ENG 4317
Advanced Fiction Writing
Jeffrey Overstreet
Wed. 6:00-8:30 p.m.
The goal of this course is to build on what students have already learned in ENG 3317 Workshop in Writing Fiction. Students will learn through completing of weekly class exercises in specific aspects of craft. They will learn through the composition of original short stories, and through small-group peer-review workshopping sessions. They will also engage in close reading and analysis of exemplary novels. (The list of stories previously explored in Professor Overstreet's course, and other novels currently under consideration, include My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok; How to Save a Life, by Sara Zarr; A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean; Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro; Silence, by Shusako Endo; Watership Down, by Richard Adams; selected short stories by Uwem Akpan and Flannery O'Connor; and the short story "The Dead," by James Joyce.) Class conversations will also explore the relationship between acts of storytelling creativity and the practice of faith.