back to school
Welcome to the Sunday post.
In the spirit of back to school vibes, fresh notebooks, and a big autumn to-read list, I offer the gist of my Fall 2024 syllabus for the MFA students at California Institute of the Arts, titled “Experiments in Experience.”
Nonfiction has the potential to be something more than what readers expect, and every writer has a variety of choices to make in determining what shape to craft their work depending on the subject. A profile of an artist may include the author’s interactions with the subject; reportage might be interrupted by the personal. A book of one’s dreams can be designated a “dreamoir”; a text of literary or social criticism may contain memoiristic elements. Writing about the self can be joyous and funny, as well as challenging and complex. Writing artfully about others while maintaining an anchored I or self for the reader takes skill in the form of wide reading, and deep, ongoing practice. In this class, we will look at some forms within the nonfiction genre, roughly described as Profiles, Humor, Experimental, Reportage, Distillation of a Nervous System (shout out to Margo Jefferson, who we’ll be reading), and Literary and Social Criticism. With the required texts, articles, and podcasts, we’ll examine these forms and their uses, and generate new work week to week that uses these forms as learning models. The class will not be a traditional workshop, but more a weekly conversation in which students will share their experience with the selected forms via the readings, and receive informal feedback and revision strategies on the written assignments produced. The practice in forms will culminate in a final portfolio that will include a minimum of three of the forms described.
Required Texts
My Pin-Up by Hilton Als
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (while this book is a novel, it has been considered an autobiographical novel)
White Magic by Elissa Washuta
A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson
Creep by Myriam Gurba
Additional readings will include brief selected excerpts from a variety of writers including MariNaomi, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Randa Jarrar, Shane McCrae, Aparna Nancharla, Cathy Park Hong, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Christina Sharpe, and Kate Zambreno. Select literary podcasts will also be assigned.
What’s your Fall 2024 (personal, imagined, concrete, or other) syllabus?
