course during the first week of the semester.

Fall 2024 Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

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