Finding Your Form: An Introduction to Creative Writing

(EGL 104)

One of the critical first steps as a writer is to identify the genre best suited for your personal voice, vision, and subject matter. With so many options available to a writer—essay, poem, story, play, memoir, screenplay—the choice can be a daunting one. In this course, students will practice writing about similar subjects in a variety of forms, learning how different genres inevitably shape material in profoundly different ways. By the end of the quarter, students will come away with a clear sense of their individual strengths as writers and the forms that best express their work. Extensive instructor feedback and class workshops will guide and support each writer through these formal choices as well as through the revision process. Readings will examine the work of contemporary writers who excel in multiple genres, including Raymond Carver, Joan Didion, Derek Walcott, Mark Doty, and Anne Carson.

Laura McKee, Former Stegner Fellow

Laura McKee received an MFA from the University of Maryland and a 2006 scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has taught creative writing internationally, in countries including South Korea, Germany, and the Netherlands. Currently she teaches literature and writing classes to US military service personnel stationed overseas through the University of Maryland – Europe. McKee’s writing has appeared in Indiana Review, New South, Poetry Miscellany, Mantis, and TheRumpus.net.