2 CATHRYN KLUSMEIER – INTRO TO CNF – FALL 2022
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Fall 2022 Asynchronous Weekly Course
Instructor: Cathryn Klusmeier
Course Supervisor: Bonnie Sunstein
Course Description
Creative nonfiction is an exciting and expansive genre encompassing memoir, literary journalism, science writing, humor, and more. In this introductory course, we’ll read contemporary nonfiction writers for inspiration, including Carmen Maria Machado, Alexander Chee, and Hanif Abdurraqib, and then practice techniques for developing character, plot, scene, and voice in our own work. This is a unique and interactive class that is part-survey, part-workshop, and geared for anyone interested in exploring the art and craft of creative writing in a generative, community-oriented class. No previous creative writing experience is necessary, just a willingness to explore writing, take risks, and attend to the work of others with care.
Course Objectives
In this course, you will learn how to:
· Read like a writer.
· Give and receive critical, constructive, and respectful feedback on a piece of writing.
· Write regularly and with discipline.
· Conduct basic research, interviews, and reporting as a nonfiction writer.
· Revise your work.
· Use different modes of nonfiction writing: personal essay, history, cultural criticism, and biography.
Course Modality
Your class will be asynchronous, online. We will be using the ICON Discussion Board every week for our discussion posts, and all work for it will always be due Sunday at 11:59 p.m. More on this in Course Requirements below.
Workload Expectations
Plan to spend about six hours per week in out-of-class preparation. This will fluctuate through the semester; some weeks will be lighter than others.
Required Texts
I will post the readings on ICON
Other Required Materials
· A notebook that you will keep exclusively for this course. Think of it like your artist’s sketchbook. Use it for reading notes, reporting notes, brainstorming sessions, and journal entries. This doesn’t need to be fancy! Anything will do.
· ICON. All readings and course documents will be on our course ICON site. The most up-to-date version of our schedule will always be on our ICON site, too. You will also be posting to the Discussion Board and submitting all your assignments on ICON.
Grading
Participation: 30% (includes online posts/discussions, smaller assignments)
Major Writing Assignment 1: 20%
Major Writing Assignment 2: 20%
Other Assignments: 20%
Final Portfolio: 10 %
I grade based on the university’s A-F grading scale (see below). Grading creative writing is hard but I am most interested in effort and growth. I want you participate regularly and thoughtfully, come to my office when you need help, and put real effort into your drafts and revision and my grading will reflect that.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Participation: Your participation grade consists primarily of an assessment of your engagement in the weekly discussions on ICON and the letters of feedback you write to your peers on their workshop essays. To prepare, you should take notes on the day’s reading(s), to share in the weekly discussion posts, and carefully read and respond to your classmates’ posts. I’m looking more for the quality of your contribution to the discussion over a quantity of comments. The discussion board is our main form of communication in this course! Please have fun with it, treat it as if you would participate in an in-person class.
This class will occur asynchronously on ICON, which means you will be able to manage your participation according to your schedule. However assignments and discussion posts will have deadlines. Each week, you’ll answer a few of the questions I’ve posed by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (Central Standard Time, US) Every due date is clearly marked on our schedule, the most up-to-date version of which will always be on ICON.
Workshop: Each of you will be workshopped twice. Your workshop essays are due to me via email one week before your workshop. Timeliness is very important; you need to give your peers enough time to formulate useful and coherent thoughts on your piece. So, failure to send me your piece in time will result in you forfeiting your chance to be workshopped and the loss of participation points unless you’ve made prior arrangements with me. You will also be responsible for reading and writing comments/letters on other’s work.
Conferences: I will meet with each of you individually on zoom to discuss your writing at least once, after your first workshop. These conferences will last approximately 20 minutes and are meant to be more formal and structured than drop-in office hours visits. I will talk to you about scheduling these after your workshop occurs. Please feel free to come to these meetings with specific questions!
Attendance: You may miss two ICON discussion board posts without penalty. Points will be deducted from your participation grade for each missed post after that. I will not be docking points per this policy until the very end of the semester, when I’m assessing final grades. Please keep this in mind when keeping track of your participation grade.
Essay 1: An essay on any topic of your choice. Please make this an essay that is whole in itself, so, not an excerpt or the beginning of a longer piece but a piece that can stand on its own. It should be a minimum of 1000 words, double spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font. Please pay attention to when you are up for workshop; you will submit by noon the week before.
Essay 2: An essay on a topic of your choice. Please make this an essay that is whole in itself, not an excerpt or just the beginning of a longer piece but a piece that can stand on its own. It should be a minimum of 1,000 words, double spaced, in 12-point standard font.
Final Portfolio: Major Essay Revision + Reflection: A substantial revision or expansion of Essay 1 OR 2 is due at time of final portfolio, accompanied with the original draft. You’ll also submit to me a two-page reflection about your revision process and how you feel your work has grown throughout the semester.
Extension Policy: Because this is a workshop class, the workshop deadlines are particularly important to give your peers time to read and comment on your work. Contact me if something comes up and we will figure it out!
NONDISCRIMINATION + PRIVACY POLICY
The University of Iowa is committed to making the classroom a respectful and inclusive space for all people irrespective of their gender, sexual, racial, religious or other identities. Toward this goal, students are invited to optionally share their preferred names and pronouns with their instructors and classmates. The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination and harassment against individuals on the basis of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, and other identity categories set forth in the University’s Human Rights policy. For more information, contact the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at diversity.uiowa.edu.
The bottom line: Be respectful. We will cover difficult subjects in this course that should be tackled sensitively, and this may, at times, be awkward on the Discussion Board. Plus, having your creative work picked apart can be challenging and requires vulnerability, trust, and respect from both the writer and their readers. To combat this, we should all approach our classmates and all the material we encounter with curiosity and kindness.
Hate speech is not an “opinion,” and I will not tolerate hate in any form, in writing or in class discussions. This space is not welcome to racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, ableism, or other hate speech or action that attempts to silence, threaten, or degrade others. This goes for all conversations related to this class, and this also includes the work you submit to me and to workshop.
I want you to feel comfortable sharing your thoughts and opinions, and that means everyone should be committed to being respectful and to assuming the best of each other. Part of developing our literary sensibilities—and of developing our beliefs that guide us through the world—is learning how to express our opinions and learning how to accept and learn from criticism. So, we are not here to pass judgement on each other. We are here to support each other’s learning, and my goal is that you will all feel comfortable speaking up if someone (including me!) writes that feels harmful to you or someone else or an entire group of people.
This policy is not here to silence you, nor to encourage a negative environment where we’re all calling each other names constantly. Just remember to assume the best of each other. We’re all on the same team, and we’re all here to grow.
In all the writing you do in this course, I want you to balance experimenting and pushing boundaries with exploring the kind of writing that most interests you. That said, I do have some guidelines to follow in order to be a good citizen of this class:
In order to foster a supportive classroom environment, I will not accept any work that contains graphic violent images, graphic sex, hateful speech (as defined above), or other content intended to offend me or your peers. I’m not going to put a moratorium on violence or sex as a whole; in fact, we will be reading some published examples of this kind of work done particularly well. But when writing scenes or descriptions most readers would consider violent or sexual, ask yourself: Is this vitally important to the purpose of my project (Is my essay fundamentally critiquing violence or sex? Could my essay succeed without it?), or am I just including it to shock my reader? If you answer “yes” to the latter, it is not welcome in this class. This policy is not intended to get you to write about only happy things. I want you to create work that is complicated and that challenges you and your readers. But there is a difference between complicated work and work that intends to shock and/or express hate. The latter will not be tolerated. And note that if I read material that threatens harm to yourself or to others, I am required to report it. Lastly, but very importantly – do not share or discuss your peers’ work with anyone who is not enrolled in this class.
Fall 2022 Calendar
This is a tentative calendar and is subject to change! Additional readings and assignments and all details will be provided with sufficient notice on ICON, emailed directly to students, and shared in-class. Students are responsible for tracking course activities, readings, and assignments, and for contacting the instructor directly with any questions or concerns.
Week One: Introducing Ourselves and The Essay (8/22)
To Read “The Trash Heap Has Spoken” by Carmen Maria Machado (essay)
What Makes Nonfiction Creative” by Dinty W. Moore (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
Week Two: Writing + Research (8/29)
To Read “I Would Like to Give Merry Clayton Her Roses” by Hanif Abdurraqib
“Transom” by Latif Nasser (craft)
“On Keeping a Notebook” Joan Didion (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON) + write in notebook
Week Three: Writing From Memory (9/5)
To Read “The Fourth State of Matter” Jo Ann Beard
“I hoisted them, two drug dealers, I guess that’s what they were” by Diane Seuss
“Why I write” Terry Tempest Williams (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
“I remember” writing exercise #1
Week Four: Writing The World Around Us (9/12)
To Read “Always Be Optimizing” Jia Tolentino
“Apocalypse Logic” Elissa Washuta
“The Writing Life” Alexander Chee (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
“Walking Exercise” writing exercise #2
Week Five: Writing in Place (9/19)
To Read: “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
To watch Nonfiction Craft Capsule: Elena Passarello
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
Writing exercise #3 “Place”
Week Six: Writing Across Time (9/26)
To Read “Notes of a Native Son” James BaldwiN
“The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin” Rachel Kaadzi Ghanza
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
Group 1: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: October 2, 2022
Week Seven: Workshop 1 (10/3)
To Read Workshop Small Essays
To Write Group 2: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: October 9, 2022
Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Week Eight: Workshop 2 (10/10)
To Read Workshop Essays
To Write Group 3: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: October 16, 2022
Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Week Nine: Workshop 3 (10/17)
To Read Workshop Essays
To Write Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Week Ten: Writing Family + Community (10/24)
To Read “The Love of My Life” Strayed
“Against Catharsis: Writing Is Not Therapy” by T Kira Madden (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
“Still Life” Writing exercise #4
Week Eleven: Literary Journalism (10/31)
To Read “The Isolation of Being Deaf in Prison” Jeremy Woody
“Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace
“Ten of My Recommendations for Good Writing Habits” by Lydia Davis (craft)
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
Group 1: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: November 6, 2022
Week Twelve: Workshop 4 (11/7)
To Read Workshop Essays
To Write Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Group 2: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: November 13, 2022
Week Thirteen: Workshop 5 (11/14)
To Read Workshop Essays
To Write Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Group 3: Essay Due to ICON Discussion Board: November 27, 2022
Week Fourteen: Thanksgiving No Class (11/21)
Week Fifteen: Workshop 6 (11/28)
To Read Workshop Essays
To Write Feedback letters on Workshop essays submitted by classmates
Week Sixteen: Writing the Mind + Body (12/5)
To Read “Anatomy of Melancholy” Andrew Solomon
“We Forget that Everything Will Become No Longer Ours” Kristin Radtke
*Wrap Up*
To Write Post responses to readings to discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 p.m CST (directions on ICON)
“Writing Illness” writing exercise #5
Week Seventeen: Final Exams (No final exam for this class!) (12/12)
*Turn in Portfolio*