In this workshop-centered course, we’ll investigate conflict within short fiction, with a focus on narrative questions and suspense. Readings from writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Bezmozgis, Carmen Maria Machado, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and Danzy Senna will inform our discussions and inspire writing exercises in and out of class. Students will write, workshop, and revise stories of their own. This course builds upon the ideas and themes covered in Introduction to Fiction and Poetry I and II, and will prepare students for upper-level fiction courses.

Johns Hopkins University

(5 sections)

Writing your way into a story is often a matter of figuring out the right “perch,” i.e., the point from which the story is told. In this workshop-centric course, students will explore elements of perch such as point of view, field of view, psychic distance, immediacy, retrospection, and audience. Readings from writers including Lucia Berlin, Octavia Butler, Tao Lin, Domenico Starnone, and Justin Torres will inform our discussions of perch and inspire writing exercises in and out of class. Students will write, workshop, and revise stories of their own. This course builds upon the ideas and themes covered in Introduction to Fiction and Poetry I and II, and will prepare students for upper-level fiction courses.

Johns Hopkins University

(5 sections)

This intermediate workshop will explore questions of form in fiction. Students will read classically structured stories, as well as stories that are written as inventories, how-to manuals, or excruciatingly personal resumés. Readings from writers including Sherman Alexie, Cara Blue Adams, Venita Blackburn, Eric Puchner, and Alice Sola Kim will inform our discussions of form and inspire writing exercises in and out of class. Students will write, workshop, and revise stories of their own. This course builds upon the ideas and themes covered in Introduction to Fiction and Poetry I, IFP II, and Craft of Fiction, and will prepare students for advanced fiction courses.

Johns Hopkins University

(3 sections)

An introduction to basic strategies in the writing of poetry and fiction, with readings by Joyce, Woolf, Baldwin, Munro, Garcia Marquez, Donne, Bishop, Yeats, Komunyakaa, Tretheway, and others. Students will learn the elements of the short story and try their hand at a variety of forms: realist, fantastical, experimental. They’ll also study the basic poetic forms and meters, from the ballad to the sonnet, iambic pentameter to free verse. Students will compose short stories and poems and workshop them in class. This course is a prerequisite for most upper level courses. This course is part one of the year-long Introduction to Fiction and Poetry, and must be taken before AS.220.106.

Johns Hopkins University

(3 sections, including in-person and remote)

The second half of IFP, this course delves deeper into the finer points of fiction writing, including tone, description, and point of view; students will also enrich their knowledge of poetic forms and devices, such as figurative language, verse rhythm, and the poetic line. Readings include work by Paley, Mahfouz, Calvino, Lessing, Richard Wright, Plath, Rich, Auden, Li-Young Lee, and others. Students will write and workshop their own stories and poems, and complete a final portfolio. This course is a prerequisite for most upper level courses.

Johns Hopkins University

(6 sections, including in-person, remote, and fully asynchronous)

This course introduces the foundational strategies for writing literary fiction and nonfiction. Drawing on a diverse selection of literary models, students will engage in “creative experiments,” eventually submitting a short story or literary essay for class discussion and feedback.

Johns Hopkins University

(1 section)

In this six week course, we’ll read stories of infidelity, alcoholism, betrayal, addiction, crossed boundaries, and crime—both fiction and memoir—from writers including Jhumpa Lahiri, Scott McClanahan, Victor LaValle, Melissa Febos, Danielle Evans, David Carr, and Jamel Brinkley. Students will learn creative writing craft skills, discuss what constitutes “bad behavior” and why people might write about it, and explore questions of ethics in storytelling. You will also develop stories of your own—both fiction and memoir—through in-class activities, assignments, and workshop.

Johns Hopkins University

(1 section)

In this course, students will learn craft techniques for writing about some of life’s messiest experiences by reading and discussing stories of love, lust, and loss by writers including Anthony Veasna So, Christine Sneed, Deesha Philyaw, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Xuan Juliana Wang. Students will generate new material through in-class writing exercises, and will write and workshop one original story.

Johns Hopkins University

(1 section)

We discussed the “inventory” as a short story form—using Lucia Berlin’s “The Trouble with All the Houses I’ve Lived In” as an example—and wrote our own brief inventory stories in this one-day arts workshop for teens and young adults living with chronic pain.

Creative Healing for Youth in Pain

(Workshop)

Using Ada Límon’s poem “Wife” as an example, we’ll write poems that explore or grapple with labels that describe the self.

Creative Healing for Youth in Pain

(Workshop)

As a creative-writing instructor at a Boston-based summer camp for teens, I led writing exercises in response to activities such as rock climbing and kickboxing, worked with students in small groups and individually, and offered written and verbal feedback as they developed polished pieces.

(4 sessions)