English 523 Graduate Creative Nonfiction Workshop
W 4:00-6:30
Spring 2012
Greg Martin
Office: UAEC 138: University Advisement and Enrichment Center. (The building used to be called Student Services.) To get here from the SUB, head east through the walkway of Mesa Vista Hall. Once in the UAEC building, My office is in the second suite on the left. BA/MD Combined Degree Program. My office is 138, which, after you come through our Old West saloon-style swinging half door, is the first door on the right.
Office Hours: Wed 2:00-3:30 (and by appointment)
Phone: 277-2623
E-mail: gmartin@unm.edu
Course website: www.unm.edu/~gmartin
This is a writing workshop focused on revision. Each student will write two new pieces of creative nonfiction. We will workshop each piece twice. Then, each of you will choose one of these two essays to revise again, and you will send it out at the end of the semester to six literary magazines.
The goal of the course is to push you to produce more than you thought you could, to break down what Jane Smiley calls “evasion strategies.”
The particular subgenre of creative nonfiction you may turn in to the workshop is wide open: Autobiographical Narrative (an essay that has the dramatic structure of a short story); a Lyric Meditation (a more “classic” Montaigne-like essay that is structured meditatively or philosophically or associatively); Profile; Travel Writing; Literary Journalism. A hybrid essay that combines two or more of these forms. It's all fair game.
Readings for discussion in class will consist of (1) published essays from a variety of the subgenres above, as well as (2) essays on craft. In selecting pieces for us to read and discuss, my aim is for eclecticism--to give you a sense of the range of literary nonfiction, to give you a sense of the possibilities of the form. But please know that the readings are not comprehensive, in any way. Nor are they intended to give you a sense of the history of the form. And as much as anything, I chose essays that I, myself, want to re-visit and discuss. E.M. Forster said of the novel (but he could just as well have said it about any form of literature): "The first test of the novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else we cannot define."
We want to read essays that will make us want to re-read that same essay again--at some point, essays that we know, when we finish, that we will want to re-visit. We want to write essays that have that same effect on the reader.
Recommended Reading
Any writer seriously committed to literary nonfiction should be reading BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS cover to cover, each year. Other recommended reading:
- Philip Lopate's THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY
- Joyce Carol Oate's THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS OF THE CENTURY
- Stephen Koch's THE MODERN LIBRARY'S WRITER'S WORKSHOP
- Literary Magazines: I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with what's being published right now in the best literary magazines that publish creative nonfiction. Most, if not all, of the best magazines have a good website with sample essays from recent issues. The Notable Essays section of Best American Essays is a good guide for the magazines publishing at a high level. Also, a list of what I take to be 50 or so very good literary magazines, with website links, can be found in the Publishing Your Work section of the course website.
Course Requirements
Treadmill Journal (5%)
Each student will keep a Treadmill Journal which I will glance at during the last class meeting. (See Treadmil Journal craft essay on e-reserves.)
Four creative nonfiction drafts: (50%)
Important note #1: the writing that you turn in to workshop must be, in some recognizable way (more on this) creative nonfiction. (No fiction.)
Important note #2: Some of you are working on booklength projects, and so will not be turning in pieces that stand alone at 10-25 pages. Fine. If so, make sure to provide at the beginning of your workshop submissions a single spaced paragraph or so of the background your readers will need to give you feedback.
Peer Responses: (25%) 1-2 page, typed, responses for each of your peer’s manuscripts submitted for workshop. These peer responses are to be distributed to me, and to the author of the workshopped piece, on the day the work is discussed. These responses should focus on what you take to be one of the work’s deeper concerns, its situation and story, your thoughts on how the essay is evolving, draft to draft, as well as suggestions for revision.
Important Note: These responses need to substantively conform to the prompts in the Peer Response handout.
Essay Submission (20%) Bring six stamped envelopes to the last class of the semester. (Those workshopped on this day have one additional week to submit.) These six envelopes should be addressed to six different literary magazines. Each of these envelopes will have:
The proper postage!
A cover letter.
A copy of one of the two essays you worked on during the semester.
A self-addressed, stamped envelope.
I'll take your submissions to the post office the following day and ceremoniously drop them in the slot. If you are submitting online, bring to the party a print out of the magazine's confirmation of your submission.
For examples of cover letters, see the Publishing Your Work section of the course website. If this course requirement makes you feel like you need to check yourself into the ER (rapid pulse, dizziness, nausea), please come see me. (But you still have to do it.) You can pass the course without submitting (you'll get a "C"), but I will not make any exceptions or extensions for the submission policy.
Try to think of the workshop as a tentative process of helping the writer make this piece better, or as is often the case, make a future piece better. Everything we say will be wrong, or partial, or skewed by our own aesthetics. You will hear startlingly different analyses of your work from the class. Writing is not democratic, and you can’t possibly listen to all the voices in the class. Go away from the workshop with the reading and critique that is most helpful to you. Choose, as your favorite critic in the class, the peer who seems most in sympathy with your work. Then make friends with that person, get together outside of class, share your work, and drink caffeine. Good workshops always extend beyond the classroom.
1. Manuscripts are due at specific times. You need to deliver copies of your work, for each of your peers and for me, one week before you are to be workshopped. There is no flexibility in this scheme. The workshop’s effectiveness depends on the timely distribution of your work. Late essays will not be workshopped. You have been charged a $20 fee for the course towards photocopying for workshop using the department's kind, able workstudy students. Your essay should be given to the department secretary to be stamped and dated at least 48 hours before you need to distribute your work to the class. If you cannot meet this deadline, you are on your own.
2. Essays should be typed, double-spaced, numbered, 12pt font, with one inch margins, on one side of the page, with no cover pages, and stapled. Also include: your name, the course number and section, my name, the date, the title.
3. Manuscripts cannot exceed 10,000 words.
4. Correct grammar, usage, punctuation and spelling are expected. A piece flawed by pervasive proofreading or mechanical errors will be mocked.
5. Attendance and participation are mandatory. If you miss class more than twice it will affect your grade.