ENG 401 - Creative Writing Seminar: True Crime

In this creative writing seminar, we will learn a variety of craft techniques via close study of several works of true crime. The life and death stakes of true crime, combined with its presence across multiple discourses-judicial, spiritual, medical, political, literary-make it a particularly good genre through which to think about how we mediate our relationship to truth and reality in a text. Discussion will also address the ethics of representing others’ stories and how to infuse intimate stories with the preoccupations of one’s historical moment. We’ll also focus on nuts-and-bolts writing skills: creating a self on the page; building characters; constructing scenes; crafting images and metaphors; and incorporating research. There will be many opportunities to write creatively via short experiments and longer essays or memoir pieces. One need not write about violence to benefit from the course: our definition of terms as such as crime, justice, betrayal, safety, and danger will be capacious.

Previous offerings

Title: Trauma Writing

Norris

This class will use these questions from Roxane Gay to guide our exploration of how to write trauma and how to write it well:

• How do we convey the realities of trauma and its aftermath without being exploitive?
• How do we write trauma without traumatizing the reader?
• How do we write trauma without cannibalizing ourselves?
• How do we write about the traumatic experiences of others without transgressing their boundaries or privacy?
• How do we tell stories of trauma without allowing the trauma to become the whole of our narratives?
• How do we avoid creating work in which there were only victims and villains, instead of flawed people who are and were hurt?

In searching for our own answers, we will read a variety of texts looking at different ways to write into trauma, discuss practical supports necessary to write safely into pain, and implement culled craft techniques to write our own narratives. We’ll think about how research can reframe experience, how placing the personal within the cultural can expand meaning, and how structure can carry content. Class will feature reading discussions, in-class presentations, written assignments, and practical advice for writing about traumatic experiences safely. The course will culminate with a reading where students will have the opportunity to share work they’ve developed in the course and received feedback on.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Ideally, students who enroll will have taken a creative writing course at the 200 level or higher.