Spring 2024 Class Schedule

Creative Writing Spring 2024 Class Schedule and Descriptions

 

This course is an introduction to the creative writing process, in which you’ll do exercises in writing poetry, fiction, and dramatic scripts. There will also be selected readings of exemplary stories, poems, and plays. Open to all students. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Priority enrollment given to Eng: Creative Writing, Eng: Ed w/ Creative Writing concentration and Cinema majors. 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.  Instructors’ names will be published in June. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite:  Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Every creative writer needs to be a creative reader. Knowing how to write means knowing how to read. As beginning writers, we learn our craft by reading the works of established writers, drawing inspiration from their examples. In this class, we will read stories, poems, and plays by a diversity of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Octavia Butler, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sally Wen Mao and others. We will also explore a diversity of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror and contemporary realism. Students will discover that creative reading is often the first and most important step to creative writing. 

Prerequisites for C W 506: C W 101 or C W 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment limited to C W majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Covers agents, corporate and small publishing houses, E-publishing, markets, publicity, etc. Students write letters to agents/editors, press releases for book tours, and several short papers. (This is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.)
 

Prerequisites: Upper-division standing; C W 101 or 301. How do we write about/from/in the body? How can we use language to embody gender, identity, materiality? This semester we'll look at how a variety of poets and writers do just that and explore strategies for translating material states and bodily identity into writing. Students will respond to readings with both analytical and creative writing. 

 

Prerequisites: Creative writing major; ENG 214 or equivalent with a grade of C- or better; CW 301 or equivalent. The aim of this class is to foster your growth as a poet. Toward that end, we’ll engage in lots of reading and writing designed both to get you thinking about how poems do what they do (craft!) and to expand the range of possibilities for the ways your own poems might be made, what they might say, and how they might mean. The class will include whole-class discussions of published poems as well as small, break-out workshop/discussion groups during which you'll discuss poems written by your fellow student writers. At the midpoint in the semester, you'll write a draft of the analytical essay that will fulfill your GWAR requirement; at the end of the semester, you'll submit the final, revised version of that essay. This course also satisfies the university’s GWAR requirement. Creative and critical writing. (ABC/NC only.)
 

Prerequisites: C W 301; ENG 114; ENG 214; B.A. majors in ENG, Creative Writing and ENG, Edu. (Creative Writing). Explore craft elements of fiction: plot, dialogue, character, point of view, place, etc. Focus is on published writing and exercises. Some student work is discussed. Satisfies the General Education GWAR/C WEP requirement. An exploration of how writers translate their vision onto the page. (Emphasis on HOW). Emphasis is on assigned reading material, but some student work will also be discussed in small groups.

 

  Journal writing is a personal space for writers to recapture the exquisite richness of personal experience in order to understand themselves and inspire imaginative ideas that lead to stories, poetry, plays and film. As such, we will explore journal writing as a literary form and as a tool to gather ideas for our own creative work. We will read excerpts from a range of writers’ journals and see how their entries found their way into their creative work. Students are expected to keep a journal as a response to stimuli the world presents to them, to record memories, to gather ideas in raw form, and to refine ideas and creative work.  The reading of assigned journals coupled with ongoing writing exercises will generate poems, stories, personal essays, or scenes or monologues through the semester.

 

 Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.  Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing, Creative Writing, and English: Education (Creative Writing). Work In Progress is an advanced process course that offers senior creative writing majors the opportunity to delve into an extended writing project of their own design. Our work in this class will focus on the creative process as it extends past the first burst of inspiration into the longer haul. We’ll study and try out a variety of creative practices that writers can use to keep their projects alive, open and dynamic over the long haul. 

CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisites: C W 301; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. This course will explore different aspects of fiction writing craft by critically analyzing published short stories, as well as fellow students’ creative writing.  Students will then apply and hone these craft concepts through in-class writing exercises and written assignments, transforming conceptual knowledge of craft into “how to” applicable knowledge.  Each student will then explore their creative process and consider how it can include critical thinking, consciously applying craft in three written assignments and a complete short story.

 

Prerequisite: TH A 130 (for CW majors: C W 301 and C W 511 or C W 512 or C W 513) Priority given to creative writing, English education, and drama majors. We will be studying a variety of definitions and models of monologues, such as childhood as the treasure chest of memory, dramatic stories that are ripped from the headlines, history, celebrations of one’s culture and identity, stand-up routines with blistering social commentaries and more. We will various performance techniques, which include the influence of dance, music and poetry on the art form.  We will explore the connection between the page and the stage.  We will practice a variety of vocal, physical and writing exercises designed to help students relax so that characters and their stories can emerge.  Students will develop their own pieces and apply these techniques and methods to their own projects.

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.

 

Prerequisite:  C W 301; C W 302; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW; or consent of instructor. Join the staff of Transfer, the literary magazine of the Creative Writing Department, established in 1950, and one of the longest running student literary magazines in the US. The course is designed to give you a working taste of what it takes to put out a literary magazine (including critical analysis and discussion of short-listed submissions, proofreading, solicitation and distribution) and to make you think about the world of literary magazines and your own beliefs in literature. Come prepared to analyze and discuss text and investigate your own literary aesthetics. In order to bring Transfer into the 21st Century, in addition to assisting the editors publish the print magazine, class members will create, design, and edit their own literary magazine. If you’re interested in being an editor of Transfer, at the end of the semester you will be given the opportunity to apply for an editor position for the next issue. This is a process course (not a lab) and can be used to fulfill 3 units of the Creative Process requirement. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

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 SFSU. 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 SFSU'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 Junse Kim at Junsekim@sfsu.edu . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.

                

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. Independent Study forms are available online http://registrar.sfsu.edu/forms under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Please request a permit number from your instructor when they approve the 699 form.

 

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.

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. In this class we will explore some aspects of the “business” of creative writing—how writers find and create audiences for their work, find editors and publishers, and pay the rent—as well as how they create lives in which art and the creative process are central. This is a survey class, not a seminar, so while this class will not teach you how to become a best-selling writer in ten easy steps, it will provide you with a larger sense of the business side of creative writing, while encouraging you to develop your ability to distinguish between the business of creative writing and the art. Each class period will involve lecture & discussion by guest speakers (poets, writers, literary agents, book editors, literary journal publishers, reading series curators, book distribution managers, free-lance writers and editors, literary nonprofit managers, and the like). You will be given a writing and/or research assignment the week before each presentation to lead you into the speaker’s field.

 

809   Directed Writing for Graduate Students                       ARR

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 e-mail. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. In this graduate-level seminar, we will examine the various ways that time operates, conceptually and practically, in fictional narratives. On one hand, time and place coalesce to form a reader’s understanding of a narrative’s milieu. Yet time can also be manipulated as a structural craft element that controls how fast or slow a reader travels through the story. We can ask ourselves questions like: How much time does this novel cover? How does the author handle time in this one particular scene? How does this time period come alive off the page? What is happening to time in the negative spaces between scenes, chapters and acts? Each week, we will discuss how the writers on our syllabus approach time on both a micro and macro level. Assigned authors include: Alice Munro, Jane Smiley, Tom Drury, Ann Patchett, Yoko Ogawa, Toni Morrison, Sigrid Nunez, Susan Choi, Alan Hollinghurst, Lan Samantha Chang and Oscar Hokeah. 

May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. This graduate process course will trace the development and history of lyric poetry, beginning with Sappho and Archilochus.  It will also include ancient Chinese and Japanese traditions as seen in Li Po, Du Fu, and Bashō, Romanticism’s revival of lyric forms like the sonnet, ode, and hymn, the confessional and personal poetry of Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton, and O’Hara, the postmodern turn toward conflicted song, as seen in the serial poems of Duncan and Spicer, as well as the Objectivists and language poetry, and the lyrics of songwriting itself.

May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or consent of the instructor. MA and M.F.A. students from all genres are welcome (should the course be over-enrolled, priority will be given to Playwriting students). Calling all playwrights, directors, actors, stage managers, production managers and graphic artists!  Greenhouse 2024 is looking for full length and short plays to be presented in a guerilla style theatre format in various indoor and outdoor spaces on the SF State campus for our annual festival of new work. Playwrights must be highly self-motivated in the creative process. They must be willing to help cast their own plays and do whatever it takes to get their work up. The festival will be held in April. Master classes with local professionals will guide students with helpful tools in dramaturgy, publicity and marketing, fundraising and grant writing. For more information please contact Anne Galjour at agaljour@sfsu.edu. May be repeated for a total of 9 units.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Fourteen Hills is a working small press as well as a graduate course in editing and literary publishing. Each year, in the spring, we publish one issue of Fourteen Hills: the SFSU Review, a nationally recognized literary print magazine, as well as in fall the Michael Rubin Book Award (MRBA) by an SFSU 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 is designed to give students an opportunity to observe and participate in many aspects of running a literary magazine, from editorial decisions to distribution logistics, from public relations and event planning to conducting author interviews. Students in the class serve as staff for the journal, working closely with the editors to consider and evaluate work for publication in the upcoming issue as well as learning about the copy-editing process, visual art selection, cover design, distribution, sales, and promotion. The course is taught primarily by the Editor-in-Chief, with guidance from the Faculty Advisor. Small group work will be led by the Fiction and Poetry genre editors. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisites: Classified graduate standing in M.F.A. Creative Writing; priority enrollment given to M.F.A. creative nonfiction students; open to other M.F.A. genre and MA creative nonfiction students only on a space-available basis, to be determined at the first class meeting. May be repeated for a maximum of 18 units.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Together, in this course, we’ll delve into the infinitely rich world of fiction—what it is, why it matters, how to shape and forge it. You are encouraged to experiment, push your own edges, and take daring leaps toward your most vaulting goals as a writer. We will read selected works of fiction as springboards for discussion, to fill our wells, and to deepen our common language around literary craft. In workshop, we’ll use an “unsilenced” method to turn close attention to each student’s manuscript in an atmosphere of aesthetic rigor, personal agency, and mutual support. We will pay attention to a range of factors at play, including characterization, plot, point of view, developing and sustaining narrative tension, evocation of setting, treatment of time, and the range of possibilities for dialogue, theme, structure, imagery, voice, and style. This class is equally welcoming of those writing short stories, those focused on a novel, and those exploring both genres and/or the exciting space between them. You are encouraged to explore, to cross-pollinate, and to let inspiration propel you to new realms. 

May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. “As if your life depended on it. You must write and read as if your life depended on it…To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife…” This excerpted quote from Adrienne Rich’s “What is Found There” speaks to the sense of urgency and complexity guiding this writing workshop. What is it to make art when the world is on fire? Students will concentrate on the creation, revision, and radical revision of their poetry. The class format will include discussion of reading assignments, writing in response to readings, viewings, and music; group discussion of student work, and in-class and at-home writing and reading assignments. Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Maria Irene Fornes wrote: "My goal in workshops is always what will be advantageous for the growth of the individual writer, rather than for the writer to show the other people in the class what they have accomplished." In that spirit, we'll focus on fearlessly generating new work and using craft and process triggers to explore work already under construction. We'll read and watch newly written and newly produced plays and discuss intention and theatrical strategies. We'll also spotlight craft and process challenges of interest to the group. Our methods, while diverse, will be adapted to target the needs of the group's particular members.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. CW 859, Practicum in Teaching, MFA and MA students in Creative Writing are given the opportunity to participate in undergraduate courses for teacher training activities under the supervision of Creative Writing instructors.   Each student must make arrangements with an instructor of an undergraduate course to participate in that course as a Teaching Practicum student.  Over the course of the semester, students will engage in a process of discovery of the values, beliefs, ideals, and aesthetics that will inform each of their own Creative Writing pedagogies.  Students in CW 859 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 activities under the supervision of an experienced teacher and in collaboration with other Practicum students.  Open to both M.A. and M.F.A. Creative Writing students. 

 

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 Spring of 2024. 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.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing or 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 SFSU. 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 SFSU'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 Junse Kim at Junsekim@sfsu.edu . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.

  

In this multi-genre class we'll be exploring ways to generate new work and to develop an idea into a publishable work. We'll read award-winning published works in various genres, including hybrid forms that combine documents, images, poetry/prose and other storytelling forms. We will have Zoom visits with acclaimed authors to discuss their craft and see how they discovered the form that they felt was the right one for developing their inspiration. Although this won't be a full workshop, students will have many opportunities to generate new creative work and receive feedback and to experiment with developing an idea in different genres and forms. We will read and discuss creative works by established and emerging authors­ including Paul Hlava Ceballos, K-Ming Chang, Benjamín Labatut, Kiese Laymon, Elissa Washuta and Jane Wong.  

 

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 get into the course students must attend the first two classes.  

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing M.F.A. CW or consent of instructor. If—as Audre Lorde once said—poetry is the “skeleton architecture” of our lives, what does this mean for our sentences, the prose we spin, the pulse we forge on the page? What is the relationship between aesthetic daring and transgressive or revolutionary thought? How does a queer lens innovate, shake up, or ignite the potentialities of language, and what might this catalyze for any and all among us who want to write with verve and power? What gifts might we find if we come together and joyfully explore what queers a sentence, makes it sing? In this class, we’ll read prose works by a range of trailblazing queer and trans authors, with a focus on what the poetics of their sentences catalyzes for us as writers. We’ll start with canonical works—by Herman Melville, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Qiu Miaojin and Reinaldo Arenas—and then draw on a broad range of contemporary voices for inspiration and creative sparks. We’ll use these readings as a springboard into our own creative work, in whatever direction calls us. We’ll gather phenomenal sentences, and practice writing our own. We’ll also keep our eyes on other elements that contribute to narrative poetics: theme, voice, pacing, narrative structure, characterization, point of view, setting, interiority and uses of time. Writers of all backgrounds and identities, of course, are welcome. Let’s launch the adventure, and make some art.

 

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing MFA CW or consent of instructor. This multi-genre course will study and themes and structures of assigned books of poetry, fiction, and one-act plays, with the end result of students writing and designing their own chapbooks of 16-24 pages.  Assigned books will include Model City by Donna Stonecipher, Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris, Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, and the procedural novel, Mr. Palomar, by Italo Calvino.

 

C W 893 Written M.A. Creative Project (3 units)
Prerequisite:  advancement to M.A. candidacy in English: 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.  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 your will not receive credit for your thesis.

 

C W 893 Written M.F.A. Creative Work (6 units)
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 your will not receive credit for your thesis.

 

C W 899           Independent Study                             ARR
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. Independent Study forms are available online http://registrar.sfsu.edu/forms under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Your instructor will give you a permit number once they have approved the 899 petition.