2026 Courses

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on the technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (A: BROWN, B: CLARK) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

509 A: Brown 

Book List:

509 B: Clark 

Lucille Clifton said, “So you come to poetry not out of what you know—but out of what you
wonder.” In this workshop, we will be coming to poetry out of that sense of curious awe and
deep inquiry for an intensive six-week exploration into poetic craft, rigorous revision, and
generative poetry prompts (guided by readings from anthologies, poetry collections, essays, and
curated packets). We will be examining the following poetic techniques, forms, and
considerations by studying the line break, ekphrasis, voltas by way of modern sonnets,
beginnings, endings, and more. Each week we will discuss a particular poetic theme followed by
a productive workshop that is centered around a community of care when giving critique.
Throughout the course, we will workshop five of your poems, each undergoing multiple drafts in
the revision process. You will also be responsible for presentations and participate in a final
reading during our last class—a moment to celebrate and showcase the fruition and development
of your beautiful work and dedication.
Our poetic journey will culminate in your Final Writing Portfolio (FWP), a collection of
thoughtfully revised workshopped poems with revision notes that showcase your creative
editorial decisions and ruminations, as well as an essay and a statement of growth as a poet.

Book List:

Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss

Horsepower by Joy Priest

Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endingsedited by Luke Hankins & Nomi Stone

Poetry Packets and additional reading materials will be made available through Brightspace.

Through close analysis of the poems of various modern and contemporary masters, we will consider the implications of voice, and consider how the poet's voice is shaped by choices made in terms of imagery, themes, form and technique. (SMITH) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (A: ADRIAN, B: HORNSBY) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

510 A: Adrian:

In this course, we will identify and experiment with the essential elements of fiction. How does a character’s motivation drive the story forward? How do authors use setting, characterization, perspective, plot, and voice to raise a story’s stakes, add tension to each scene, create conflict, and put pressure on the protagonist? Together, we will read and respond to a wide range of published fiction, honing our close reading skills and approaching one another’s works-in-progress in that same analytic spirit. 

Book List:

The Best American Short Stories 2025 by Celeste Ng, Nicole A. Lamy

510 B Hornsby

For the six weeks of the summer session, my goal is to equip you with as many fiction writing tools, skills, and techniques as I can, so that as you pursue your own projects as writers in the future, you have what you need to breathe some life into your vision. We will primarily be operating a traditional workshop, but each week we’ll also focus on a particular topic or technical component of a piece of writing (voice, setting, plot, etc.). We’ll go deep into process stuff, play with a bunch of generative exercises, and, hopefully, work together to begin to understand who we are as artists and what we want to explore in our work. I want the workshop to be a place of play, discipline, and discovery to fuel you for when you’re far away from Sewanee.

Book List:

The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (Bausch Ed.).

A course packet that will be provided will include:

Wonderlands Charles Baxter (excerpt)

Madness, Rack, and Honey Mary Ruefle (excerpt)

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain George Saunders (excerpt)

Misc stories by Jenny Zhang, Justin Taylor, Joy Williams, and many more!

How does fiction "work"? This course attempts to answer that question with close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form and technique. (TAYLOR) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Discussions center on students' nonfiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (BOLIN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Through the close study of nonfiction writing including essays, researched work, and memoir, this course examines the way nonfiction writing works with a special emphasis on form and technique. (SUBRAMANIAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates [ISBN-10: 0812983815 and ISBN-13: 978-0812983814]

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El-Akkad [paperback should be out soon! I know Omar and wrote him to ask about it, but for now, still just hardcover: ISBN-10: 0593804147 and ISBN-13: 978-0593804148]

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by  Margaret Renkl [ISBN-10: 1571313834 and ISBN-13: 978-1571313836]

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on the technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (HOWELL) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Book List: 

1. Horsepower by Joy Priest.
2. Paraíso by Jacob Shores-Argüello.

Through close analysis of the poems of various modern and contemporary masters, we will consider the implications of verse as an imitation of voice, and consider how the poet’s voice is shaped by choices made in terms of imagery, themes, form and technique. (BROWN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

A study of the forms, techniques, and theories of poetry, emphasizing the views of poets. Exploring the question of poetic craft from the “practitioner” point-of-view, this course in prosody is for the serious student of poetry that wants to understand the ticking of the clock, so to speak, by taking it apart to reveal its intricate workings of tiny cogs and springs and notched wheels. While we’ll be investigating the historical developments of form, the vast majority of our time will be dedicated to the sweet insanity of clapping out syllables and UN-accenting words to learn how the basic building blocks of poetry—rhyme, rhythm, pace, line breaks, syntax, and meter—can be used to underscore and accentuate a poem’s emotional tenor and tension. We’ll discover what music different forms make, what happens when you break from those forms to make it “new,” and ultimately, how a mastery of prosody can strengthen both one’s reading and writing skills, no matter your artistic temperament. 

Book List: 

1. A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making & Sharing Your Poetry by Annie Finch ISBN-10: 0472033646  ISBN-13: 978-0427033645

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (A: QUATRO, B: HORNSBY) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Book List (QUATRO): 

1. Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, ISBN: 9781250005984
2. We the Animals by Justin Torres, ISBN: 9780547844190
3. Green Water, Green Sky by Mavis Gallant (Please purchase the edition with the intro by Brandon Taylor), ISBN-10: 1914198921  ISBN-13: 9781914198922

Book List (HORNSBY): A compilation of stories will be distributed the first day of class. The list will include:

1. Joy Williams
   “Charity”
   “The Girls”
2. Danzy Senna
   “Admission”
3. Anton Chekhov
   “In the Cart”
4. Sterling Holywhitemountain
   “False Star”
5. Bohumil Hrabal
   Opening pages of I Served the King of England
6. Charles Baxter
   Excerpt from Wonderlands

How does fiction "work"? This course attempts to answer that question with close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form and technique. (THREATT) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

In this course, we will learn how to trace recurring themes in author Toni Morrison’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction. Students will grow to recognize commonalities across Morrison’s essays and her novels, using Morrison to understand Morrison. This course is perfect for students seeking an intensive experience with one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Book List: 

1. Sula by Toni Morrison, ISBN: 
2. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, ISBN: 9780307388124
3. Desdemona by Toni Morrison, ISBN: 9781849436359
4. “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison, ISBN: 9780593315033

Discussions center on students' nonfiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (SUBRAMANIAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Book List: 

1. Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue, Edited by Lee Gutkind and Leslie Rubinkowski, ISBN: 9781953368812

Through the close study of nonfiction writing including essays, researched work, and memoir, this course examines the way nonfiction writing works with a special emphasis on form and technique. (TAYLOR) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

In this course we’ll read memoirs, essays, and hybrid works that bend or break supposed boundaries of structure, voice, and style in nonfiction. James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time takes the form of a pair of open letters, but it’s also a work of searching autobiography, searing social critique, and keen journalistic observation. Scott McClanahan’s Crapalachia is a feral memoir of the contemporary South that upends the conventions of memoir itself. Natalia Ginzburg’s essays in The Little Virtues are deceptively simple, marvels of clarity and quiet that provoke big questions about our most intimate relationships. Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a kind of multimedia work on paper: prose-poems, clip art, news photos, personal narrative, and found text are collaged into “An American Lyric.” We’ll look closely at the formal and aesthetic decisions each writer makes in order to bring their vision to life, and through that inquiry explore a wide range of critical, social, and literary questions raised by these pathbreaking nonfictions. We will expand the depth and breadth of our knowledge of what’s possible within the genre, with an eye toward applying what we learn to our own creative work. 

Book List: 

1. The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

2. Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place, by Scott McClanahan

3. The Little Virtues, by Natalia Ginzburg

4. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, by Claudia Rankine
5. Best American Essays 2024, by Wesley Morris

This is an optional one (1) credit colloquium focused on professional development, publishing opportunities, craft talks, submit-a-thons, meetings with visiting authors/editors/agents, and anything else that falls under the broad rubric of “the writing life.” The School of Letters offers a robust and varied series of public programs, class visits, panel discussions, and informal gatherings during the six-week summer session. Registered students are expected to attend these events and produce short-form responses detailing what they have learned and how they intend to apply it in their own writing and publishing practice. Students are invited to all School of Letters events but are not registered for the class and need not submit responses to events they attend.

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on the technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (BROWN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Book List: 

To 2040: Poems, by Jorie Graham, Copper Canyon (2023)

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Essays by Jane Hirshfield, Harper Perennial (1998)

Contemporary Amerikan Poetry: Poems, by John Murillo, Four Way Books (2016)

Constellation Route: Poems, by Matthew Olzmann, Alice James Books (2022)

Through close analysis of the poems of various modern and contemporary masters, we will consider the implications of verse as an imitation of voice, and consider how the poet’s voice is shaped by choices made in terms of imagery, themes, form and technique. (CLARK) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

This intensive craft course will focus on the micro and macro creation, evolution, and development of a chapbook length manuscript of poetry. Each week, students will discuss and dissect various poetry chapbooks. This class will have a strong focus on developing organizing principles for poetry collections, taking risks, emphasis on line breaks, examining form, chasing your obsessions, revision, and trusting your creative imagination and instincts. The culmination of this course will include formatting your chapbook using InDesign software and a preface to your work. I am in talks with publishers about the possibility of printing your chapbooks for personal use. If so, there may be an additional cost for printing.

Book List:

• • Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems
  • Tunsiya/Amrikiya by Leila Chatti
  • Connotary by Ae Hee Lee 
  • After by Fatimah Asghar
  • between every bird, our bones by emet ezell
  • What Are We Not For by Tommye Blount
  • The Donkey Elegies by Nickole Brown
  • Slick Like Dark by Meg Wade

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (A: PRICE, B: QUATRO) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

PRICE: Fiction workshop will focus on two rounds of discussion of students' fiction (workshop students should come with at least one story they're prepared to submit). Craft/style lessons will follow from workshops and selected readings, including the class text: the 2023 Best American Short Stories.

Book List (PRICE): 2023 Best American Short Stories edited by Min Jin Lee, ISBN10: 0063275902, ISBN13: 978-0063275904

Book List (QUATRO): Book list to come! 

How does fiction "work"? This course attempts to answer that question with close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form and technique.

Due to popular demand, there are two sections of ENGL 598. They meet at the same time and use the same syllabus.

Eternity in an Hour: The Short Novel- From Anna Karenina and Middlemarch to A Little Life and Infinite Jest, the kinds of novels that Henry James called "large, loose baggy monsters" enjoy a clear and secure place in the literary imagination. Less secure, and less clear, is the place and purpose of the short novel. In this class, our whole syllabus adds up to fewer pages than any one of the books named above, yet our readings will be no less epic. These micro-masterpieces cover decades and lifetimes, loves and losses, cultural histories and impossible encounters, classical realism and bold formal experiments, and much more besides. We will accept William Blake's invitation to "see a World in a Grain of Sand... And Eternity in an hour", purge ourselves of the presumption that length is strictly correlative to depth of meaning or breadth of story, and discover just how much can be done with just how little. All coursework will be creative. (A: CHAPMAN, B: TAYLOR) (Credit, full course, can be repeated).

Note: Be sure to get the specified editions of the Rulfo and Crawford novels. For the others, it does not matter which edition you get.

Books: 

• 1) Train Dreams by Denis Johnson - ISBN10: 9781250007650, ISBN13: 978-1250007650
  2) Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid - ISBN10: 0374527350, ISBN13: 978-0374527358
  3) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark - ISBN-10 ‏ :0061711292ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061711299
  4) Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811226697 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811226691
  5) Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, translated by Douglas Weatherford with an introduction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 080216093X  ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802160935
  6) Log of the SS the Mrs Unguentine by Stanley G. Crawford -- this is a rare book, currently out of print and expensive to buy used. We are getting advance digital copies of a forthcoming reissue, by special arrangement with the publisher. Your professor will send this to you. 

Discussions center on students' nonfiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (ADRIAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Through the close study of nonfiction writing including essays, researched work, and memoir, this course examines the way nonfiction writing works with a special emphasis on form and technique. (SUBRAMANIAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Leaps and Boundaries: Forms of Nonfiction 

This creative nonfiction class will explore the ways that we can tell true stories by probing the concept of boundaries and borders. The divisions we’ll explore will be literal and metaphorical. Blurred lines between genres. Militarized lines between nations. Transitions gradual and sudden. Distinctions between states of being—healthy and ill, alive and dead—as well the distinctions of our own identities. What does it mean to cross a boundary? When does a physical crossing mirror internal experiences and how can words capture the moment when something shifted? Whether a quiet moment of clarity or a cataclysmic rupture, something changed. There was a before. And an after.

This class will help recognize how to focus writing on these pivot points by exploring a wide range of texts, from classic to contemporary including Hiroshima by John Hersey,  Bluets by Maggie Nelson, and The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú. What forms work? And, more importantly, why. We’ll probe form, voice, perspective, structure and other elements of craft in this seminar class, our collective knowledge deepening our understanding of readings. Longer assignments coupled with regular, short writing exercises are designed to encourage creativity, helping you wade into zones of discomfort and discovery, emerging with tools that allow you to deepen your writing skills. They will also help you connect what you’re learning in the classroom to the world around you as you push your own boundaries, perhaps redefining them. You’ll emerge from this class with a fresh perspective on how creative nonfiction can help you leap over into whatever comes next.

Books:

·      Bluets by Maggie Nelson, ISBN10: 1933517409, ISBN13: 978-1933517407

·      Hiroshima by John Hersey, ISBN10: 0679721037, ISBN13: 978-0679721031

·      The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú, ISBN10: 0735217734, ISBN13: 978-0735217737

·      Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, ISBN10: 161620642X, ISBN13: 978-1616206420

Craft and Practice is a credit-earning course available during the summer sessions. A one-credit colloquium exploring practical aspects of the writing life as well as the publishing industry, students will attend readings of creative work as well as craft lectures by current faculty and talks with publishing professionals such as agents, editors, and working writers. The School of Letters will offer a variety of events during the summer session, including but not limited to the Wednesday Reading Series. 

Craft & Practice intends to meet the two most common requests from SSL students: More professional development opportunities and faster progress toward degree completion. To receive credit for Craft and Practice, students must attend at least seven events and write up brief summaries of each to be turned into the Director at the end of the summer session. These assignments will be made available at the beginning of the semester and will focus on how students will apply what they learned in their own writing practice. 

Over three summers, C&P earns each student the credit-equivalent of a literature seminar, which means that as long as a student takes one online course or independent study at any point during your time at SSL, they will finish their coursework by the end of their third summer and be ready to embark on their thesis. Of course, there is always the option of adding more online/IS work to further hasten progress, or the option of enrolling for only one class per summer for those students who want to slow down. If a student has already completed 18 credits and intends to finish their coursework during the current summer, or if they plan to enroll in only one summer class, then C&P is optional. Otherwise, it is required for all students. 

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on the technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (FRANCIS) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Through close analysis of the poems of various modern and contemporary masters, we will consider the implications of verse as an imitation of voice, and consider how the poet’s voice is shaped by choices made in terms of imagery, themes, form and technique.

Writing in the Age of Loneliness: Eco-Literature & the Writer’s Task We are now in the throes of a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. Some call it the Anthropocene, but biologist E.O. Wilson said it may be called by scientists and poets alike the Eremozoic, meaning “The Age of Loneliness.” If we take the worries of climate change and habitat destruction seriously—and in this lonely age potentially bereft of our fellow creatures—how can we help but feel an incapacitating sense of hopelessness that threatens to render things like literature and poems utterly useless? In this intensive, we’ll strive together to find ways past this potentially debilitating hurdle. We’ll ask questions that instead of silencing ourselves will urge us on: What is our responsibility as writers to this epoch? Can the average working person with limited access to nature make any difference? How might we depict the suffering of non-human but sentient beings? How can one write about plants and animals without producing work that is sentimental, overly personified, flat-lined with facts, or, worse, rendered incapable of communicating from its own rage or sorrow? What impact can we make with our words? We’ll study poems, lyric essays, and fiction that have their own solutions to these pitfalls and will try our hands at writing through this darkness with awareness, control, and yes, even hope.  

(BROWN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (CHAPMAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

How does fiction "work"? This course attempts to answer that question with close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form and technique.

The Short Story Short fiction is an endlessly rewarding form that offers an author the chance to portray a human life in anywhere from 2 to 30 pages. It is, to some extent, a perfectable form, and for this reason there's a unique, pure pleasure in the production of a short story that works. Because of its constraints and compression, the short story also serves as an especially rich site of general study—a firm grounding in the craft of the story provides valuable lessons in plot, scene, point of view, and more for writers to use when they scale up to the novel. Furthermore, short stories offer a key path for new writers to establish themselves in the literary world, build community with the literary journals where they publish, and attract agent interest. In this class, we will read a selection of old and new short fiction classics carefully, anatomizing them to figure what makes a narrative urgent—how do great authors produce material that demands to be read? The essential and eternal question for all forms of writing and writers being: how can I make a reader keep reading?

(PRICE) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Discussions center on students' nonfiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (SUBRAMANIAN) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

Through the close study of nonfiction writing including essays, researched work, and memoir, this course examines the way nonfiction writing works with a special emphasis on form and technique.

Finding Your Narrator, Framing Your Story  In her landmark study of personal narrative, The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick argues that “Every work of literature has a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstances, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” In this nonfiction literature seminar we will read a variety of essays and memoirs with an eye toward seeing how each writer has developed a story out of their situation. What is the relationship between style and subject-matter? How do we decide what to keep and what to cut? Is there freedom in limitation, such as narrowing the time-frame, leaving lacunae, and imposing formal constraints? Must the “I” of personal narrative correspond precisely to the “I” of the author, or can we allow for unreliability, persona, character development, and other elements of creativity more readily associated with fiction or the lyric poem?

(TAYLOR) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)

This semester the School of Letters is introducing an additional credit-earning course available during the summer sessions. A one-credit colloquium exploring practical aspects of the writing life as well as the publishing industry, students will attend readings of creative work as well as craft lectures by current faculty and talks with publishing professionals such as agents, editors, and working writers. The School of Letters will offer a variety of events during the summer session, including but not limited to the Wednesday Reading Series. 

Craft & Practice intends to meet the two most common requests from SSL students: More professional development opportunities and faster progress toward degree completion. To receive credit for Craft and Practice, students must attend at least seven events and write up brief summaries of each to be turned into the Director at the end of the summer session. These assignments will be made available at the beginning of the semester and will focus on how students will apply what they learned in their own writing practice. 

Over three summers, C&P earns each student the credit-equivalent of a literature seminar, which means that as long as a student takes one online course or independent study at any point during your time at SSL, they will finish their coursework by the end of their third summer and be ready to embark on their thesis. Of course, there is always the option of adding more online/IS work to further hasten progress, or the option of enrolling for only one class per summer for those students who want to slow down. If a student has already completed 18 credits and intends to finish their coursework in Summer 2023, or if they plan to enroll in only one summer class, then C&P is optional. Otherwise, it is required for all students. 

Hybrid and Experimental Literatures focuses on narrative modes that foreground formal innovation and/or blur or erase distinctions between traditional genre boundaries such as prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, image and text, author and reader, etc. Students read creative works that possess these qualities, as well as critical writing that frames, theorizes, and interrogates the aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural conditions in which said work was produced and to which it responds. Assignments are largely creative though students are invited to produce their own theoretical models as well as their own hybrid or experimental works of art. (CASTILLO)(Credit, full course.)

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (KIRBY) (Credit, full course, can be repeated)