Exploring Creative Nonfiction: “Tell it Slant” Course Descriptor

Course Overview

‘Creative Nonfiction’ is an umbrella term for works which depict true events in captivating and artistic ways. Such pieces use subjects and material drawn from real life but employ literary techniques to make the writing more compelling, vivid, and immersive. This course will introduce students  to the structures and techniques underpinning published examples of creative nonfiction across a variety of genres, including Life Writing, Travel Writing, Nature Writing, and the Lyric Essay. Discussions, writing activities and collaborative creative writing workshops will help students  generate ideas, give them form, and learn to adapt their voices for different texts and audiences. Learning how to locate the ‘storyable’ moments of life, construct narrative arcs, and give shape to a message, will enhance students’ overall writing and communication skills.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage you in your studies.

The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

1. Lectures and Workshops 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

OR

2. Directed study 

4-12 scheduled hours, the exact number varying according to the balance of 1:1s, 2:1s, or small groups. The plan will be confirmed by the start of the course, taking into account student numbers and the proposed topics, readings, and specific tasks.

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

The summative assessment gives students the opportunity to produce their own work of creative nonfiction designed for a specific audience, and to articulate and critically evaluate their creative process in an academic context, in a reflective commentary.

Summative Assessments

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours). 

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Gerard, Philip & Forche Carolyn (eds), Writing Creative Nonfiction (Story Press: Cincinatti, 2001)
• Gutkind, Lee & Dillard, Annie (eds.), In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005)
• Kidder, Tracy & Todd, Richard, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction (New York: Random House, 2013)
• Lapote, Philip, To Show and To Tell (New York: Free Press, 2013)
• Miller, Brenda & Paola, Suzanne, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, 3rd edn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2019)
• Morley, David, The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below is used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Creative nonfiction forms
• Research practice
• Reading as a writer
• Writing across audiences
• Rhetorical writing
• Professional applications