Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

Summer 2025 C W 101 Course Schedule Available Here!

Creative Writing Fall 2025 Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

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C W 101 1  Introduction to Creative Writing   Tuesday 4-5:40 PM ONLINE  May-Lee Chai  
C W 101 2  Introduction to Creative Writing   Wednesday 12:30-2 PM ONLINE  Paul Hoover
C W 101 3  Introduction to Creative Writing   ONLINE  Tonya Foster
C W 101 4  Introduction to Creative Writing   Monday 12:30-3:15 PM Joseph Cassara
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  Monday 4:00-6:45 PM   TBA
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 520 1  Writers on Writing Wednesday 4:00-6:45 PM   Chanan Tigay 
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 601 1 Work In Progress  ONLINE Tuesday 12:30-1:45 PM  May-Lee Chai
Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.  
Capstone course for seniors in which undergraduate final project is completed.
 
C W 640 1  Transfer Literary Magazine     Wednesday  4-6:45 PM   TBD
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 12:30-3:15 PM Caro De Robertis
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 Caro De Robertis caro@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 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 810 1  The Creative Process: The Lyric Poem ONLINE Tuesday 4-5:40 PM Paul Hoover 
Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in creative writing or consent of instructor. This graduate process course will trace the development and history of the lyric poem, beginning with Sappho, Archilochos and Pindar and including ancient Chinese and Japanese traditions, Italian and Shakespearean sonnets, Cavalier ease and Metaphysical compression, Romanticism’s revival of lyric genres such the ode and hymn, modern and postmodern turns toward conflicted song and songwriting itself, from Sappho’s lost music to contemporary popular song. Writing assignments will span all of the lyric modes as investigations of self and other.
May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

C W 810 2  What The Body Knows: Trans and Genderqueer Narratives  Monday 12:30-3:15 PM  Caro De Robertis
Prerequisite: classified graduate status, M.A. or M.F.A. in Creative Writing. 
How does freedom live—or not live—in the body? How does memory? Wounding? Daring? Queerness? Joy? And what does this mean for the stories we generate on the page? In this class, we’ll read literary works by trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, and otherwise gender nonconforming writers as a springboard for exploring themes of embodiment, desire, self-actualization, liberation, danger, and belonging. We’ll start with foundational, canonical texts, and then draw on a broad range of contemporary literary voices for inspiration and creative sparks. As always, we’ll use these readings as a springboard into exploration of craft, and our own creative work. All genres welcome. 

C W  820 1  Writers on Writing   Wednesday 4:00-6:45 PM   Chanan Tigay
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   Monday 4-6:45 PM   Caro De Robertis
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 852 1   Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Thursday  12:30-3 PM   May-Lee Chai
Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in MFA in Creative Writing, the MA in English; Creative Writing, or the new MA in Creative Writing. In this graduate Creative Nonfiction Workshop, you will submit 2-3 pieces of creative nonfiction—either separate shorter pieces or sections of something longer you are working on. You will hone your skills as critics, responding weekly to your classmates’ submissions, both in class and in feedback letters. The great majority of our time will be dedicated to discussing students’ work, with an eye toward drawing connections between craft principles and their own writing practice. We will workshop two writers’ submissions each week, examining such craft elements as structure, tension, dialogue, clarity, arc and character, paying particular attention to the ways in which conventions of craft are applied and understood—and oftentimes reinterpreted or subverted.
May be repeated for a total of 18 units. 

C W 853 1   Workshop in Fiction  Wednesday  4-6:45 PM     Joseph Cassara
Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. In this class, we will explore the landscape of contemporary fiction, including novels, novellas and short stories. Emphasis will be placed on students’ works-in-progress. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop two new stories or chapters for feedback from their peers. The goal of this workshop is for students to identify strengths and areas for growth in their own work, while also building their ability to articulate elevated critiques of peer work. MFA candidates will also have an opportunity to begin shaping the work that will constitute their thesis. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

C W 854 1   Workshop in Poetry Thursday 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 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  12:30-3:15 PM   Nona Caspers
Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. This course engages Creative Writing graduate students in pragmatic and theoretical exploration of the teaching of creative writing. Our methods and activities will be diverse. We'll begin the semester in active imaginative engagement in the student experience, here and now, the Fall of 2025. We'll create and present craft exegeses and craft and process lectures of varying length. We'll explore strategies for engaging in useful, generative analysis of student works-in-progress. We'll hold practice sessions in leading class discussions, setting out to use text models with creativity, adaptability and imagination. We'll also discuss aspects of Creative Writing pedagogy as stimulated by essays and interviews. By the end of the semester, each student will have prepared a detailed syllabus for a fifteen-week creative writing course. These activities will be not only pragmatic but also diagnostic: as the semester progresses, each student will aim to unearth their particular passions and priorities as writers, educators and human beings--the prime movers in the discovery of each of our own unique teaching voices and styles.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

C W 875 1  Community Projects-Literature  Tuesday 12:30-3:15 PM   Caro De Robertis
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 Caro De Robertis at caro@sfsu.edu . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.                          

C W 880 1 Art of Subtext  Wednesday 12:30–3:15 PM   Nona Caspers
Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate students in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. This course will examine “those elements that propel readers beyond the plot of a novel or short story into the realm of what haunts the imagination: the implied, the half-visible and the unspoken.”  Charles Baxter, Art of Subtext. Using Baxter’s book Art of Subtext for our springboard, we will analyze selected short fiction, novels and excerpts to identify and absorb how the text builds a world both solid and haunted, how the language, staging (dramatic placement), silences and speech, tonal shifts, fictional personalities and their forbidden thoughts serve as lures. We will respond to writing exercises intended to startle us into generating material that matters to us, veering toward surprise, risk, delight, depth.  We will discuss this generated material (experiments) in class in terms of the subtext in motion—the tensions, dynamics, voice, place, characters, unanswerable questions that may be burgeoning on the page and could be further developed.  Weekly texts may include a wide-range of authors such as Shruti Swamy, Bernardo Atxaga, Charles Mungoshi, Julian Lopera Delgado, Luke Dani Blue, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Brandon Taylor, May-lee Chai, Lydia Davis, James Allan McPherson, Jean Thompson, Alice Munro, Magda Szabo etc.  To remain in the course, students must attend the first two classes.  

C W 881 1 Individual Vision: Let Me Lay Eyes On You Thursday 12:30–3:15 PM   Tonya Foster
Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate students in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Where I’m from Let me lay eyes on you is a saying which offers the optical encounter with light and form through the cornea and retina as a laying on of hands, as a potential point of contact. In “The Revolutionary Theatre,” Amiri Baraka notes that “What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.” In this Seminar and workshop, we will explore images (“the poetic image is not just visual but an activation of any of the senses”) as constructed and experienced vectors of possibility. We will read and explore poetry, essays and other genre and media to explore the “image” and the artists’ individual visions.

C W 882 1  Contemporary American Playwrights  Monday 4-6:45 PM   Michelle Carter
Prerequisite: Restricted to M.F.A. in Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Examination of creative process emphasizing techniques, style, and structure. Topics to be specified in Class Schedule. May be repeated for a total of 18 units when topics vary.

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.       

Archived Class Schedules