College of Arts and Humanities

MFA Course Descriptions

MFA Course Descriptions

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FA QTR 18 On-Campus Cluster

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In Your Own Voices: Articulating Your Craft

Instructor: Gillian Parrish

Start Date: Wed. September 26; meets Wednesdays 6-10pm in the LARC building, room 311

Class Type: Workshop, Craft, & Literature (9 credit hours) 

Course Numbers:
IMF 52209 Focused Fiction Workshop: Revision Workshop
IMF 55500 Prose Workshop
IMF 55800 Adv Studies in Prose

Class Flier

Course Description: 

In Your Own Voices: Articulating Your Craft

Voice isn’t just how we sound but how we see. How we see a thing—and how to make it sing on paper. And don’t let the photo fool you; this work is not a closed circuit, but stems from looking and listening within and without. Developing one’s voice on the page—putting the world into words—is a process of hearing one’s life. Hearing our inner voices that echo the outer voices of our lives: the given communities of our families and our neighborhoods. And then there’s our chosen communities: friends, studies, hobbies, films, and songs—and, especially for writers, the voices of the books that have been (or perhaps are just becoming) your compasses and companions.

This course will provide MFA students with a chance to encounter and explore exemplary writing, some selected by the instructor with students’ projects in mind, some selected by students. We’ll use these texts to seed and feed your creative projects as well as to help you articulate your growing understanding of the craft of writing as you move through the MFA program. The aim, is always, after all, to put what you are learning “into your own words.”

Textbooks:

Kyrie: Poems
Author: Ellen Bryant Voigt, Ellen Voight
ISBN: 9780393315615
Publication Date: 09/28/1996
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.

Pafko at the Wall
Author: Don DeLillo
ISBN: 9780743230001
Publication Date: 10/28/2001
Publisher: Scribner

Beloved
Author: Toni Morrison
ISBN: 9781400033416
Publication Date: 06/08/2004
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

MONSTER CALLS: INSPIRED BY AN IDEF 
Author: NESS PATRICK
ISBN: 9780763692155
Publisher: PENG RAND

Ebooks are acceptable. Students using financial aid vouchers must purchase textbooks through the Lindenwood Barnes & Noble bookstore site