English 290 - CRAFTING CREATIVE NONFICTION

A writer's workshop designed to explore the complexities and delights of creative nonfiction. Constant reading, writing, and critiquing. Admission by permission of the instructor. English 290 will be a course for students with a serious interest in developing and refining their skills at formal essay writing. Because reading and writing are complementary cognitive activities, we will spend time reading essays by some of the best writers of the last 100 years or so: Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Richard Rodriguez, Alice Walker and Gore Vidal. Selections will be arranged in thematic clusters to inspire, prompt, provoke or incite responses that will generate formal essays. Attention will be paid to the writing process, particularly revision, and to matters of style ("the perfection of style is to be clear without being mean, Aristotle said.") Admission by permission of the instructor.

Writing Sample Required.