- Please go to Onestop for complete course listings and schedules.
- The Creative Writing Program no longer keeps waiting lists in the office. If a section is full, we recommend that you attend class on the first day and speak to the instructor. Only individual instructors will be able to provide permission numbers for overrides.
- 8000-level seminars fulfill a component of the workshops requirement. You may use an 8000-level seminar to fulfill the out-of-genre workshop requirement.
- Taken under the EngW designator, a Topics course can fulfill either a literature/language requirement or a workshop requirement, depending on how the instructor designs the course.
- Taken under the EngL 5090 designator, a Topics course can fulfill the "EngL" related field requirement.
Fall 2008 ENGW Course Descriptions
Note: If you are an undergraduate, MA or PhD student and you would like to take a graduate-level creative writing course, please contact Kathleen Glasgow, kglasgow@umn.edu.
ENGW 5102 Advanced Fiction Writing (required for first-year fiction writers) Instructor: Julie Schumacher 3:35-6:05 pm, Thursday 4 cr
Advanced fiction writing workshop. Students should expect to have at least two new stories or excerpts from a novel critiqued. Readings in classic and contemporary literature. This course fulfills a workshop requirement.
ENGW 5106 Advanced Literary Nonfiction Writing (required for first-year nonfiction writers) Instructor: Madelon Sprengnether
3:35-6:05 pm, Wednesday 4 cr
This class will combine readings in classic and contemporary nonfiction with short writing exercises and the development of a longer manuscript. Readings will be selected to demonstrate various styles and subject matters, so as to illuminate the range of writing in the nonfiction genre. We will also consider issues concerning the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction in contemporary practice, the ethics of representing “real” people in nonfiction writing, and the instability and unreliability of personal memory. Class time will be divided between discussion of the readings and commentary on student work. Note: this class will include a visit by Andrea Elliott, Pulitzer Prize winning NYT journalist, who will be a guest of the Creative Writing Program in October. This course fulfills a workshop requirement.
EngW 5104 Advanced Poetry Writing (required for first-year poets) 3:35-6:05 pm W 4 cr
Instructor: Michael Dennis Browne
This is a workshop for experienced writers of poetry. We critique individual poems and exchange written comments on each poem. Students are encouraged to keep notebooks, to memorize, and to bring in favorite poems and statements on poetry and poetics for discussion and reading. Most sessions begins with a writing exercise. At the end of the semester, students turn in a portfolio of poems, including several revisions, and a statement of self-assessment. Admission to the workshop for non-MFA students requires instructor’s permission based on reading of a manuscript (10-12 poems). This course fulfills a workshop requirement.
EngW 5205 Screenwriting Instructor: Affiliate 6:20-8:50 pm, Monday 4 cr
Beginning instruction in the craft of screenwriting. Prerequisite: Graduate student or junior/senior with at least one 3000-level literature, creative writing, or composition/Writing Studies course. Please see Creative Writing Office, 222 Lind, for permission number. This course can fulfill an-out-of-genre workshop requirement
EngW 5606W Literary Aspects of Journalism Instructor: Kathy Roberts 12:20-1:10 pm MWF 3 cr
Meets with JOUR 5606W This course can fulfill an out-of-genre workshop requirement, an out-of-department Related Field requirement or a Literature/Language requirement (NOT the EngL related field requirement)
EngW 8101 Reading Across Genres (required for all first-year MFAs) Instructor: Patricia Hampl
4:30-7:00 pm, Monday 4 cr
This class is taught in rotation by Creative Writing Faculty and introduces new MFAs to the program, each other, and to the faculty (core faculty, visiting faculty and established writers in the Twin Cities literary community visit the class during the term).
EngW 8140 Thesis Seminar: Poetry (required for second/third year poets) Instructor: Ray Gonzalez
3:35-6:05 pm, Tuesday 4 cr
This course is for second and third year poetry students preparing their thesis manuscripts. Second year students, who are at an earlier stage of writing and gathering sequences of poems, will be required to submit fewer pages than third year students, but will be expected to generate and workshop poems that will serve as the foundation for their projects. As we workshop these poems, we will discuss and debate how individual pieces create sequences and signal what kind of manuscript is being written, even if it is at an early stage. Third years students will submit more pages and we will look at large portions of their manuscripts which, at this point in the third year, should be well on their way toward the final stages that make up a first book. Third year students are expected to have larger, working manuscripts that should already resemble a final thesis. We will also read and discuss five or six published books of contemporary poetry to study how poets group sections of poems, create movements within sequences, and how they begin and end their manuscripts. By the end of the course, second year students should have a good foundation of poems as they prepare for their final year and third year students will have manuscripts that point to final revisions and ordering as they go into their last spring semester.
EngW 8150 Thesis Seminar: Fiction (required for second/third year fiction writers) Instructor: Alexs Pate
3:35-6:05 pm, Tuesday 4 cr
Foundation course for second- and third-year fiction writers to work on the thesis manuscript.
EngW 8160 Thesis Seminar: Nonfiction (required for second/third year nonfiction writers) Instructor: Patricia Hampl
3:35-6:05 pm, Tuesday 4 cr
Foundation course for second- and third-year nonfiction writers to work on the thesis manuscript.
EngW 8170 MFA Practicum: EngW 1101W (required for EngW 1101W Teaching Assistants) Instructor: Affiliate
1:00-2:15 pm, Wednesday 3 cr
Note: All first-year MFAs are required to take EngL 5800: Practicum in the Teaching of English, 2:00-3:40, Friday, Instructor: Eric Daigre, 2 cr.
EngL Courses of Interest:
EngL 5711 Introduction to Editing Instructor: Affiliate
4:40-6:35 MW 4 cr
This course is an introduction to the editing process--specifically, learning about the editor-author-publisher relationship, with an emphasis on building skills in basic copyediting, style, grammar, and mechanics. We focus primarily on nonfiction editing; assignments vary from newspaper and magazine articles to academic editing and, briefly, fiction editing. Professional editors from the community visit on several occasions. The course texts include "The Chicago Manual of Style" and several copyediting textbooks. Weekly practice homework assignments are given. There are two midcourse exams and one final. Each has two parts: a take-home portion, in which students have one week to edit an article and query the author, and an in-class portion, in which students show their knowledge of mechanics, grammar, and style in a deadline-driven (and open-book) publishing environment.
EngL 5200 Readings in American Literature: American Poetry from 1900 Instructor: Maria Damon
3:35 - 06:05W 3 credits
Meets with: ENGL 3212 section 001
