Courses: Fall 2025
All CWL courses are 4 credits unless noted otherwise. FLM courses 1-3 credits.
All classes are in person unless noted otherwise.
Fall semester begins Monday, August 25. Last day of regularly scheduled classes is Monday, December 8. The official end of term is Thursday, December 18.
Registration begins April 7, 2025. Full Academic Calendar
GRADUATE COURSES IN Manhattan (in-person)
CWL 500.S60 (95529) - Introduction to Graduate Creative Writing
Christian McLean
Wednesday, 6:00-8:50 PM, 4 credits
Part ethics, part studio, part special guest appearances and craft conversations, this course is designed to get you thinking about how you would like to exist in the creative world, both in this program and beyond. You’ll explore recent and current events in writing, dig into literary magazines, and spend time generating work. You’ll explore craft. You’ll engage with contemporary writers in and outside of our faculty. The course is designed with you and your MFA experience at the forefront.
CWL 510-S60 (92834) - Forms of Fiction - Short Story - FULL
Amy Hempel
Monday, 6:00-8:50 PM, 4 credits
Submission and discussion of two short stories, plus weekly reading of exemplary contemporary stories and personal essays provided by the instructor. Authors will include Joy Williams, Ayse Papatya Bucak, Aaliyah Bilal, Bret Anthony Johnston, Morgan Talty, Taylor Koekkoek, and more. All elements of powerful stories will be examined, as well as a range of narrative strategies available to all.
CWL 520.S60 (92859) - Forms of Poetry - Mining the Museum
L.B. (Laura) Thompson
Seven Saturdays (9/6, 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 11/01, 11/15), 11AM - 4:50PM, 4 credits
This course in hybrid and intertextual forms of poetry takes its title from visual artist Fred Wilson’s revelatory recontextualizations of museum collections. How can we interact with fine art to understand, critique, and generate new poetic texts? Museum/archive visits to consider Fred Wilson's techniques for interrogating collections will be an early point of exploration. Public art and its legal backchannels, as well as altered books by Tom Phillips, Jen Bervin, Ronald Johnson, Janet Holmes, and Terrance Hayes, are examples of ways our perspectives can emerge in original poetic compositions arising from art. The techniques we will cultivate in this course are designed to serve projects in any genre.
CWL 535.S60 (92852) - Writing in Multiple Genres - Risking Form and Language
Robert Lopez
Wednesdays, 2:30-5:20 PM, 4 credits
In short fiction and essays: In this class we'll read and write prose works that employ innovative forms and push language in fresh directions. We'll be on the lookout for the unexpected, the surprising turn of syntax and diction that can startle readers and reveal complex truths and emotions. We'll read stories and essays by Joy Williams, Garielle Lutz, Renee Gladman, John Keene, Samuel Beckett, Anne Carson and others.
CWL 565.S60 (92855) - Special Topics in Writing - The Novella
Susan Minot
Tuesdays, 6:00-8:50 PM, 4 credits
The novella, caught between the short story and the novel, may have the best aspects of each: an intensity and velocity demanded by its length alongside an extra length capable of taking the tale farther and deeper. The novella length—for our purposes up to 160 pages, but as short as 50-- fits Joan Didion’s wish for a book: one which one is able to read in one sitting. It is a stellar, if not the most appealing, form. In this seminar we will read one novella each week and examine its form and content, noting how each writer utilizes its benefits and mines its limitations. Students will be responsible for procuring the books/reading themselves, preferably before class begins, or close to it. Selections will be chosen from: James Baldwin, Claire Keegan, Karen Russell, William Maxwell, Jenny Offill, Juan Rulfo, Rachel Cusk, Leo Tolstoy, Katherine Anne Porter, David Vann, Anne Carson, Louise de Vilmorin, Agatha Christie.
FLM 550.S60 - Teaching Practicum - Karen Offitzer
Thursdays, 2:30-5:20 PM, 3 credits
This is a weekly seminar in teaching at the University level, with special emphasis on teaching in the creative arts, specifically creative writing and filmmaking. Open to students in our Creative Writing, Film and TV Writing programs, this course plunges into the basics of pedagogy, exploring learning styles, discovering a teaching philosophy, designing syllabi for undergraduate courses, creating assignments and rubrics for grading assignments, and practicing these skills in a classroom setting. You’ll get hands-on experience and mentoring through visits to undergraduate classes and teaching opportunities, and will gain an understanding of what works best for helping undergraduate students learn. Particular focus will be on discussing issues that arise when teaching creative endeavors such as writing and filmmaking. OPEN TO FLM, TV AND CWL STUDENTS
GRADUATE COURSES IN SOUTHAMPTON (in-person)
CWL 535.S01 (92873) - Writing in Multiple Genres - Write Your Head Off*
Robert Reeves
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM, 4 credits
In a letter to her agent, Flannery O’Connor wrote, "I have to write to discover what I am doing.” In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster puts it this way: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" This generative workshop welcomes writers seeking to “discover” new work in short fiction, personal essay, and creative nonfiction, but we won’t worry too much about labeling pages that don’t yet exist. In class, we’ll work from prompts, discuss each other’s work, and pause from time to time to consider issues important to contemporary writers, but mostly – take a deep breath – we will write. The justification for all the intense labor, frustration, and self-doubt? Simply this: the only way to get to the amazing pages trapped inside of you is to write your way there. That path can require hard work, so it’s only fair that, along the way, we try to have a little fun.
*Course title borrowed from Melissa Bank’s renowned generative workshop.
CWL 560.S01 (95536) - Topics in Literature for Writers - Experimental Literature
Susan Scarf Merrell
Tuesdays, 2:30 - 5:20 pm, 4 credits
Nothing great ever comes from following the rules. Or does it? What is experimental
literature? How can we think about it as writers, in terms of craft “lessons” that
we can learn to use in our own work? This class will examine risk-taking in literature,
with a very heavy reading load, weekly annotations on craft, the writing of responsive
short fiction, and student presentations. Texts include Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, The Waves, Virginia Woolf, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, Beloved, Toni Morrison, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead, and some experimental short stories.
CWL 580-S01 - Arts Administration
Carla Caglioti
To Be Arranged, 1-4 credits
Under the guidance of a faculty advisor, students will learn the essentials of arts administration. This may include assisting in the coordination of reading and lecture series, planning and administering conferences, or other writing and arts administration activities.
online
CWL 510.S30 (95530) - Forms of Fiction - Creating Characters - A Lab in Writing Characters You Can't Stop Reading About
Karen Bender
Thursdays, 6:00-8:50 PM, 4 credits
How do you create characters from the inside out? How do you create them through interiority, dialogue, action, interaction? In this class, which will be held on zoom, we will read two or three short stories per class, examining ways that writers create great and memorable characters. We will see how motivation leads to action, how "unlikable" characters can be compelling, how characters exist across time. We will read stories by writers including Tillie Olsen, Mavis Gallant, Haruki Murakami, Yiyun Li, Edward P. Jones, Joy Williams, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Jamaica Kincaid, and others. The class is also a workshop, and each student will turn in two pieces, stories, or chapters, which we will read with an eye to developing both major and minor characters within a work.
CWL 582-S01 – (92861) - Practicum in Publishing and Editing
Lou Ann Walker
Tuesday, 11:00 AM-1:50 PM, 1-4 credits
Under the guidance of editors and advisors, students will be exposed to the hands-on process of editing and publishing TSR: The Southampton Review. Yes, the P&E Practicum is designed to give you experience in editing a literary and arts review. But here’s the secret: This practicum also provides an excellent means for you to build your skills as a writer. For example, as you read submissions in Submittable, you’ll be seeing what works and doesn’t work in cover letters. You’ll be examining successful structures in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry. You’ll be acquiring editing diagnostic tools. And you’ll be drilling down to what works line by line throughout a creative piece. We’ll discuss word choices, juxtapositions, imagery, symbolism, all that good stuff.
THESIS
CWL 599.V01 (91310) Karen Bender
CWL 599.V02 (91311) Magdalene Brandeis
CWL 599.V03 (91312) Carla Caglioti
CWL 599.V05 (91314) Amy Hempel
CWL 599.V06 (91315) Kaylie Jones
CWL 599.V07 (91316) Christine Kitano
CWL 599.V08 (91317) Matthew Klam
CWL 599.V09 (91318) Robert Lopez
CWL 599.V10 (91319) Patricia Marx
CWL 599.V11 (91320) Christian McLean
CWL 599.V12 (91321) Susan Scarf Merrell
CWL 599.V13 (91322) Susan Minot
CWL 599.V14 (91323) Julie Sheehan
CWL 599.V15 (91324) Molly Gaudry
CWL 599.V16 (91325) Lou Ann Walker
CWL 599.V17 (91330) Emma Walton Hamilton
CWL 599.V18 (91359) Carla Caglioti