January 2024 Workshops

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                                                    4 credits • 3 weeks

                 Introductory and Intermediate Workshops in Creative Writing

The NYU Creative Writing Program is excited to welcome the poet Michael Montlack to our faculty this winter, along with Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, novelist Eliza Minot, author of In the Orchard (Knopf, 2023) and Emily Skillings, poet, editor, and recipient of a 2023 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellowship.

INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOPS

This workshop offers an exciting introduction to the basic elements of poetry and fiction—with in-class writing, take-home reading and writing assignments, and substantive discussions of craft. The course is structured as a workshop, which means that students will receive feedback from their instructor and their fellow writers in a roundtable setting, and should be prepared to offer their classmates responses to their work. No prerequisite. 4 points.

CRWRI-UA 815.001: TWRF, 2:00pm-4:55pm  
Intro to Creative Writing: Popular Music, Poetry and Prose
* In-Person Workshop *
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Popular Music, Poetry & Prose. As many of us turn to the radio or music streaming device to escape or process the rapidly changing socio-political and environmental landscapes, we create a space to explore the intersections between popular music and the poetry and prose of contemporary writers. How are poems and prose inspired by these works? This course will look at how writers like Ocean Vuong speak to musicians like Lil Nas X and Cardi B, how poets like Audre Lorde speak to musicians like Solange, and writers like Cameron Awkward-Rich speak to musicians like Billie Eilish or Kehlani. Through a discussion of readings and craft, working through creative writing prompts, and attending listening parties, students will learn to write with their ears and make music on the page. 

CRWRI-UA 815. 002: TWRF, 2:00pm-4:55pm  
Intro to Creative Writing: Gender as Genre: Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction and Creative Forms of Being.
* In-Person Workshop *
Michael Montlack
Much of our experience is framed by gender—how we identify, how we are perceived and how we are received by the world. This can be a rich and complicated source of inspiration as it is constantly being challenged and evolving. This workshop will look at how authors—from Lucille Clifton to Ada Limón, F. Scott Fitzgerald to David Sedaris, and more—have dealt with such themes through various genres (poetry, nonfiction, and fiction). By discussing how and where these genres meet, we will note how one can inform the other. For example, how poems use elements of fiction and nonfiction, or how to elevate prose by incorporating the compression and imagery of poetry. Through reading, drafting and workshopping, we will investigate a range of views on the theme of gender, and explore how genre serves a writer's personal expression. 

INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOPS

The intermediate workshops offer budding prose writers and poets an opportunity to continue their pursuit of writing through workshops that focus on a specific genre. The workshops also integrate in-depth craft discussions and extensive outside reading to deepen students’ understanding of the genre and broaden their knowledge of the evolution of literary forms and techniques. Prerequisite: CRWRI-UA 815, OR CRWRI-UA 818, OR CRWRI-UA 9818, OR CRWRI-UA 9828, OR CRWRI-UA 820, OR CRWRI-UA 860 or equivalent. 4 points. Ask about prerequisite waivers at creative.writing@nyu.edu. 

Intermediate Fiction Workshop 
CRWRI-UA 816 001,  TWRF, 2:00pm-4:55pm
* In-Person Workshop *
Eliza Minot
This workshop will focus on voice. Through reading one another’s work and thoughtfully responding to it, consistently writing new pages, and absorbing and discussing outside readings, we will attempt to join up with the voice within us that is most effective and most engaging. All writers have their varying issues. While one writer might be struggling with issues surrounding character, another might be hung up on problems with pacing, while someone else is overly lyrical to the point of distraction or is grappling with having absolutely nothing to say. In this workshop we will learn from each other what we, both as writers and as readers, respond to. We will encourage one another to write as freely as possible to get the words on the page, and then, from there, we will hopefully begin to discover where it is we would like to be heading.

Intermediate Poetry Workshop
CRWRI-UA 817 001, TWRF, 2:00pm-4:55pm
* In-Person Workshop *
Emily Skillings
In the Bestiary: Reading and Writing the Animal Poem
It blinds itself. Rolled up in a ball, prickly with spines, vulnerable and dangerous… No poem without accident, no poem that does not open itself like a wound, but no poem that is not also just as wounding. 
-- Jacques Derrida (on the poem as hedgehog) 
In this intensive class, poets will encounter and explore poems that make animals their subject (or magic ingredient)--from antiquity to the romantic poets to the modernists and beyond--taking cues from writers both contemporary, canonical, and overlooked. This course will use the animal poem to track different poetic/political movements and experiment with various poetic forms. Students will leave the class with a portfolio of 6-8 revised poems. 
 

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