Three people reading out loud into a microphone from works placed on a music stand in front of them.
Writing

Curriculum & Courses

Graduate Curriculum Overview

WRIT 5001 Writing Workshop 

12  

WRIT 5500 Topics in Writing Seminar

12  

MFA 6009 Graduate Projects 

(minimum of 12 credits with writing advisors)

24  

Electives

Courses at the 3000 level or above. Art History courses must be at the 4000 level or above.

12  

Participation in four graduate critiques 

 

Inclusion in graduate publication or participation in the Graduate Exhibition or equivalent 

 

Completion of the thesis 

 

Total Credit Hours

60  

Students may elect internships to satisfy up to 6 hours of elective credit.

Degree Requirements and Specifications

  1. Completion schedule: Students have a maximum of four years to complete the degree (this includes time off for leaves-of-absence).
  2. Transfer credits: A minimum of 45 credit hours must be completed at SAIC. Up to 15 transfer credits may be requested at the time of application for admission and are subject to approval at that time. No transfer credit will be permitted after a student is admitted.
  3. Thesis requirement: During their final semester, students are required to submit a thesis of appropriate length in any genre.
  4. Exhibition requirements: MFAW students planning to participate in the Graduate Thesis Exhibition or Time Arts events are required to complete at least 6 studio credits by the end of the third semester AND to advise with a studio faculty member in their final semester.
  5. Studio space: Individual studio space is not provided automatically to students in the MFA in Writing; however, Writing students with a visual arts practice in addition to their writing may apply for a space through the Administrative Director, Graduate Division, at gradstudio@saic.edu.
  6. Graduate Projects: MFA 6009 Graduate Projects enrollments must be in increments of 3 credit hours. No more than two advisors and a total of 6 credit hours may be scheduled for a given semester. The number of credits earned by the student has no correlation with length or frequency of the advising sessions or to faculty assessment of student work.

Students may elect internships to satisfy up to 6 hours of elective credit.

Courses

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

Class Number

1894

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

Class Number

1895

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

Class Number

1898

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.

Class Number

2273

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

In Stanzas in Meditation, Gertrude Stein writes, ¿I call carelessly that the door is open / Which if they can refuse to open / No one can rush to close.¿ Playing on the Latin root of stanza as a standing space or room, Stein writes her stanzas as rooms, spaces, and boundary zones that are equally porous and enclosed. Is the stanza a coordination of limits and encasements, or is it a liminal space of experimentation and transgression? Does the stanza bear a similar relation to the body of a poem as a paragraph does to the flow of a narrative or argument? In this course, we will be writing, workshopping, and thinking in and through the stanza as a unit of form and function within poetic composition and lyric prose. We¿ll also engage with prose poetry and lyric prose in which the paragraph functions as a destabilizing or deterritorializing event in narrative form. We¿ll read classic and contemporary theories about the stanza, as well as read across various stanzaic forms, ranging from classical standards drawn from Sappho, Spenser, and Swinburne, as well contemporary experiments in the stanza and the prose poem by poets like Lyn Hejinian, Jericho Brown, Juan Felipe Herrera, Anne Waldman, and Nathaniel Mackey. Course work will consist of weekly creative writing assignments, revision exercises, in-class review sessions, a brief two-page research statement, and a final portfolio of work.

Class Number

1896

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

In this beginning workshop, we will engage in generative sessions that facilitate writerly observation and curiosity to spark new writing. Ongoing journaling exercises, observational walks, deep listening activities, and ekphrastic writing at museum and campus galleries will prompt writing ideas that spring from paying attention and seeing the familiar as refreshed and redefined. In tandem with these sessions, we¿ll read and discuss excerpts from Alexandra Horowitz¿s book, On Looking: A Walker¿s Guide to the Art of Observation. We¿ll also investigate and analyze examples of poetry and prose rooted in similar aspects of noticing by a wide range of writers such as Sei Shonagon, David Sedaris, Mary Oliver, Stuart Dybek, Julia Alvarez, and Aminatta Forna. Students will create early drafts based on their individual experiences and free writing responses to our generative sessions and discussions. Then, with a focus on both building strong drafts through revision and cultivating a keener sense of individual voice as it surfaces and continues to develop, we¿ll workshop student writing across the semester. Students should expect to write daily in a journal, participate in frequent class walks outside, and create several drafts of fresh writing toward finished pieces as a final project portfolio.

Class Number

1899

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon, Virginia Woolf in London, Frank O¿Hara in New York City; writers, philosophers and artists of all kinds have long created, expanded, and contracted themselves through walking the city. We will spend this semester walking and reading and writing fiction structured around the movement of the self in the city. We will consider the walk as form and content. We¿ll read short-and long-form works to examine how writers work¿contracting and expanding time, organizing structure, shifting among points of view, creating spaces, and controlling tensions¿so that you can develop skills and craft your own fictions. Students will write three new works of fiction over the course of the semester, to be developed into a final portfolio.

Class Number

1897

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

Poetry can provide a necessary circular path¿ where the page offers a place to think out loud. But poetry, simultaneously, provides a way OUT of the circularity and the spin. It can provide unexpected resolution¿a quick turn, surprise, a daring jump, or rupture¿¿ writes Layli Long Soldier, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. In this advanced workshop, we will challenge and reinvigorate your approach to writing poetry. We will experiment with poetic hybrids, exploring collage, docupoetics, ecopoetics, ekphrastic, and erasure, to name a few. We will read the work of groundbreaking contemporary writers such as Layli Long Soldier, Claudia Rankine, Craig Santoz Perez, Kimiko Hahn, Harryette Mullen, Victoria Chang, Forrest Gander, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ilya Kaminsky, and others. Each week, you will be offered writing prompts to create your own poetic possibilities. For the final class, you will present at least six pieces you have written during the course of the semester. This class is open to students exploring any genre.

Class Number

1904

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

What does it mean to write queerly? Is the personal truly political? What constraints do dominant structural expectations of form and craft place in the non-conforming imagination? Combining critical reading and reflection with writing and student-centered workshop practice, this course explores themes and aesthetics present in the work of contemporary queer personal narrative. Through the study of authors including Melissa Febos, Saeed Jones, Alexander Chee, Mattilda Sycamore Bernstein, Kai Cheng Thom, and Cooper Lee Bombardier, we contemplate the juxtapositions between intersectional identities, marginalization, and social and historical context in the art of personal writing. Weekly reading response journals and creative exploration combined with vigorous craft discussion culminate in composing and revising two potentially publishable personal essays.

Class Number

2230

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

In this course, we¿ll take speculative fiction seriously, diving headfirst into science-fiction, fantasy, horror, romance and works of alternative history. This means we¿ll be looking at things like tropes and conventions of the genre and how literary craft works in mediums that might run toward camp or pulp. To help us ask these questions, we¿ll look at writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Eve Ewing, TANAIS and Saidiya Hartman. We¿ll also engage with TV and film adaptations of speculative fiction, thinking about what is added and what gets lost when a work crosses from page to screen. Students can expect generative writing prompts, mini-workshops and exercises in literary criticism. By the end, each student will have written one piece of speculative fiction of their own, as well as one piece of criticism regarding a work of speculative fiction read in class.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: WRIT 1102 or WRIT 2040 or permission of the instructor.

Class Number

1900

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

Course topics vary by term and instructor. See topic description for more information.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: WRIT 1102 or WRIT 2040 or permission of the instructor.

Class Number

1901

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

What do writers and artists do with surplus, with extras, leftovers, and other excesses of production? Is there a creative use to put them to? When viewed in the context of ecology and economy, what are the ethical dimensions of working with surplus? Are there also ethics and aesthetics of the ¿useless¿? With these guiding questions, this course will explore creative approaches to waste, and develop revision practices that draw on the reuse of material surplus. We will consider forms of excess (literary, artistic, economic, material, etc.), and examine diverse types of waste and things that ¿waste¿, including literal trash, ruins, the body, time, the dream, and everyday texts (such as emails, text messages, rough drafts, conversations, and ephemeral media).

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: WRIT 1102 or WRIT 2040 or permission of the instructor.

Class Number

1903

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

This course concentrates on animal as character??either as narrator or designated subject??in nonfiction, fiction, poetry and hybrid forms. To provide a foundation for creative work we read from Lydia Davis, J.M. Coetze, Etgar Keret, John Berger, Paisley Rekdal and view visual art from Sue Coe, Paula Rego and Richard Barnes, among others. We do animal observations, create generative exercises, and take a field trip. We investigate: How does one?s identification of and curiosity about animals inform a text? How does one negotiate an anthropomorphic urge? What are the issues surrounding sentimentality and animals on and off the page? What kinds of constraints are apparent (or not) in animal characterizations? How do animals we read and see impact our culture? How do we impact theirs? Throughout the semester, students will have several opportunities to share and receive feedback on their work. This class is open to writers and artists across all disciplines.

Class Number

2118

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

We read work by pioneers of immersive journalism from the mid 20th century and its contemporary practitioners, and attempt versions of the practice ourselves. We explore how seeking new experiences sharpens detail in written work and how immersion can provide fodder for any genre of writing or visual art. Students produce work that stems from life experience sought for the specific purpose of making. This is an opportunity to practice careful first-hand observation; capturing dialogue; and conducting research and interviews. Short, low-stakes assignments are given throughout the course, and one larger, longer work is presented near the end of the semester. Authors include Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, George Plimpton, and Amy Hempel.

Class Number

2119

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

To write in any genre is a gesture that puts one in a relationship with predecessors and precursors. While this relationship if often constructed as a dialogue, it can also be a conflict, full of clatter, disagreement and intentional offensiveness. In this sense, the writer's mark crosses out the predecessors' work, and functions as an act of desecration. Furthermore, writing itself might internalize this structure, making a text that turns back on itself via contradiction and negation. In this workshop, we will try out various exercises of textual desecration on both our own and others' writing (for example, cutups, collages, erasures, etc.). We will draw comparisons with tendencies in the visual arts and read widely in modern and contemporary writing, likely including work by Tristan Tzara, Leonora Carrington, Ted Berrigan, Nikki Wallschlaeger, and Alice Notley.

Class Number

2120

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

This workshop provides tools for refining your unique point of view or the 'voice' of your work. We'll explore the practice of persona in narrative forms, performance monologues, and the solos and arias of music. We'll look at portraiture to prompt and sustain vibrant characters and luscious language. We'll find structural and lyric inspiration in asides and soliloquies from Shakespeare, the Greeks, opera and soap opera. Readings will include Susan Sontag's Alice in Bed, Caryl Churchill'sSkriker, Anais Nin's Winter of Artifice, as well as Ozen Yula, Atom Egoyan, Richard Wagner, Taylor Mac, Slavoj Zizek, Heiner Mueller, Hidden Fires (Calcutta, India), Diamanda Galas, Robert Ashley, etc. and the American voiceovers of Richard Foreman, Out From Under female performance artists of the 1980s and HowlRound. Project-driven with ample time for writing, high intuition and workshopping new projects. Open to all disciplines.

Class Number

2123

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 808

Description

Writing workshops meet once a week for three-hour sessions and focus primarily on the work of students enrolled in the program, although published works will often be examined as well. Workshop sections vary in focus, emphasizing single genre, mixed genre, or new forms. Please see the Degree Course Schedule for current offerings. Students enroll in one writing workshop each semester.

Class Number

2125

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

Many sections of this course, best characterized as a generative seminar, are offered each semester. The course focuses on aspects of literary art, the work of individual writers, literary criticism, new forms, and issues in contemporary culture, usually with an emphasis on generating new work. Students are often required to make presentations and lead discussion in these seminars. Please see the Degree Course Schedule for current offerings. Students enroll in one topics seminar each semester.

Class Number

2121

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

This is a process-oriented seminar on how to build creative habits. Emphasis is on a de-romanticized approach to the creative process. Discussion topics include the romantic approach (why it beckons, how it fails), rituals, self-knowledge, building a support system, organizing your materials, reading to write, navigating criticism, understanding the larger literary landscape, and failure. This is a good course to take at the beginning of your time at SAIC to ensure you know how to make use of your time, but students further along may benefit from its emphasis on the cultivation of a disciplined writing practice. Requirements include a writer's diary, an in-class partner meeting in which you set artistic goals for the following week, an interview with a working writer, and a final reflective essay.

Class Number

2122

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Description

A seminar in which we'll be thinking about surface-depth and foreground-background relations in our writing practices; also, we'll read across material poetries, book-objects, and visual poetry. As a supplement, we'll also engage in a history of close reading practices that moves from close-reading, to distant-reading, to surface-reading, each of which covers a specific methodology of reading and critical thinking (so, the New Critics to Helen Vendler, to Franco Moretti, to Best and Marcus), while also providing a way of reading/revising one's own work in a critical mode.

Class Number

2124

Credits

3

Department

Writing

Location

Lakeview - 803

Take the Next Step

Visit the graduate admissions website or contact the graduate admissions office at 312.629.6100, 800.232.7242 or gradmiss@saic.edu.