October 4, 2023 – L404 Silk Parachute – John McPhee

Course Description: Students will read John McPhee's Silk Parachute, participate in weekly topic discussions, and write a short response paper with a focus on using the crafts of writing personal essays.

Course Length: 4 weeks

Required Text: Silk Parachute by John McPhee

October 5, 2023 – MFA03 Writing the Memoir Essay

Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Difficulty: 3

Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.

October 5, 2023 – MFA252 Emotions and POV

Course Description: Explore the relationships between POV, emotions and body language.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron

October 12, 2023 – MFA165 Flash Fiction Getting the Lead Out

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Getting the Lead Out

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field

October 19, 2023 – MFA253 What Protagonists Want

Course Description: Everyone—real and fictional has a goal. What your protagonist wants dictates how she reacts to everything that happens to her. In stories, all other considerations bend to the protagonist's external and internal goals. This course shows how to put this into practice.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 3rd of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)



October 19, 2023 – MFA04 The Classically Modern Essay

Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Difficulty: 3

Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.



October 26, 2023 – MFA367 Music and Metaphor

Course Description: This is the second workshop in a series of four courses. Each includes notes on craft, examples of model poems, and exercises as ways to encourage you in beginning to shape your own experience, language, and insights into poetry. The courses in this series can be taken in any order.

Course Length: 5 weeks

Required Text: In the Palm of Your Hand, Second Edition: A Poet’s Portable Workshop



October 26, 2023 – MFA166 – Flash Fiction – Prose Poetry

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Prose Poetry

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field



October 30, 2023 – MFA750 Writing Literary Fiction – Part 1

Course Description: You know the basic elements of fiction. Now what? Whether you’ve only written a few short stories or dozens, this course is designed to help you push your writing to the next level. To do that, we will concentrate on the craft and vision needed to write the literary short story. Alice LaPlante calls this the method and the madness. This course is one of three consecutive courses using the LaPlante book. It is a prerequisite for the other two courses in the series.
 
Course Length: 8 weeks

Difficulty: 5

Required Text: The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing by Alice LaPlante



November 2, 2023 – MFA254 Protagonist Inner Issues

Course Description: New material is crafted first and foremost with an eye toward how it will fit into what's already there, because our unconscious allegiance is to what we've already written, rather than to the story itself. Outlining can be an intuitive, creative, and inspiring process, often surprisingly shorter than you might think.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 3rd of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)



November 2, 2023 – MFA05 The Contemplative Essay

Course Description: Recommended for bloggers, essayists and nonfiction writers. This workshop is part of the MFA Nonfiction Series. Courses may be taken in any sequence, though we recommend taking MFA01 first, either with a scheduled class or by independent study.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore.



November 9, 2023 – MFA167 Flash Fiction – Put Yourself in Danger

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Put Yourself in Danger

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field



November 9, 2023 – MFA356 Shaping Forms

Course Description: MFA356, Shaping Forms, is the second in a series of 2 courses that introduces traditional poetic forms. This course includes Blank Verse, Heroic Couplet, the Elegy, the Pastoral, the Ode, and Open Forms, and a two-week workshop. Each week focuses on one form and includes reading its history and its contemporary context, and a "close-up" of an individual poet. The writing assignment is to write one poem using its formal characteristics.

Course Length: 8 weeks

Required Text: THE MAKING OF A POEM: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms

Required Reading: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/89288/why-write-in-form


November 9, 2023 – MFA102 Sentence Structures: Propositions, Subtext and Syntax

Course Description: “Proposition” is a familiar term to students of logic or rhetoric. It simply means an expressed thought put forward for the receiver to accept or not accept. Every individual idea, concept, action, emotion and description we communicate through a sentence is a proposition, a thought represented by a sequence of words. Some sentences have a single proposition, some have many.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Reading material provided



November 14, 2023 – L230 Italo Calvino Short Stories

Course Description: Students participate in selected readings and topic discussions, and have the choice of writing a review, an analysis of a specific element of fiction or a biography of the author.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Difficulty: 3

Text Provided



November 16, 2023 – MFA255 Story Is in the Specifics

Course Description: Learn how to make generalities specific. Abstract concepts, generalities, and conceptual notions have a hard time engaging us. Because we can't see them, feel them, or otherwise experience them we tend to find abstract concepts boring. This course will help bring your stories to life.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 3rd of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)



November 23, 2023 – MFA103 Creativity and the Cumulative Sentence

Course Description: The basic unit of thought is the sentence, and from these grow the paragraph, the short story, and the novel.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Reading material provided



November 30, 2023 – MFA168 Flash Fiction – Flash in a Pan

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Flash in a Pan

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field



November 30, 2023 – MFA256 Conflict and Change

Course Description: Learn why conflict and change in different in fiction than in real life, and how to use this understanding in your stories.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 3rd of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)



December 14, 2023 – MFA169 Flash Fiction – Expose Yourself

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Expose Yourself to Flash

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field



December 14, 2023 – MFA257 Cause & Effect

Course Description: Learn how to create a story the reader will care about by following an emotional cause-and-effect trajectory.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (This is the 8th of 12 independent MFA courses using Wired for Story.)



December 28, 2023 – MFA170 Flash Fiction – Load-bearing Sentences

Course Description: Flash Fiction - Load-Bearing Sentences

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field



December 28, 2023 – MFA050 Flash Nonfiction: Form

Course Description: MFA50 is the first in a series of flash nonfiction workshops (works under 2,000 words). Each of the eight courses in the series will use The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction. Courses in the series may be taken in any sequence, though reading the text's Introduction is recommended for those who haven't taken MFA50 yet.

Course Length: 5 weeks

Required Text: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers



December 28, 2023 – MFA259 Setups to Payoffs

Course Description: Learn how to satisfy readers with setups and payoffs.

Course Length: 2 weeks

Required Text: Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence