Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction: Shapeshifters (Capstone eligible)

Fiction invites writers to disguise or question their identities, dislodge received ideas, inhabit various subject positions, imagine new worlds, and experiment with form. So a storyteller is always a kind of shapeshifter. This semester, we will work on developing our technical abilities to meet the narrative challenges of an ever-changing reality. We will explore scientific plots with Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics and work on dialogue in conjunction with Suzan-Lori Parks’ play Father Comes Home from the Wars. We’ll write short stories inspired, in part, by Best American Short Stories 2025, and produce game stories modeled on those in the YA anthology Game On. As we move toward our full-length stories, we’ll think about expansion and compression in the novella The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson. And we’ll consider possibilities for publication with group reports on contemporary literary magazines. Students will write five exercises then choose one for expansion, development, and revision. They will produce approximately seven in-class wiring exercises, a group report, and several group writing projects.