Courses: Spring 2024
All CWL courses 4 credits unless noted otherwise. FLM courses 2-3 credits.
Regularly scheduled classes for the Spring 2024 semester begin on Monday, January 22nd and end on Saturday, May 4th. The semester ends Wednesday, May 15. For other important dates about registering, adding or dropping, etc. please check the Graduate School calendar here:
https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/registrar/calendars/_graduate-calendar-spring-2024.php
GRADUATE COURSES IN SOUTHAMPTON (in-person)
CWL 510.S01 #54121 Forms of Fiction: The Short Story in Particular
Amy Hempel
Mondays 5:30 - 8:20 p.m., 4 credits
Members of this short story workshop will submit two-three stories that feature some of the narrative strategies we will discuss, including ways to strengthen a reminiscence, how far the use of voice can go, and the language of the workplace. The aim is to amplify what a story can be, what it can do. Weekly supplemental reading will include contemporary stories and poems from writers including E.C. Osundu, Ayse Papatya Bucak, Kimberly King Parsons, Nami Mun, Danielle Evans,, Sharon Olds, Davy Rothbart, Sherry Sonnett, and many more.
CWL 520.S01 51964, Forms of Poetry: The Sentence; Prose Poetry; Flash Fiction
Christine Kitano
Thursdays 2:30 – 5:20pm, 4 credits
In this course, we will focus on the expressive possibilities of the sentence. The first part of the semester will be dedicated to studying the sentence as both grammatical unit and aesthetic tool. Then, we’ll see how to build prose poems and flash stories by wielding syntax to further the imaginative vision. Many of us learned to write “by ear,” so don’t worry if you never learned to diagram a sentence or are unsure about the difference between a phrase and a clause. This course is designed for both grammar nerds and skeptics, and for both poets and prose writers. We can all benefit from deeper investigation into the structures of language as we continue to hone our craft.
CWL 540.S01 54166 Forms of Creative Nonfiction: Ways of the Memoir
Lou Ann Walker
Mondays, 2:30 – 5:20, 4 credits
We could even retitle this course “Life: A Story.” In addition to reading new masters of the memoir form, you’ll be writing in order to discover themes in your life. We'll be touching on narrative subjects such as the reliability of memory, point of view, the accuracy of dialogue, as well as portraying other characters in your life—memoir is not just about the “I.” You’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish during this semester.
Our reading list will be finalized at the beginning of the class depending on what will be most useful to you as writers, but some of the works we’ll be considering include: Solito by Javier Zamora; All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tina Miles; Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder; The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom; Out of Egypt by André Aciman; Educated by Tara Westover; The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer; The Color of Water by James McBride; Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey; The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls; Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal by Jeanette Winterson; When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanith; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah.
CWL 550.S01 54201, Forms of Professional Writing: The Business of Being a Writer
Emma Walton Hamilton
Wednesdays, 2:30 - 5:20P, 4 credits
“I’m a writer, not a business-person!” So says every new writer who hopes to avoid the challenges of marketing, promoting and otherwise managing their work. But being a professional writer is 50% writing and 50% business, and without the business part, the chances of being a successful writer are few and far between.
The Business of Being a Writer course is an overview of what it takes to be a professional writer in today’s world, from submissions to agents and editors through book deals, the publication process, marketing and PR for authors, and more. The focus is on demystifying the business side of being a writer, finding the creativity within it, and maybe even learning to enjoy the process. Coursework includes lectures, readings and discussion on the various topics, plus writing assignments, presentations, and feedback on fellow students’ written material.
CWL 560.S01 54144, Topics in Literature for Writers: Experimental Literature
Susan Scarf Merrell
Tuesdays, 2:30 - 5:20 pm, 4 credits
Nothing great ever comes from following the rules. Or does it? What is experimental
literature? How can we think about it as writers, in terms of craft “lessons” that
we can learn to use in our own work? This class will examine risk-taking in literature,
with a very heavy reading load, weekly annotations on craft, the writing of responsive
short fiction, and student presentations. Texts include Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, The Waves, Virginia Woolf, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, Beloved, Toni Morrison, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead, and some experimental short stories.
CWL 580.S01 51934, Practicum in Arts Administration
Christian McLean
Thursdays, 11 am – 1:50 pm , 1 – 4 credits
This course teaches important skills in arts/event management. It provides education in marketing, design and software that will boost your résumé and increase your workplace skill set. We’ll examine work/volunteer opportunities in local arts organizations and you will design an MFA event from the ground up. Learn the basics in Photoshop, Mailmerge, Google Docs/Sheets, Constant Contact, plus Facebook and Twitter ads. Completion of at least 6 program credits or permission of instructor required.
CWL 581.S01 54145, Practicum in Teaching Writing
Julie Sheehan
Wednesday, 10:00am – 12:50pm, 3 credits
This course is being taught at the West, Main Stony Brook, Campus and will meet in the Melville Library, N3060
See the WEST CAMPUS course list for the description.
Practicum in Publishing & Editing
Lou Ann Walker & Scott Sullivan
Tuesdays, 11:00am – 1:50pm, 1 – 4 credits
NOTE: One instructor will be in Southampton and the other in Manhattan. This course will be taught jointly. You may take this course in either location, or online.
CWL 582.S01 51932 (use this section and class number if you’ll be taking the course either In person in Southamptonoronline)
CWL 582.S60 56239 (use this section and class number if you’ll be taking the course In person in Manhattan)
Under the guidance of editors and advisors, students will be exposed to the hands-on process of editing and publishing TSR: The Southampton Review. Yes, the P& E Practicum is designed to give you experience in editing a literary and arts review. But here’s the secret: This practicum also provides an excellent means for you to build your skills as a writer. For example, as you read submissions in Submittable, you’ll be seeing what works and doesn’t work in cover letters. You’ll be examining successful structures in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry. You’ll be acquiring editing diagnostic tools. And you’ll be drilling down to what works line by line throughout a creative piece. We’ll discuss word choices, juxtapositions, imagery, symbolism, all that good stuff.
MANHATTAN
CWL 510.S60 54167, Forms of Fiction: Re-Visioning Your Story
Karen Bender
Tuesdays, 2:30 – 5:20pm, 4 credits (Limited Hybrid)
Revision is a writer's superpower, and this class will be a workshop/lab in which you work on one story, chapter or essay throughout the semester. Students turn in a first draft of their work, we'll workshop it, and each student will get a personalized revision exercise to start the process going. Students turn in a fully revised second draft of the work as a second submission. We'll look at revision as a process that happens in stages--from creating the architecture of the story, to deepening characters, to creating scenes vs. summary, to honing language at the end. We will also be reading different drafts of published writers' work and do in-class writing that will help you explore your work in progress. We'll see how re-visioning can be as playful and creative as a first draft. We'll also research magazines that could be a good fit for your project and send the work out the last day of class.
CWL 535.S61 51961, Writing in Multiple Genres: Humor Writing
Patricia Marx
Tuesdays, 5:30 – 8:20 pm, 4 credits
- “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”—James Thurber
- “Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.” —Sid Caesar
- “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” —Mel Brooks
- “. . .An amateur thinks it's really funny if you dress a man up as an old lady, put him in a wheelchair, and give the wheelchair a push that sends it spinning down a slope towards a stone wall. For a pro, it's got to be a real old lady.”—Groucho Marx
- “What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.” —Steve Martin
- “You know, crankiness is the essence of all comedy.”—Jerry Seinfeld
- “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” –E.B. White
- “Patty Marx is the best teacher in the Creative Writing Program.”—Patricia Marx
One of the above quotations is false. Find out which one in this humor-writing workshop, where you will read, listen to, and watch comedic samples from well-known and lesser-known humorists, and complete weekly writing assignments. Students already working on projects are welcome to develop them. You will learn a thing or two and you will have fun - or else!
CWL 535.S62 53282, Writing in Multiple Genres: Flash Fiction and Nonfiction Writing
Robert Lopez
Wednesdays 2:30 – 5:20pm, 4 credits
Brevity is the soul of wit, so said Polonius. We will aim to write narratives that deliver an emotional impact inside very strict parameters. Every writer will come up with flash pieces of 300, 600, and 1000 words and we will see how much we can achieve within these constraints, which are often liberating. We'll read flash writers like Kim Chinquee, Kathy Fish, Jamaica Kincaid, Diane Williams, Abigail Thomas, Eula Biss, Justin Torres, and others.
FLM 550.S60 #54161 Teaching Practicum
Karen Offitzer
Thursdays, 2:20-5:10pm, 3 credits
Prerequisite: Six credits of writing workshops or permission of program/instructor.
This is a weekly seminar in teaching at the University level, with special emphasis on teaching in the creative arts, specifically creative writing and filmmaking. This course plunges into the basics of pedagogy, exploring learning styles, discovering a teaching philosophy, designing syllabi for undergraduate courses, creating assignments and rubrics for grading assignments, and practicing these skills in a classroom setting. You’ll get hands-on experience and mentoring through visits to undergraduate classes and teaching opportunities, and will gain an understanding of what works best for helping undergraduate students learn. Particular focus will be on discussing issues that arise when teaching creative endeavors such as writing and filmmaking.
CWL 565.S61 Special Topics in Writing: Infinite New Yorks
Tim Horvath
Every Other Saturday, 11:00am – 4:50pm, 4 credits (Seven Class Sessions: 1/27, 2/17, 3/2, 3/30, 4/13, 4/27, 5/4)
Another story/novel/poem/play set in New York? In this class, we’ll see how the city has been refracted in innumerable ways in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, and we’ll find the angles and interstices from which to add our own visions of the city to the infinite array. By reading passages from works such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Daphne Palasi Andreades’s Brown Girls, Teju Cole’s Open City, Weike Wang’s Joan is Okay, Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World, Jamel Brinkley's Witness, Jonathan Lee’s The Great Mistake, and Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140, we’ll wander through fictional New Yorks past, present, and even future. We'll also dive into poetry, including Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Eileen Myles, a play, and nonfiction from writers such as Philip Lopate and Prudence Peiffer. We'll go on field trips and do site-specific writing, exploring art galleries and food markets, the High Line, the theater district, and perhaps an outer borough. In all, as have so many before us, we'll triangulate ourselves, language, and this mesmerizing, consuming, infuriating, exhilarating city.
Practicum in Publishing & Editing
Lou Ann Walker & Scott Sullivan
Tuesdays, 11:00am – 1:50pm, 1 – 4 credits
NOTE: One instructor will be in Southampton and the other in Manhattan. This course will be taught jointly. You may take this course in either location, or online.
CWL 582.S01 51932 (use this section and class number if you’ll be taking the course eitherIn person in Southamptonoronline)
CWL 582.S60 56239 (use this section and class number if you’ll be taking the course In person in Manhattan)
Under the guidance of editors and advisors, students will be exposed to the hands-on process of editing and publishing TSR: The Southampton Review. Yes, the P& E Practicum is designed to give you experience in editing a literary and arts review. But here’s the secret: This practicum also provides an excellent means for you to build your skills as a writer. For example, as you read submissions in Submittable, you’ll be seeing what works and doesn’t work in cover letters. You’ll be examining successful structures in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry. You’ll be acquiring editing diagnostic tools. And you’ll be drilling down to what works line by line throughout a creative piece. We’ll discuss word choices, juxtapositions, imagery, symbolism, all that good stuff.
ONLINE
CWL 535.S60 51965, Writing in Multiple Genres: Creating Stories When You Can’s Stay Silent
Thursday, 2:30-5:20
Matthew Klam
Most writers need multiple drafts, and when the work succeeds it does so because the author is entangled, involved, a little obsessed. Creative writing, both fiction and nonfiction, uses all sorts of techniques and tools, uses the intimacy and intensity of great memoir, the confessional power of a first person essay, the disruptive surprise of humor. It uses lists, and stretches of pure dialogue, and plenty of straight up reportage and hard-won observation. The best writing can and should come right at us, should defy our expectations. It can be structured in a classical or experimental way, or a mix of approaches to fit the subject.
We'll look at examples of the form by fiction writers and non fiction writers like by Jo Ann Beard, Jon Krakauer, Justin Torres, Adam Haslett, Jhumpa Lahiri, Mary Karr, Mary Gaitskill, Kiese Laymon, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and many others. We'll examine their structure in the way a carpenter might study a beautiful house. We'll look at half page essays and eyewitness accounts, masterworks of longform journalism, essays, chapters of books, comics by Allison Bechdel and Adrian Tomine, sections of plays, and whatever else inspires us. How is it that some writers are able to create real character development and tension in a few lines or pages? We'll talk about that too. In this class we'll write, read, and discuss, while also workshopping your pieces-in-progress in a helpful, constructive manner.
CWL 565.S01 54202, Special Topics in Writing: The Post-Novel
Jennifer Solheim
Thursdays, 5:30 – 8:20pm, 4 credits
ONLINE
“Post-” refers to “after,” often in terms of the aftermath of a social disaster or revolution. “Post” can also be defined as a stake or stay in the ground, meant to offer support. In this course, we will look at novels that offer grounding in the wake of collective trauma and social transformation to consider how elements of fiction can orient and stabilize readers within a fictional universe that is inherently unstable. In considering works such as Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), Georges Perec’s W: Or The Memory of Childhood (1972), Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks (2018), Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942) and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation (2015), students will write toward a grounded post- narrative for workshop, along with response questions and leading discussion about setting, character, action, plot, and narrative strategy to support their aims for their own work.
WEST (MAIN) CAMPUS
CWL 581.S01 54145, Practicum in Teaching Writing
Julie Sheehan
Wednesday, 10:00am – 12:50pm, 3 credits
Melville Library N3060
This course plunges into the basics of pedagogy, including designing writing assignments, sequencing them, grading them, and creating syllabi for creative writing, composition and literature courses. You’ll get hands-on experience and mentoring through visits to undergraduate writing classes taught by your colleagues. You’ll get a preliminary overview of writing pedagogy on your way to devising your own. Most importantly, you’ll ask and ask again, “What is teachable about writing, and who am I to teach it?” (You need permission of the director and at least 6 program credits under your belt to take this class.)
THESIS
CWL 599.V01 51933 Julie Sheehan
CWL 599.V02 51907 Matthew Klam
CWL 599.V03 51940 Christine Kitano
CWL 599.V04 51941 Kaylie Jones
CWL 599.V05 51942 Carla Caglioti
CWL 599.V06 51943 Genevieve Crane
CWL 599.V07 51944 Robert Lopez
CWL 599.V08 51945 Paul Harding
CWL 599.V09 51946 Susan Merrell
CWL 599.V10 51947 Susan Minot
CWL 599.V11 51948 Robert Reeves
CWL 599.V12 51949 Lou Ann Walker
CWL 599.V13 51950 Amy Hempel
CWL 599.V14 51951 TBA (Molly Gaudry)
CWL 599.V15 51953 Robert Reeves THESIS PLANNING
CWL 599.V16 51954 Magdalene Brandeis
FILM and TV Courses Possibly Open to CWL Students
FLM 550.S60 #54161 Teaching Practicum
Karen Offitzer
Thursdays, 2:20-5:10pm, 3 credits
Prerequisite: Six credits of writing workshops or permission of program/instructor.
This is a weekly seminar in teaching at the University level, with special emphasis on teaching in the creative arts, specifically creative writing and filmmaking. This course plunges into the basics of pedagogy, exploring learning styles, discovering a teaching philosophy, designing syllabi for undergraduate courses, creating assignments and rubrics for grading assignments, and practicing these skills in a classroom setting. You’ll get hands-on experience and mentoring through visits to undergraduate classes and teaching opportunities, and will gain an understanding of what works best for helping undergraduate students learn. Particular focus will be on discussing issues that arise when teaching creative endeavors such as writing and filmmaking.
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