Course Description:

In this eight-week long creative writing course, students will have the opportunity to discuss and experiment with a variety of linguistic styles.  This course is designed to meet twice each week to discuss a written work by authors such as Faulkner, Poe, Hemingway, Bradbury, Chopin, and LeGuin.  Students will explore the literary and stylistic techniques employed by these authors and use their works as the basis for weekly stories.  These stories may later be discussed, edited, and revised at optional weekly group workshops.  In this way, aspiring writers will be able to experience and experiment with a range of styles and genres of fiction to develop their own individual voices as writers.  While the emphasis of the course will be on fiction, students will also write poetry and drama.  

Activities will include writing a fifty-three word story and adapting it into a short story, poem, and screenplay, writing stories in the style of a specific author, and writing a follow up/preface/spin-off of a text.  By the end of the eight weeks, students will develop a comprehensive and polished portfolio of their writing.  Students will then self-publish these works in a professional format and submit pieces they are most proud of to literary journals and contests such as Scholastic, Bennington Young Writers, and the Middlebury Breadloaf program.