How Writers Write Fiction 2015
This course is now closed, but can be accessed for free online.
In late September 2015, the International Writing Program will open its fourth creative writing MOOC, How Writers Write Fiction 2015. This MOOC will offer an opportunity for the interactive study and practice of writing fiction. This course has been designed to welcome both beginning and experienced writers; video classes, writing assignments, and discussions will engage and challenge writers at all levels. How Writers Write Fiction 2015 will be taught by Christopher Merrill, IWP Director and University of Iowa Professor of English, and Angela Flournoy, author of the critically-acclaimed novel The Turner House. This MOOC is freely available to everyone in the world; there is no cost to register.
Course Description
How Writers Write Fiction 2015 will be taught in English as follows: each week, instructors Merrill and Flournoy will post a new video class. In this video class, they will introduce two or three short video lectures given by successful authors of fiction. Featured authors will include Venise Berry, Edward Carey, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Bernice Chauly, Susan Taylor Chehak, Boris Fishman, Angela Flournoy, Boaz Gaon, Andrew Sean Greer, Paul Harding, Naomi Jackson, Leslie Jamison, Mamle Kabu, Jonathan Lethem, Margot Livesy, Stephen Lovely, Peter Orner, and Douglas Trevor, among others. Each week, the video class will be followed by a set of writing assignments. These assignments will invite you to write fiction, post your work to the MOOC website, and engage in community feedback with your fellow writers. Supplementary readings will also be posted for your exploration.
Each week, a team of teaching moderators will lead live discussions of the video topics and the challenges of the writing assignments around the clock in the MOOC discussion forum. A teaching moderator or guest author will open a video master class, offering an in-depth analysis of the week’s writing themes; discussion of the master class will follow in the forum. Community moderators will actively support the participation of writers who are new to online learning, new to writing fiction, and/or writing as nonnative speakers of English. These community moderators will facilitate the formation of writing groups and support the vitality and inclusivity of your international writing community.
Registration
Again, this MOOC is freely available to everyone in the world; there is no cost to register. The University of Iowa will offer an optional MOOC Certificate of Completion for a fee of $50.00 USD. You are not required to pay this fee in order to register for and participate in this MOOC. Those who wish to earn the MOOC Certificate of Completion must complete a set number of weekly video quizzes, weekly writing assignments, and weekly peer feedback and discussion requirements.
All are welcome to join us in this exciting exploration of fiction-writing theory, practice, and community!
To join our mailing list to be notified of future MOOCs, please fill out the sign-up form here.
For questions regarding How Writers Write Fiction 2015, please contact us at distancelearning.iwp@gmail.com.
IWP Online Campus
The IWP Online Campus, a MOOC outreach initiative, provides the IWP's creative writing and literature MOOCs as MOOCpacks, online toolkits that feature all of the course content and various teaching tools for use in a study group or workshop setting. As part of the IWP's commitment to global accessibility for educational resources, the kits are designed to be used by anyone, anywhere in the world who wishes to lead a local group; no prior teaching experience is necessary. If you are interested in using this MOOC to lead a local study group or workshop, visit our IWP Online Campus page for more details.
Narrative Witness: Indigenous Peoples, Australia-United States
Exchange Overview
In August 2015, the IWP Distance Learning Program will open a new artist-writer exchange to honor the voices of indigenous peoples in Australia and the United States.
Narrative Witness, Indigenous Peoples: Australia-United States will bring photographers and writers in far-flung communities together to create, collaborate, and workshop online. Poets Ali Cobby Eckermann and Jennifer Elise Foerster along with photographer Will Wilson will lead the exchange.
Emerging and established writers and photographers are welcome to participate. Over two months, you will be invited to create fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography on the theme of narrative witness: turning a documentary and imaginative lens on your lived and inherited experiences as indigenous artists. If you self-identify as a member of an indigenous community in Australia or the United States and are interested in participating, please email Samantha Nissen.
Instructors
Ali Cobby ECKERMANN is the author of six books, including the poetry collections Little Bit Long Time (2009), Kami (2010), Love Dreaming and Other Poems (2011), and Ruby Moonlight (2011), the verse novel His Father’s Eyes (2011) and a poetic memoir, Too Afraid to Cry (2013). Her awards include the Australia Poetry Centre’s 2008 New Poets Award and the 2013 Book of the Year for Ruby Moonlight. She co-edited Southerly Journal’s 2012 Aboriginal issue titled A Handful of Sand. In 2015, Eckermann was an IWP Fall Resident.
Jennifer Elise FOERSTER’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies including New California Writing 2011 and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. Her first book of poems, Leaving Tulsa (2013), was a Shortlist Finalist for the 2014 PEN Open Book Award. She has received a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Of German, Dutch, and Muscogee descent, Foerster is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She is a non-profit development consultant, and is also pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
William (Will) WILSON is a Diné photographer who spent his formative years living in the Navajo Nation. Some of his many awards include the Native American Fine Art Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum; and, in 2010, a prestigious grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. From 2009 to 2011, he managed the National Vision Project, a Ford Foundation-funded initiative at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, and helped to coordinate the New Mexico Arts Temporary Installations Made for the Environment (TIME) program on the Navajo Nation. Wilson has held visiting professorships at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Oberlin College, and the University of Arizona, and he has been an active part of New Mexico’s Science and Arts Research Collaborative, which brings together artists interested in using science and technology in their practice with collaborators from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Labs. Recently, Wilson completed an exhibition and artist residency at the Denver Art Museum and was the King Fellow artist in residence at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM. He is the Photography Program Head at the Santa Fe Community College. An archive of his work, both past and present, and his artist’s statements regarding ongoing projects are available on his website.
Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Elena Passarello
Course Description
This course will address the four key components of Creative Nonfiction: Scene, Commentary, Research, and Form. Over the eight weeks of this course, we will read and discuss a dozen or so published essays, each of which uses those four elements to varied effects. As we read and chat, we'll also try our hand at several short weekly exercises. For the first half of the course, we'll use the prompts to "build" an essay that focuses on people—the self and the family. In the second half, we'll work through another linked series of prompts and essays on the world around us. We will meet weekly in our online video classroom for live lectures and discussion. Each week, four of us will submit what we've been working on to the class for workshopping so we can discuss each writer's process and progress at that particular stage of the term. The course will run from July 12, 2015 to September 6, 2015.
Participants
Twenty-four writers hailing from Brazil, Canada, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Zambia were selected from a pool of 400 applicants to participate in this seminar.
24 writers are enrolled in the Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Elena Passarello
Instructor
Elena PASSARELLO is the author of Let Me Clear My Throat and the forthcoming Animals Strike Curious Poses, both with Sarabande Books. Her essays on music, popular culture, and the natural world have appeared in Slate, Creative Nonfiction, Oxford American, Ninth Letter, Iowa Review, and The Normal School, and in anthologies including After Montaigne and Cat is Art Spelled Wrong. The recipient of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, Elena teaches in Oregon State University's Creative Writing MFA program.
Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Amy Leach
Course Description
In this course we will read and write a wide range of creative nonfiction. We will begin with an introductory writing assignment and then move into a series of essay assignments, loosely modeled on the forms presented in each week's reading assignments. We'll meet weekly in our online video classroom for live discussion of these readings and essays, and will make use of in-class writing activities to spark ideas. We will also be responding to each other's work through ongoing workshops; providing the writer with an attentive audience, and cultivating analytical skills and sensitivity as readers. As the course draws to an end, we'll move into revision work. The goal of this course will be to discover one's own stories and interests, and to develop a style and a voice with which to create art out of facts. The course will run from July 19, 2015 to September 13, 2015.
Participants
Twenty-four writers hailing from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, India, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria, Scotland, Serbia, South Africa, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, the United States, and Venezuela were selected from a pool of 400 applicants to participate in this seminar.
24 writers are enrolled in the Nonfiction Writing Seminar with Amy Leach.
Instructor
Amy LEACH, author of Things That Are from Milkweed Editions, has had her work appear in A Public Space, Tin House, Orion, the Los Angeles Review, and in a Best American Essays collection. The recipient of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, she plays bluegrass, teaches English, and lives in Montana.
A Room of One's Own: Developing the Female Authorial Voice (Amman, Jordan | Manama, Bahrain)
Course Description
Centered on the development of the female authorial voice and on issues of artistic identity, A Room of One’s Own will bring female students together in Amman, Jordan and Manama, Bahrain. This seven-week course will encourage participants to consider the physical and cultural spaces that support the formation of a creative identity, to explore a diversity of female literary voices, and to begin to develop their own voices and identities as writers.
Weekly live video classes will bring together the participants in Amman and Manama. Readings and writing assignments will be provided through a passworded course website, where asynchronous online workshops of students’ writing assignments will be conducted. Each student can log into the website at any time and share supportive critical feedback on her fellow students’ work. During the live video classes, the instructor and students will discuss the challenges posed by each writing assignment and the craft issues brought up by the workshops and readings. Readings will encourage participants to consider the roles that physical and cultural space play in the development of one’s identity and to envision the spaces and routines that would best support their artistic ambitions.
The course dates are February 23rd-April 10th, 2015. Participants in Jordan are students at the University of Jordan. Participants in Bahrain will be recruited from the following schools: Bahrain Polytechnic, The Ernst and Young Training Centre, the University of Bahrain, King's College London, Ahlia University, Khawla Secondary Girls School, Kingdom University, the Modern Knowledge Schools, the New York Institute of Technology (Bahrain campus), AMA International University, Leeds Metropolitan, and the APG School. The IWP is proud to offer a virtual space for creative and cultural exchange to these aspiring female writers.
Bahrain Completion Ceremony
On the evening of May 4th, 2015 at the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain, Ambassador William V. Roebuck and Deputy Chief of Mission Timothy Pounds hosted a ceremony to celebrate the successful completion of A Room of One’s Own by Bahraini women. The event was attended by the students and their families and included speeches and remarks from participants Fatima Al Attar, Noor Nass and Fatima Adel. The participants shared their experiences and appreciation to the workshop coordinators and their colleagues. Ambassador Roebuck talked about the important role that writing plays in all of our lives and congratulated the attendees on their efforts by handing out certificates of participation. This innovative program was the first workshops of its kind in the Kingdom of Bahrain. You can see images from the ceremony in the gallery on the right side of this page.
Instructor
Naomi JACKSON is the author of The Star Side of Bird Hill ( 2015), long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award finalist. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of residencies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and the Camargo Foundation. Her website is www.naomi-jackson.com.