I have a long background in teaching writing, most recently as an associate professor of English at Northern Arizona University, where I directed and taught in the undergraduate and MFA programs in creative writing. Previously I taught at the College of William & Mary, Oberlin College, the College of St. Benedict’s Minnesota Street Summer Writing Fellowships, Portland Community College, the Writers in the Schools Program in Portland, Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and Iowa Arts Share. I also teach summer, weekend, and one-off writing workshops. Some recent courses:
Intro to Creative Writing
An exploration of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and their trans-genre interstices. Readings from recent semesters have included Citizen by Claudia Rankine, fiction from current literary journals and The Best American Short Stories anthologies, and poems by Cathy Park Hong, Terrance Hayes, Evie Shockley, Tyehimba Jess, Frank O'Hara, Layli Long Soldier, Ari Banias, Danez Smith, and others.
Fiction Workshop
An intermediate course that focuses on the fundamentals via a multiplicity of lenses and forms. Student favorites you can find online: “The Flower” by Louise Erdrich, “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco, "Sorry Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" by Helen Oyeyemi, "Stone Animals" by Kelly Link, "North Country" by Roxane Gay, “Begin with an Outline” by Kaui Hart Hemmings, “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying” by Alice Sola Kim. and “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” by Jamil Jan Kochai.
Writing the Novel/la
Students each write a single sustained work of fiction of 12,000-30,000 words (though some go longer--the record so far for a completed project is 46,000.) Novellas, long stories, and short novels I’ve assigned for this class include “The Office of Historical Corrections” by Danielle Evans, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang, Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang, Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra, Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, "Gloss..." from Counternarratives by John Keene, Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, We The Animals by Justin Torres, Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, and “Secret Identity” by Kelly Link. One of my favorite courses to teach--the novella is such an adventurous and flexible form, and turning in 1200-2000 words per week, no matter how rough and raw, proves to be a transformative practice for the students.
A course in narrative nonfiction, particularly literary longform nonfiction suited to magazine and journal publication. Student favorites: "Girl" by Alexander Chee, "Blacker Than Thou" by Kevin Young, "They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don't Exist" by Jenny Zhang, "Immortal Horizon" and "Fog Count" by Leslie Jamison, "To Scratch, Claw, or Grope, Frantically or Clumsily" by Roxane Gay, "Netherland" by Rachel Aviv, "Trouble in Lakewood" by Joan Didion, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" by Gay Talese (and the annotated version!), and "The Really Big One" by Kathryn Schulz (plus her discussion of it on the Longform podcast). This course often culminates in students creating and editing a pop-up online magazine featuring their strongest work.
Creative Nonfiction
A staid title for a freewheeling exploration of nonfiction: memoir, the lyric essay, the meditation, autotheory, hybrid forms. Readings have included Hilton Als, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, Jo Ann Beard, Eula Biss, Brian Blanchfield, Edwidge Danticat, Kiese Laymon, Yiyun Li, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Matthew Salesses, Lucy Sante, Zadie Smith, David Treuer, and Dubravka Ugresic, among others.
Advanced Nonfiction Workshop
A workshop in writing the permutations and cross-pollinations of speculative, fabulist, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy fiction. Readings include Jorge Luis Borges, Octavia Butler, Dan Chaon, Ted Chiang, Cathy Park Hong, Nalo Hopkinson, Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and David Mitchell, among others.
Beyond Genre: Writing Fabulist Fiction
A graduate seminar and workshop in writing ecologically-driven poetry and prose. Readings include Undermining by Lucy Lippard, Toxicon and Arachne by Joyelle McSweeney, The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Trace by Lauret Savoy, and many more TBD.
Climate Science Writing
Writing for Television
A graduate workshop in writing for television using the technique and craft of literary fiction. We investigate contemporary television as a site of sophisticated, complex, challenging stories that draw on a diverse range of human experiences and aesthetic approaches. Students read craft essays and criticism, study scripts, and watch series and episodes to analyze form and technique; read profiles of creators to learn how they originate and execute their shows; simulate a writers’ room to practice adaptation and origination of stories for television; write own their original pilots; and workshop their drafts with peers, including live table reads in class.
The Art of Revision
A one-credit graduate course in revising prose and poetry at the level of structure, image, and sentence. Weekly exercises in rearranging, exploring, tuning, and reimagining the language of works-in-progress are supplemented with readings and live sentence clinics.