55-4217 CRW: Novelists

Course examines the ways in which novelists read, respond to what they read, and incorporate their reading responses dynamically into their own fiction-writing processes. In addition to their own written responses to reading, students work individually and in small groups researching the reading and writing processes behind selected novels (mainstream and alternative), ranging from the beginnings of the form to the present day. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, letters, and more public writings, students explore the writing processes of well-known writers and ways in which students’ own responses to reading can nourish and heighten the development of their fiction. Course will survey many of the principal novelists and novels and the development of the genre from its roots to contemporary fiction. Students should be writing fiction, but novel-length material is not required.

4 Credits
Requisites COREQUISITES: 55-4104 Prose Forms