2009 Morning Creative Writing Workshops

Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
( / between faculty for 1st 2 weeks and 2nd 2 weeks)

Fiction

1.  Robert Eversz (novel, novella)
2.  Stu Dybek          
3.  Bret Lott / Jaimy Gordon

Poetry

1.  Barbara Cully / Stanley Plumly
2. William Pitt Root & Pamela Uschuk / Cynthia Hogue

Creative Nonfiction

1.   Mary Karr/ Robin Hemley

Playwriting / Scriptwriting
Course Description (PDF)

1.   Steve Feffer / Sean Clark

Multi-Genre (undergraduate only)

1.   Michael Waters / Richard Katrovas

This workshop will center on the particular needs of undergraduate poets, as well as fiction and nonfiction writers interested in attending graduate school. In addition to traditional workshop activity, students will be coached in the graduate-school application process. The course will be taught the first two weeks by Michael Waters, a highly respected poet and PSP Director Richard Katrovas.

PSP workshop description

Most creative writing workshops will have two mentors, one in the first two weeks and one in the second. The slash mark between names separates the faculty teaching the first two weeks from the faculty teaching the second two weeks of the program. Robert Eversz and Stuart Dybek will teach 4-week workshops (2-week enrollments will be accepted for these workshops).

Each will also have a TA who is the class manager; the TA will facilitate the collection and distribution of work prior to the beginning of the program, take roll, disseminate work once workshops are underway and help in the transition from the first two weeks to the second, etc. The TA will also serve as liaison between program participants and the academic director. In addition, the TA, a Western Michigan University MFA or Ph.D. candidate with teaching experience, will serve as mentor for those program participants who have limited workshop experience.

We make our best effort to limit workshops to twelve students, including the TA. Above are the workshops as they will likely be configured when the Program begins. The creative writing classes will be composed of individuals at all skill levels, and will include both undergraduates and graduates. Novices (who may be brilliant and wildly gifted, but are early in their development as artists, and/or are relatively new to the workshop experience) will meet out of class with their TAs for special tutorials, and will otherwise be observers in the classroom. These tutorials will center on writing assignments and text-editing exercises. In consultation with the TAs, the mentors may invite novice poets and prose writers to submit their writing for critique.

Each PSP participant will have work solicited by her or his TA, before the Program begins, for dissemination online to the rest of the workshop. This is a messy though necessary process that will insure that each workshop begins crisply.

All students seeking academic credit for PSP courses and workshops must also attend the Tuesday Lecture Series (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) and submit a minimum 1000-word personal essay on the 2008 theme to the PSP director by the evening of the final Tuesday of the program. In addition, creative writing students seeking credit must attend all of the Ypsilon Theater readings (few will find this requirement anything but a joy).