Spring 2015 : African American Studies 157 Creative Writing: The Short Story

This course is a short-story-writing workshop. In the first portion of the course, we’ll read and analyze exemplary short stories by Edith Wharton, Randall Kenan, Ursula Le Guin, Sherman Alexie and others in order to examine the styles and strategies employed by various writers, and we’ll experiment with various in-class writing exercises that emphasize basic skills in writing description, dialogue, characters, and plot. For the rest of the semester, we’ll discuss student work in class. Each student will write two 12-20 page stories, which the class will discuss and critique. For the course final, students will choose one of their two stories to revise. The members of the class will provide written constructive critiques for each piece, and we’ll discuss together suggestions for solving problems that surface in the development of students’ stories.

Requirements:

*2 short stories, approximately 12-20 pages

*a substantial revision of one of the 2 stories

*1-page critiques of all student work

*participation in class discussion of student work

*writing exercises (including 1-2 page contribution to class novella)

*1 individual meeting with Prof. Scott

*timely posting & distribution of stories to be discussed and novella contributions