Readings

General Resources

  1. Words Without Borders Campus (good for models)
  2. The Paris Review “The Art of …” series (good for manuals)
  3. Poets and Writers
  4. AWP
  5. Writer Magazine Link
  6. Anne Lamott “Shitty First Drafts” Link
  7. Revision: Peter Ho Davies
    1. “The Art of Revision: The Black Box” Link
    2. “A survivors guide to the long, slow, infuriating process of revision” Link
  8. Readings from a previous semester class based on Students choices. All works listed are available for free online). Document below.
  9. OER Creative Writing Textbook Write or Left Sybil Priebe. Link
Reading-ChoicesDownload

Craft

  1. Matthew Salesses “25 essential notes on craft” Link
    1. “Redefining craft terms (ongoing)”  Link
  2. Rivka Galchen and Zoe Heller “Can Writing be Taught?” Link
  3. James Baldwin “the Creative Process” Link
  4.  Joan Didion “On Keeping a Notebook” Link
  5. Mary Gannon and Kevin Larimer “How Having a Community stimulates creativity”
  6. Annie Dillard “write til you drop” Link

 

Poetry

General

Poetry Foundation

Academy of American Poets

Manuals

  1. Adrienne Rich “Someone is Writing a Poem” Link
  2. Rachel Richardson “Learning Image and Description” Link
  3. Rebecca Hazelton “Learning the Poetic Line” Link
  4. Ursula K Le Guin “In pursuit of the Gorgeous sound of Language” Link
  5. Matthew Zapruder “Understanding Poetry is more Straightforward than you think” Link
  6. Maggie Smith “How to Revise Poems without losing the initial spark” link
  7. Barbara Guest “Invisible Architecture” Link

Models

  1. Baseball and Writing” by Marianne Moore
  2. Natalie Diaz “My Brother at 3 A.M.”
  3. Elizabeth Acevedo “Rat Ode” 
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay “Sonnet XLIII”
  5. Rafael Campo “Love Songs for Love Songs”
  6. Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye “When Love Arrives” 
  7. Walt Whitman “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
  8. Olivia Gatwood “Backpedal”
  9. Hieu Minh Nguyen “Confessional”  Link
  10. Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin [I lock you in an american sonnet that is part prison]. Link
  11. Melissa Lozada Oliva, “Yolanda and Selena don’t talk anymore” Link/Picture of Poem Form Link
  12. Claudia Rankine, “From Citizen, VI [My brothers are notorious]”: Link

Fiction

Manuals

  1. Zadie Smith “That Crafty Feeling” Link
  2. Wayne C Booth “What Every Novelist needs to know about Narrators” Link
  3. David Corbett “How to Craft Compelling Characters” Link
  4. Emily Barton “Literary or Genre, it’s the plot that counts” Link
  5. Teddy Wayne “Tips for Writing Great Dialogue” Link
  6. Charles Johnson “The art of revision: most of what you write should be cut” Link
  7. Kerrie Flanagan “The Long and Short of the short story form” Link
  8. Joan Didion “Why I write” Link
  9. George Orwell “Why I write” Link

Models

Flash Fiction

  1. George Saunders “Sticks”
  2. Sofia Samatar “The Huntress”
  3. Victoria McCurdy “This is How you Fail to Ghost him”
  4. Virginia Wolf “A Haunted House”
  5. Sejal Shah “Curriculum”
  6. Ed Park “The Wife on Ambien”
  7. Lydia Davis “The Visitor”
  8. Eric Cofer “Sorry Dan, but it’s no longer necessary for a human to serve as CEO of this company”
  9. Peter Orner “My Dead”
  10. Joyce Carol Oats “Where are you?”

Drama 

  1. Scene from Suzan Lori Parks “Topdog | Underdog”
  2. Scene from Phoebe Waller-Bridge “Fleabag” (play version)

Short Stories/Excerpts

  1. Aoko Matsuda, “Smartening Up” Link
  2. Elif Batuman, The Idiot excerpt Link
  3. Jamil Jan Kochai, “Playing Solid V: The Phantom Pain” Link
  4. Victor LaValle excerpt from The Changeling Link
  5. Nicole Dennis-Benn excerpt from Here Comes the Sun Link
  6. Sally Rooney, Normal People Excerpt  Link

 

Creative Nonfiction

General

  1. Creative NonFiction Organization Link
    1. Most Read in 2021 Link

Manuals

  1. Toni Morrison “the Site of Memory” Link
  2. Liz Stephens “Lies I Tell my Nonfiction Students” Link
  3. Jill McCabe Johnson “Getting Lost — and Found — in Personal Essays” Link\
  4. Sonya Huber “The Sounds of Your Self” Link
  5. Heather Lanier “Getting honest about Om: A Brief Essay on Audience” Link
  6. Roy Peter Clark “the Line between fact and fiction” Link
  7. Lee Gutkind “The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction”
  8. “The Lyric Essay” by Deborah Tall and John D’Agata Link

Models

Short Essays/Excerpts

  1. Abigail Thomas “How to Do Nothing”
  2. Habibe Jafarian “How to be a Woman in Tehran”
  3. Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Link
  4. Colson Whitehead the colossus Link

Long form Essays

  1. Esme Weijun Wang “Perdition Days: on experiencing psychosis” Link
  2. Michelle Zauner, “Crying in H Mart”  Link
  3. Marjane Satrapi “the Veil” from Persepolis Link

Publishing

  1. “How to Submit Your Writing to Literary Magazines” by Aerogramme Writers’ Studio Link
  2. “Ask the Writing Teacher: Fifty Shades of Rejection” by Edan Lepucki Link