Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 269 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This is an intermediate course in the art of writing literary fiction. Previous experience with workshopping writing is encouraged but not required. The emphasis of the course will be learning how to read literature as a writer, with special attention given to the short story, novella, or short novel. We will read these works from the perspective of the writer as craftsperson and of the critic seeking in good faith to understand and describe a new aesthetic experience. We will be concerned foremost with how literary language works, with describing the effects of different kinds of sentences, different uses of genre, tone, and other rhetorical strategies. Together, we will explore our responses to examples of literature from around the world and from all periods, as well as to the writing you will produce and share with the class. As a member of a writing community, you should be prepared to respectfully read and respond to the work of others—both the work of your peers and that of the published writers that we will explore together.
Supplemental Application Information: This course is by application only but there are no prerequisites for this course and previous experience in a writing workshop is not required. In your application please submit a short letter explaining why you are interested in this class. You might tell me a bit about your relationship to literature, your encounter with a specific author, book, or even a scene or character from a story or novel. Please also include a writing sample of 2-5 pages (5 pages max!) of narrative prose fiction.
Instructor: Claire Messud Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course approaches the writing of fiction with character at its center. If fiction is an exploration of what it’s like to be alive on the planet, character is paramount: we are who we are because of a combination temperament and experience. You can’t write convincingly if you don’t know your characters: plot, voice, detail, dialogue, setting – all these elements of story are interwoven with and dependent upon character. While it will be primarily a workshop of student fiction, we will read and discuss fiction through the lens of character – including works by Gustave Flaubert, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Anton Chekhov, Brandon Taylor, Min Jin Lee, Ling Ma and Sidik Fofana.
Supplemental Application Information: Admission by application only. Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. There is no prerequisite for this course. For your writing sample, please submit 2-5 pages of creative work in any genre.
Instructor: Neel Mukherjee Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings of an assigned text, with the aim of isolating some concept or aspect of the genre under discussion in order to take bearings for your own. We will be reading authors such as Ursula Le Guin, Stanislav Lem, Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Kij Johnson, among others. We will be looking at questions of genre, and at the reasons for the quotation marks bracketing the word genre in the heading. We will also look at the convergences and divergences in the various kinds and modes mentioned in the title of the course. We will be thinking of generic topoi, conceptual underpinnings, imagination, style, world-building, storytelling, character, and resolution, among other things. Some of the best writing in these genres is by women on issues of gender and intersectionality, so there will also be a strong feminist component to the course. These genres have also been used, with extraordinary creativity and to great effect, by writers of colour to meditate on issues of race, inequality, oppression, freedom, so the syllabus also features an introduction to that domain.
In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of 55 minutes each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. To this end, every week two students will hand in something they have written, to the tune of 2,500-5,000 words, to me and to everyone in the group, ideally one week before their turn. At our first meeting, I will circulate a rota for you to put down your names and walk you through the syllabus, the aims and objectives of the course, workshop rules, expectations, requirements etc. Our goal is for each of you to have two turns, and approximately 5-10,000 words of your work critiqued, by the time semester ends. Copies of these writing samples will be returned to you at the end of each workshop with comments from me and from everyone in class.
This is a workshop intended for intermediate to advanced students. Previous experience of Creative Writing workshops is helpful but not necessary. You will have to read a short story -- sometimes, quite long -- every week, and three novels over the course of the semester.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a letter of introduction in which you write about why you’re interested in this course; what experience you’ve had writing; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favourite works of fiction are and why.
Instructor: Valeria Luiselli Wednesday, 12:45-2:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This is a course for anyone who is interested in the politics and aesthetics of sound. We will work on developing listening literacy as writers, thinking of it as a source of narrative craft. We will likewise explore listening as a collective practice that allows for intentional solidarity and creative resistance, both environmental and political. Some of our explorations will include: acoustemology, soundscaping, sound and gender, noise vs sound, archives and voices from the past, aural phenomenology, or the geophony-biophony-anthropophony triad. We will be engaging with a wide range of work from different fields, including: Anne Carson, Alice Oswald, Svetlana Alexievich, Layli Long Soldier, Fred Moten, Gloria Anzaldúa, Steven Feld, Roland Barthes, Arlette Farge, and the Ultra-red International Sound Collective.
Instructor: Laura van den Berg Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course will serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of writing fiction, with an emphasis on the contemporary short story. How can we set about creating “big” worlds in compact spaces? What unique doors can the form of the short story open? The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Ted Chiang, Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and Octavia Butler. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. Please also include a very brief writing sample (2-3 pages). The sample can be in any genre (it does not have to be from a work of fiction).
An introductory workshop where we will learn to read as writers and study all aspects of the craft of fiction writing, including such topics as character, point of view, structure, time, and plot. The first weeks will focus on writing exercises and reading contemporary short fiction. As the semester progresses, the focus of the workshop will shift to creating and discussing your own work at the table.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit ONLY a letter to me. I want to know what your favorite work of fiction is and why; and then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Please no writing samples.
Instructor: Neel Mukherjee Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings/literary-critical analyses of an assigned text (see below, ‘Course Schedule’, for all the reading material for the semester), with the aim of isolating some aspect of the craft of writing in order to take bearings for your own. We will be looking at technical things such as point of view, free indirect discourse, narration, character, interiority, style, movement, affect, but also at broader issues: metaphysics, politics, inequality, race, colonialism/imperialism, the white gaze. You will not only have read the assigned text with critical rigor but also taken notes of the points you want to raise in class. While I do not expect you to hand in short critical essays on the texts, I will be looking for engaged, alert discussions, so it may help to have something written down to facilitate our conversations. Please note: Reading the assigned text is obligatory. Previous Creative Writing workshop experience is desirable. If you’re writing YA fantasy, there are other courses on offer that would be a better fit.
In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of 55 minutes each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. To this end, every week two students will hand in something they have written, to the tune of 2,500-5,000 words, to me and to everyone in the group, ideally one week before their turn. At our first meeting, I will circulate a rota for you to put down your names and walk you through the syllabus, the aims and objectives of the course, workshop rules, expectations, requirements etc. For our first workshopping session, two students should hand in work five to seven days before. Our goal is for each of you to have two turns, and approximately 5-10,000 words of your work critiqued, by the time semester ends. Copies of these writing samples will be returned to you at the end of each workshop with comments from me and from everyone in class. Work submitted must be single-sided, double-spaced, paginated and, ideally, bearing a title. It must have your name on it and, on the top right-hand corner of the first page, my name and ‘Advanced Fiction, Fall 2024’.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a substantive letter of introduction in which you write about why you’re interested in this course; what experience you’ve had writing, especially what Creative Writing workshops you’ve already taken at Harvard; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favourite works of fiction are and why.
Instructor: Andrew Krivak Tuesday, 9:00-11:45 1m | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course is a workshop intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any novel poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable. We will read from roughly twelve novels written in the first-person, from Marilynne Robinson and W.G. Sebald, to Valeria Luiselli and Teju Cole, and ask questions (among others) of why this form, why this style? And, as a result, what is lost and what is realized in the telling? Primarily, however, students will write. Our goal will be to have a student’s work read and discussed twice in class during the semester. I am hoping to see at least 35-40 pages of a project —at any level of completion—at the end of term.
Supplemental Application Information: Please write a substantive letter telling me why you’re interested in taking this class, what writers (classical and contemporary) you admire and why, and if there’s a book you have read more than once, a movie you have seen more than once, a piece of music you listen to over and over, not because you have to but because you want to. Students of creative nonfiction are also welcome to apply.
Instructor: Claire Messud Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
Intended for students with prior fiction-writing and workshop experience, this course will concentrate on structure, execution and revision. Exploring various strands of contemporary and recent literary fiction – writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Chimamanda Adichie, Douglas Stuart, Ocean Vuong, etc – we will consider how fiction works in our present moment, with emphasis on a craft perspective. Each student will present to the class a published fiction that has influenced them. The course is primarily focused on the discussion of original student work, with the aim of improving both writerly skills and critical analysis. Revision is an important component of this class: students will workshop two stories and a revision of one of these.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of prose fiction, along with a substantive letter of introduction. I’d like to know why you’re interested in the course; what experience you’ve had writing, both in previous workshops and independently; what your literary goals and ambitions are. Please tell me about some of your favorite narratives – fiction, non-fiction, film, etc: why they move you, and what you learn from them.
Instructor: Claire Messud Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
In this course, we will explore the evolution of a story from a factual anecdote or incident to a fictional creation. The aims of the semester are to learn to listen to someone else’s story in interviews, and to endeavor to find, from there, the necessary bones for a fictional narrative. What is most urgent? What is most emotionally affecting? What are the details from an interview that stay with you? And from there: what, from a broader account, is the story you are moved to relate? Once you make that choice, how do you do further research, if necessary? How do you select the point of view, the frame, the characters for your fiction? What are the ethics and responsibilities of these choices? We will read work by writers who have transformed fact into fiction, some of whom will visit the class. Past visitors include Geraldine Brooks, Akhil Sharma, Amity Gaige, Meng Jin and Paul Yoon. No previous fiction-writing experience is required for this class.
Supplemental Application Information:Admission by application only. Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class, and, if you've a subject in mind, why it's interesting to you. There is no prerequisite for this course: all who are interested are welcome to apply. For your writing sample, submit 2-5 pages of creative work of any genre. If you haven't written creatively before, you might consider writing a brief character sketch or memoir piece.
Instructor: Paul Yoon Monday 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site
What defines a novel? And what does it mean to read one as a writer? How does a painter consider a painting or a photographer a photo? This readings class will study novels through the point of view of a practicing writer. We will read one novel a week, with the goal of exploring the ways in which long-form narratives are constructed, from chapter to chapter, from one movement to another—that is, the architecture of it. Please note: this is not a typical workshop. You will not be sharing you work every week, though later on in the semester we may participate in small group workshops and readings. Consider the class an investigation into all the tools a writer has to create fiction, with the end goal of producing 2 - 3 chapters of the beginning of a novel as your final project.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit ONLY a letter to me. I want to know what your favorite novel is and why; and then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Please no writing samples. Again, note: This is NOT a typical workshop.
Instructor: Valeria Luiselli Wednesday, 12:45-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
How do fiction writers interact with official narratives and the archives that support them? This is a course both about fictions created by historical archives, and a course about using fiction to intervene historical archives. If the archive is often historically bound to power, perhaps fiction can act as a destabilizing force, throwing official narratives off balance and offering alternatives to how we can imagine possible futures. In this course we will be examining a series of works –literary, acoustic, photographic, hybrid, and others– that have worked with archives and offer insight into the relationship between document and fiction. Among others, we will be looking at work by Svetlana Alexievich, Michael Ondaatje, Layli Long Soldier, Zoe Leonard, Arlette Farge, Alice Oswald, Humane Borders, and Ecologies of Migrant Care. We will also be working directly with a selection of archives, thinking (and practicing!) ways to intervene and question them.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter telling me about yourself, and your interests as a reader and writer. Tell me about the reasons why you are interested in this course, including what you expect from both the course and from yourself as a writer working with archives.
Instructor: Jamaica Kincaid Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This class is open to anyone who can write a letter, not an e-mail, a letter, just a plain simple letter, to someone who lives far away from you and who has no idea really of who you are, except that you are, like them, another human being. I have not quite yet settled on the books we will read, that usually happenswhen I get a sense of what the assembled personalities suggest. Usually, I suggest films, but I have lately become enamored of Korean soap operas and detective dramas: the food looks delicious, people wear the most interesting clothes and are obsessed with handbags, and small things, such as a piece of crumpled up paper lying in a corner is given serious consideration. A real delight. So, give all of the above serious consideration before you decide to register for this class.
Supplemental Application Information:
A brief autobiographical note, to give me some sense of who you are and what your are interested in now, will be appreciated. Many thanks.
No writing sample. No previous work-shopped writing will be a part of the class.
Instructor: Teju Cole Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
For almost two centuries now, words have accompanied photographs, sometimes to sublime effect. In this writing-intensive workshop, we will model our work on the various ways writers have responded to photographs: through captions, criticism, fiction, and experiments. Students will learn close-looking, research, and editing, and will be expected to complete a “words and photographs” project using their own photographs or photographs made by others.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a photograph and up to a page of text responding (or perhaps not responding) to the photograph. In addition, submit a cover letter saying what you hope to get out of the workshop. The cover letter should mention three books in any genre that have been helpful to your writerly development.
Instructor: Laura van den Berg Wednesday, 9:00-11:45 am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course will serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of writing fiction, with an emphasis on the contemporary short story. How can we set about creating “big” worlds in compact spaces? What unique doors can the form of the short story open? The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Ted Chiang, Jonathan Escoffery, Lauren Groff, Edward P. Jones, Ling Ma, Carmen Maria Machado, and Octavia Butler. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. A writing sample is not required; you will be writing entirely new work for this course.
Instructor: Paul Yoon TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
Advanced fiction workshop for students who have already taken a workshop at Harvard or elsewhere. The goal of the class is to continue your journey as a writer. You will be responsible for participating in discussions on the assigned texts, the workshop, engaging with the work of your colleagues, and revising your work.
Supplemental Application Information:*Please note: previous creative writing workshop experience required.* Please submit ONLY a cover letter telling me your previous creative writing workshop experience, either at Harvard or elsewhere; then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Again, please no writing samples.
Instructor: Laura van den Berg Spring 2024: Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD
Julio Cortázar: “The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves.” This workshop will explore the art of writing literature that unsettles our understanding of reality, that splits open the world as we know it, allowing us to encounter new possibilities. The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Julio Cortázar, Mariana Enríquez, Sofia Samatar, Yoko Ogawa, and Jorge Luis Borges. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction and to “world-bending” in particular; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. A writing sample is not required; you will be writing entirely new work for this course.
Instructor: Teju Cole Spring 2024: Tuesday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD
This reading and writing intensive workshop is for students who want to learn to write literary fiction. The goal of the course would be for each student to produce two polished short stories. Authors on the syllabus will probably include James Joyce, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Diane Williams.
Supplemental Application Information:Please submit a cover letter saying what you hope to get out of the workshop. In the cover letter, mention three works of fiction that matter to you and why. In addition, submit a 400–500 word sample of your fiction; the sample can be self-contained or a section of a longer work.
Instructor: Paul Yoon Spring 2024: Monday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD
An introductory workshop where we will learn to read as writers and study all aspects of the craft of fiction writing, including such topics as character, point of view, structure, time, and plot. The first weeks will focus heavily on writing exercises and reading contemporary short fiction. Writers we will study will include: Daniyal Mueenuddin, Haruki Murakami, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Tom Drury. As the semester progresses, the focus of the workshop will shift to creating and discussing your own work at the table, along with submitting a final revision project.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit ONLY a letter to me. I want to know what your favorite work of fiction is and why; and then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Please no writing samples.
Instructor: Laura van den Berg TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
A promising draft is of little use to us as writers if we have no idea what to do next, of how to begin again. This course aims to illuminate how revision can be every bit as creative and exhilarating as getting the first draft down—and how time spent re-imagining our early drafts is the ultimate show of faith in our work. We will explore the art of revision—of realizing the promise of that first draft—through reading, craft discussion, exercises, and workshop. Students can expect to leave the semester with two polished short stories (or 40-50 polished novel pages), a keener understanding of their own writing process, and a plan for where to take their work next. Texts will include How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee, Refuse to by Done by Matt Bell, and Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. It will be helpful to enter into the semester with some pre-existing material that you wish to revise (a short story, several chapters of a novel). Previous experience with workshopping writing is encouraged but not required.
Supplemental Application Information:Please submit a brief letter—1-2 pages—that discusses your interest in the course and in writing more broadly. What are you interested in working on and learning more about, at this point in your practice? Please also submit a short—2-3 page—writing sample (the first 2 pages of a short story or novel, for example).
