ENGL 206 - Intermediate Creative Writing

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Continued study and practice of various forms of prose and poetry. Reading and writing assignments may include prose fiction, journals, poetry, drama, and essays.

Topic for 2026/27b: Voice. Voice is the most visible and least understood aspect of successful fiction. It’s the tunnel through which every other story element must travel, and the site of exploration for the elasticity of the English language. In this class you consider disparate and multiform approaches to first-person POV through close readings of short stories, hybrid works, craft essays, and novellas by Sidik Fofana, Emma Cline, Jamaica Kincaid, Thomas Bernhard, Amit Chaudhuri, Joy Williams, Jonathan Escoffery, and Stanley Crawford, among others. You also workshop your own short fiction and complete weekly generative exercises. Throughout, you consider the fertile/vexing question of, per Zadie Smith, “the I who is not me.” Ryan Chapman.

Prerequisite(s): Open to any student who has taken ENGL 205.

One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.

Course Format: CLS