423  Advanced Creative Nonfiction  Spring 2007:

Emulation and Revision

Syllabus

Calendar of Readings & Responsibilities 

 

On E-reserve at Zimmerman Library*   password:  study423 

Personal Essays

• "Somehow Form a Family"  Tony Early
• "My Father's Brain"  Jonathan Franzen
• "Biography of a Dress"  Jamaica Kincaid
• "Consider the Lobster"  David Foster Wallace
• "Maintenance" Naomi Shihab Nye
• "Being Brians"  Brian Doyle
• "Bags in Trees"  Ian Frazier
• "The Solace of Open Spaces"  Gretel Erhlich

Craft Essays

• "The Eleventh Draft"    Chris Offutt

• "The Treadmill Journal"  Greg Martin

• "The Situation & the Story"  Vivian Gornick

• "Writing Personal Essays:  On the Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character" Philip Lopate

• "Taking Yourself Out of the Story"   Philip Gerard

• "Linear Design" & "Modular Design"  Madison Smartt Bell

• "An Interview with Jane Smiley"

• "What Stories Teach Their Writers"  Jane Smiley

• "Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed"  Susan Sontag

• "Working & Reworking:  Early Drafts & the Techniques of Revision"  Stephen Koch 

Early, Middle, and Published Drafts

• Melody Gee's 3 Drafts of "Back Home"  published in North Dakota Quarterly

• Molly Cooney's 3 Drafts of "Missing Pieces"  published in The Gettysburg Review

• Dana Salvador's 3 Drafts of "After the Harvest"  published in Fourth Genre

Handouts (on website)

          The Reading Response

 The Peer Response

Craft Features:  Quotes, Ideas, Questions, Working Definitions

Revising for the Middle Draft

Publishing Your Work