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This course will explore the ways in which writers use their personal stories to comment on aspects of the wider world. “Creative nonfiction” is an evolving genre that combines recollection with reporting--a linkage beneficial to both reader and writer. Readers can relate more easily to, say, the emblematic struggles of one family than to a dry, abstract account of a social trend or historic period. Writers can focus on a subject of endless fascination—themselves—while still generating the fact-filled narratives that publishers crave.

Students will examine the work of nonfiction masters to see how they achieved their results. They will then attempt to incorporate these devices or approaches in short exercises and a long piece of original nonfiction. At least one half of each class will be a workshop.

Monday
Mary Yukari Waters
CRWT 262 200– Fiction Workshop/The Novel
Call No. 12618
Room B118

This class is designed for students working on novels-in-progress, and therefore will focus exclusively on the novel form. The lectures and class discussions will cover key technical concepts that beginning novelists need to know. These in-class discussions will be supplemented by reading material that exposes the student to unusual and interesting examples of the novel form. For the workshop portion of the class, students will submit excerpts from their novel in progress.

Tuesday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT246 200 - Special Topics in Fiction, The Contemporary Short Story
Call No. 20793
Room B118

In this seminar, we will discuss the major writers and forms of the contemporary short story, focusing on work published in the last 30 years. From the dirty realism of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Joy Williams to the minimalists like Amy Hempel, the fabulists like George Saunders and Aimee Bender and the classical work of Alice Munro. The course will also take a close look at short fiction derived from the most significant cultural conflicts of the last three decades, including the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the effects of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. Students will be expected to write two five page papers and weekly one page response papers to the reading and take part in active discourse. As well, each week a student (or students) will present their assessment of the assigned reading for class discussion.

Required Texts:

The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970 edited by Michael Martone & Lex Williford. 2nd Edition (isbn: 1416532277)

Wednesday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT299 200 – Thesis Workshop
Call No. 20296

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

Wednesday
Stu Krieger
THEA299 002 – Thesis
Call No. 20490

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

Wednesday
Rob Roberge
CRWT262 201 - Fiction Workshop/The Short Story
Call No. 20545
Room B120

Designed for students on the threshold of producing advanced work, this workshop emphasizes the "give-and-take" of in-depth criticism and the strategies for revision, as well as explores new fictional alternatives in a productive setting. We’ll cover several techniques and issues of craft including, but not limited to, scenes, dialogue, POV, interiors and exteriors, how to discuss and edit the work of others, how to create memorable characters and how to revise your work.

Wednesday
Chuck Evered
THEA266 200 – Screenwriting Workshop/The Feature
Call No. 20546
Room B117

The class will explore the basics behind creating a full length screenplay. During the class, students will study the basic three act structure, as well as alternative structure variations. Feature ideas will be developed from pitch, to treatment to the first act of a full length script. Rewriting will be stressed and encouraged.

Wednesday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT290 200 - Directed Study
Call No. 20810

Research. Must have prior instructor consent and submit a Petition for Directed Study.

WINTER 2010
MFA Palm Desert Graduate Center
Schedule of Classes
All classes 5:30-8:20

Monday
Stu Krieger
THEA267 200 – Workshop, Writing for the Family Audience
Call No. 18828
Room B120

Students will workshop original screen or television projects aimed at the lucrative and ever growing family market. We will also examine three of the instructor’s own successful productions in this genre, tracking them from inception to completion.

Monday
Mary Yukari Waters
CRWT262 201 – Fiction Workshop
Call No. 12646
Room B118

This class is primarily a workshop for students' short stories and novel excerpts. However, we will also examine and discuss a variety of published stories in terms of craft and construction. Each student will meet privately with the instructor after his/her story has been work-shopped in order to discuss ideas on revision, general questions, etc.

Tuesday
Rob Roberge
ENGL289 200 - Literature Seminar
Call No. 14115
Room B120

In this seminar, we will discuss some of the major writers and forms of the contemporary novel, focusing on work published in the last 40 years. From the non-fiction novel hybrid of Capote to Stahl’s post-modern update on Salinger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE, we’ll look at ways contemporary writers approach the form in new and different ways. The course will also look at other genre-bending techniques, such as Minot’s novel-in-stories and Lodge and Ellroy’s experiments with form and narrative in seemingly familiar genres or subject mater. Students will be expected to write two five page papers and weekly one page response papers to the reading and take part in active discourse. As well, each week a student (or students) will present their assessment of the assigned reading for class discussion.

Required Texts:
Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD
Susan Minot’s MONKEYS
Jerry Stahl’s PERV: A LOVE STORY
David Lodge’s CHANGING PLACES
Katie Arnoldi’s CHEMICAL PINK
James Ellroy’s LA CONFIDENTIAL

Wednesday
Andrea Seigel
CRWT246 200 - Special Topics in Fiction Seminar (Young Adult Literature)
Call No. 20306
Room B120

This course is for your inner adolescent, whether submerged or still running your life. In a workshop environment, we will explore the young adult genre as both a literary sensibility and a publishing division. Is it a young narrator or protagonist that makes a work of fiction young adult? Where is the line between adolescence and adulthood? Are there subjects or approaches “too adult” for contemporary young adult narratives? Through weekly discussions of original writing and reading assignments that offer a varied look at author interpretations of “coming-of-age,” students will dwell in the moment when everything once seemed incredibly important, even if it lacked the questionable authority that comes with age.

Wednesday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT299 200 – Thesis Workshop
Call No. 12684

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

Wednesday
Stu Krieger
THEA299 200 – Thesis
Call No. 18852

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

SPRING 2010
MFA Palm Desert Graduate Center
Schedule of Classes
All classes 5:30-8:20

Monday
Stu Krieger
THEA266 200 – Screenwriting Workshop
Call No.
Room

THEA 266 is a comprehensive introduction to the craft of screenwriting with a primary focus on re-writing original projects. Each students work will be read, discussed and critiqued on a weekly basis by the entire class.

Monday
Theada Shapiro and Stephanie Hammer
ENGL 289 200 - Seminar, Autobiography and Its Others
Call No:
Room

The discovery, rediscovery, and telling of the self, through autobiography, autobiographical fiction, and their postmodern avatars. Why do authors feel that telling the story of their life is worthwhile, compelling, even mandatory? What is the nature and importance of individualism as a literary project in the West, and how do non-Western authors go about self-telling? What do these auto-fact/fictions tell us about confession, sexuality, memory, forgetting, and/or creating alternate selves?

Readings will include (in entirety or excerpts):
St. Augustine, Confessions:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions:
Jonathan Swift, "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift":
Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Interior:
Rengetsu, poetry:
Marcel Proust, "Combray," from In Search of Lost Time:
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet:
Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" or selected letters:
Jorge Luis Borges, "Borges and I":
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:
Georges Perec, W:
William S. Burroughs, Queer:
Amélie Nothomb, The Quality of Rain (La métaphysique des tubes):
Films:
    Federico Fellini, 8 1/2
    Agnès Varda, The Gleaners and I
    Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Students will also work on their own choice of other texts, such as:
Elie Wiesel, Night
Peter Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictée
Hélène Cixous, Rootprints
Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale
or others suggested by the student, approved by the instructors.

Monday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT299 200 – Thesis
Call No. 20296

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

Monday
Stu Krieger
THEA290 200 – Directed Study
Call No. 18396

Research. Must have prior instructor consent and submit a Petition for Directed Study.

Monday
Stu Krieger
THEA299 200 – Thesis
Call No. 20490

Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.

Tuesday
Mary Yukari Waters
CRWT262 201 – Fiction Workshop
Call No. 19790
Room B

Wednesday
Ben Ehrenreich
CRWT 230 200 – Non Fiction Workshop

This course explores the relationship between fiction and nonfiction: the fiction of nonfiction, the nonfiction residing in the fictional. We would discuss the fiction inherent in crafting any narrative and look at how the devices and methods of fiction-writing (metaphor, voice, suspense, etc.) can be applied to nonfiction, and vice versa. At the same time, we would ask what kinds of truths can be expressed through fiction, what kinds of lies nonfiction can tell. Writing assignments would be for nonfiction work, but students would be encouraged to delve fully into the complexities and ambiguities that join the two genres. Readings would include both fiction and non-: Borges, Orwell, Babel, Kapuscinski (again), others.

Thursday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT 252(E-Z) Seminar – Art of Adaptation

In this seminar, we'll look at the art of adaptation, how some of our most cherished books have become some of our most cherished films (as well as how books most have never heard of became successful films, too). In addition, we'll examine films that have far exceeded the quality of their source material (Jaws, Forrest Gump & The Godfather), films that have failed miserably to capture the essence of the source material (a la The Talented Mr. Ripley, Snow Falling on Cedars and a cavalcade of others) and will discuss, in depth, the creative tools required for the aspiring adaptor. Students will be expected to both read source materials and view source films. Special guests will include novelists and screenwriters who have been on both sides of the adaptation fence.