The graduate version of Writers on Writing has a dual character, involving
both artistic and pedagogical dimensions. On one hand, it ensures a
primary intellectual encounter with (almost) the entire CW faculty, as
well as personal acquaintance with a slate of younger, up-and-coming
Seattle writers. In this aspect, we'll meet together to review and
discuss at an advanced level the ideas and assignments which comprise
the general curriculum. On the other hand, the class may be considered a
collaborative teaching apprenticeship, involving individual mentoring
responsibilities and an explicit responsibility to help shape and
sharpen the tenor of the discussion sections. In this aspect, we'll
maintain an ongoing conversation about the teaching/learning process as
it evolves through the term. This is a work in progress: your chance to
participate in the invention of--not just a new class--but a new kind of
class. Students will be expected to attend all TTh sessions of the undergraduate class, described below.

ENGLISH 285: WRITERS ON WRITING [5 credits VLPA]


For the first time in a large-format class, the collective UW Creative
Writing faculty, along with other visiting artists, will remember in
public why they do what they do. On ten sequential Tuesdays, they will
speak in depth about what interests them most, including the ways and
means of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and the joys and vagaries of
inspiration, education, artistic practice, and the writing life.
Thursdays will constellate a literary reading series. Discussion
sections will be scheduled in between.

Serious curiosity is the only requirement for admission. Students will
be expected to attend all talks, do the assigned reading, respond to
problems and exercises posed by the lecturers, and participate
vigorously in the ongoing conversation. By the end, they will have had a
disciplined brush with literate passion, practiced imaginative methods
at the point of the pencil, learned something about books from people
who write them, and gained a practical sense of the artist's way of
knowing the world.

Conceived as a perpetual work-in-progress, according professors full
freedom in designing their respective contributions, the course will
find its coherence in the conversation we leap to make of it. Sample
topics: What Is It? or, Ars Poetica; Forms of Poetry, Forms of Thought;
Mythos-Minded Thinking: From Proverbs to Parables, Stories as Metaphors
in Motion; Odd Autobiography; Reading the New; Literary Collage &
Blurring Boundaries; The Writing Life; The Revision Process; Closing Words.

No required text. Readings will be posted online or handed out in
class. Grading based equally on reading (by quiz and
conversation), writing (solutions to assigned prompts), and
participation (attendance and discussion).

Repeat: this course is intended to bring infectious literate passion
within earshot of as many people as possible at the University of
Washington. No formal prerequisites. Everyone is invited.