CNF 49 — An Introduction to Creative Nonfiction: From Creative Process to Final Draft
Spring
Thursdays
6:30—9:20 pm
Date(s)
Mar 31—Jun 9
10 weeks
Drop By
Apr 13
3 Units
Fees
$605
Format
On-campus course
Limit 21
Open
Please Note: This course has a different schedule than what appears in the print catalogue. The final on-campus session will be on Thursday, June 9. There will be no class on May 5.
In this lively, hands-on workshop, students will have the opportunity to shape their own experiences and interests into powerful stories. Using the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction as our guide, we will read a variety of works by such writers as Joan Didion, Wendell Berry, Cheryl Strayed, and David Sedaris. We will go through a step-by-step creative process in order to gain access to our own life material and begin shaping our ideas into writing that is compelling and publishable. Whether you are just getting started or you have been writing for years and are ready to share your work with a community, you will find in this course the structure and feedback that you need to write with confidence and intention. Bring a willingness to take creative risks and an open mind, and you will complete the course with a preliminary manuscript of twenty pages, a community of supportive writers, a new understanding about your own material and its strengths, and a concrete plan for continuing to write well into the future.
Caroline Goodwin, Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford
Caroline Goodwin’s work has been published in The New Republic, Junction Box, Puerto del Sol, PRISM International, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collections Trapline (2013) and Peregrine (2015), and in 2014 was named the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. Goodwin received an MFA from the University of British Columbia.Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Lex Williford and Michael Martone, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, First Edition (ISBN 978-1-4165-3174-6)
(Required) Alice LaPlante, The Making of a Story (ISBN 978-0393337082)
(Required) Alice LaPlante, The Making of a Story (ISBN 978-0393337082)