Windward Review Announcements
Course Descriptions for Creative Writing, Fall 2024
Our Islander Creative Writers and Editors are busy developing our craft in creative writing. Come join us! Enroll in these classes offered this Fall. Click here for more about our Creative Writing Minor.
English 3302.002 | Techniques of Creative Writing | Fall 2024 | Dr. Robin Carstensen
Face to Face (F2F) for .002 | TTH– 12:30-1:45 p.m.
This core course for the minor in Creative Writing invites students from all backgrounds and disciplines, from the beginner to emerging in the craft. It is designed as an introduction and continued practice in the discipline and art of creative writing. You will practice an exciting range of techniques in writing prose and poetry, including their multi-genre, bilingual, culturally diverse, and blended forms. You will apply new techniques in daily writing practice, interactive responses, and two main projects. You will discover your own voice and style, fusing traditional forms and structure with dynamic, new blends. The course invites you to be engaged within a community of writers in this course and beyond. You will how to find and give creative writing support among our community. We explore together why art matters to you and how it can support your personal and collective goals. The course helps prepare you for a diverse range of jobs post-graduation that require writing. Employers call for innovative, creative thinking from writers as one of their top demands. Reading material includes your own “family tree” of artistic mentors and influences as well as a living archive of multicultural texts that we will build together and that best inform your own writing projects. These living archives tend to especially include BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+ authors, and other historically excluded voices.
English 4335.001 | Creative Writing Studio: Development of Craft | Fall 2024 | Dr. Robin Carstensen
Face to Face (F2F)| MW– 3:30-4:45 p.m.
This course is designed as a continued development in the discipline and art of creative writing, and is a core course for the Minor in Creative Writing. This writing and reading intensive course invites students from a diversity of creative writing background and experience, from the beginner to the more advanced. The course develops students' skills as writers and appreciative, discerning critics of literary prose and poetry in a studio workshop that invites the multi-genres, multi-lingual, culturally diverse, and blended forms. The course will also advance your publishing experience within a community of creative writers. The first six weeks is a review and practice of innovative techniques across genres, with a study of revision strategies. Each student practices drafts in one or more genre. By week seven, each student chooses a genre (or hybrid genre) on which to focus your craft and subject matter to produce your own portfolio, chapbook, e-zine or project by semester final. Reading material and mentor texts includes your own “family tree” of artistic mentors and influences as well as a living archive of multicultural texts that you will build together and that best inform your own writing projects. These living archives tend to especially engage with the perspective of our BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ authors, and other historically excluded voices.
ENGL 3364.001: Writing Creative Nonfiction
TBA | Face to Face, TTH 11:00-12:15
The course focuses on writing creative nonfiction through study and practice, using contemporary published works of experienced writers in the field and through peer work-in-progress. You will practice an exciting range of techniques and form in creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction). You will explore the contributions of creative nonfiction in your fields of study as you practice writing in various forms, such as the personal narrative, the lyric essay, and literary journalism among the multi-genres, multi-lingual, culturally diverse, blended forms that make up the ever-evolving hybrid field of creative nonfiction. You will discover your own voice and style, fusing traditional forms and structure with dynamic, new blends. The course invites you to be engaged within a community of writers in this course and beyond. The course helps prepare you for a diverse range of jobs that require writing. Employers call for innovative, creative thinking from writers as one of their top demands.
Events
The People's Literary Festival! February 22-24
There is something for everyone at this three-day event, across four venues. You can also download the full program from the website, and you'll find one or more of the 19 literary showcases and 8 creative writing workshops integrating well with your course content and your students' research and creativity. Please share with your students!
Our famous Friday night Open Mic returns to Lazy Beach Brewery this year, and Saturday we'll be hosting 20 book fair vendors and a Type-in with Austin, Inc. along with more of our editors, student, and community writer panels. Family and children's workshops and panels too on Saturday. Stefan Sencerz is doing an early Saturday morning Haiku Walk and later on Saturday, Haiku Death Match.
Windward Review in the News!
Click here for full story and picture gallery:
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Jacob Benavides and Raven Reese, who were both accepted into MFA programs recently, Fall 2023. Jacob is now attending Oklahoma State University, studying poetry. Raven Reese is at Texas State University in San Marcos. Both report a successful first semester!