Eureka! Summer 2004 Workshops

How to Make Literature: Teaching Creative Writing as Literature and Vice-Versa

Leader: Dr. Tony Crunk

Date: Thursday, July 8, 2004

Time: 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Place: Henley Room, Mervyn H. Sterne Library (Second Floor)

Presentation Overview
The workshop will explore the possibilities and rewards of using creative writing as an approach to studying literature, and vice-versa.

We'll begin with a series of in-class creative writing exercises that will introduce some basic concepts in creative writing pedagogy -- e.g., aesthetic experience, figurative vs. literal language, writing as a process of exploration and discovery, and the social dimension of creativity.

We'll then develop and apply these concepts as useful tools in examining works of literature. We'll discuss a sample of brief works as writers, considering the particular challenges the authors of these works have set for themselves, how they've shaped their work in response to those challenges, why they've made the decisions they've made in crafting the work into its final form.

A last step will be to apply these insights to a final creative writing challenge / project we will ourselves pursue through some concluding in-class writing exercises.

The workshop will be very hands-on, with most of the discussion arising from the participants' own writing experiences.
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