The life so short, the craft so long to learn. — Leo Tolstoy

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. — Ernest Hemingway

Let’s face it, writing is hell. — William Styron

In English 201, an introduction to writing nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, you will read, discuss, write, revise, and play with works in all three genres, addressing the crucial writing challenges each genre presents and the often confusing edges between and around them. Class time will be divided between discussions of readings and craft, exercises, collaborations, and workshops. Outside of class you will develop your own writing process and goals within each genre, and respond to one another’s work. You will also meet regularly with me in conference to discuss your writing, and you will attend readings given by visiting authors. In this classroom, you are a community of writers sharing a learning experience and taking risks, and therefore, you shall support one another and contribute to one another’s sense of creative writing by being thoughtful and honest writers, readers, experimenters, and responders. By the end of the course, you will have engaged deeply with the practice of writing, established a writing discipline, honed your skills, generated new work, developed a portfolio, and extended your sense of the possibilities of stories and poems as they live within and around us.