Interdisciplinary Arts 0244 - Diving Through the Page: A Creative Writing Workshop

"One does not look through writing on to reality - as through a clean or dirty windowpane. Words are never transparent. They create their own space, the space of experience, not that of existence..." -John Berger. This class will be a combination of an excavation of experience and a deep-sea dive beyond. Through a broad selection of readings--James Baldwin, Emily Dickinson, Lucille Clifton, Julie Otsuka, and others--we will carefully consider the many ways in which a piece of writing creates its own space, one a reader can fully enter, and the ways in which truth is harnessed and released through that space. Through guided exercises, participants will aim to cultivate the clarity of their writing voice and apply this clarity toward the creation, on the page, of spaces marked by both the ambiguity of experience and the radical promise of imagination.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Multiple Cultural Perspectives In this course, students can generally expect to spend 6 to 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.