Taught by Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive) and Paul Muldoon (Rogue Oliphant) with class visits from guest singer/songwriters and music critics, this course is an introduction to the art of writing words for music, an art at the core of our literary tradition from the Beowulf poet through Lord Byron and Bessie Smith to Bob Dylan and the Notorious B.I.G.. Composers, writers and performers will have the opportunity to work in small songwriting teams to respond to such emotionally charged themes as Gratitude, Loss, Protest, Desire, Joyousness, Remorse, and Defiance.

Practice in the original composition of poetry supplemented by the reading and analysis of standard works. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student's growth as both creator and reader of literature. This class is open to beginning and intermediate students by application.

The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers a perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student's growth as both creator and reader of literature.

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

This fiction workshop will look at the ways writers learn from and pay tribute to one another - sometimes intentionally and explicitly, other times tacitly, perhaps even unconsciously. Reading across a range of genres and voices, each week we will discuss a pair of stories revealing writers' artistic heritage, in some cases clearly identifiable as literary tribute to (or subtle critique of) enduring stories, in other cases, less overt in acknowledgment. Throughout, we will explore fundamental elements of fiction through analysis and discussion of these works and through peer critique of student writing (your own original works).

This is a multi-genre writing class that explores daily creative practice. This semester, you'll be challenged to push your creative limits and to take risks in your work. Together we'll explore how we can become more alert to the world and how, through language, we can respond in fresh ways to the events of our lives. As we imagine other experiences and engage in a conversation with the long tradition of writing, we'll practice thinking flexibly and seeing opportunity in failure. In this class, you will be a member of a community of writers prepared to challenge and support each other as we navigate the process of creation.

Poets should come to this class ready to move, yell, play, and discover. Writing and performing our way towards a deeper understanding of ourselves as spoken word poets, we will collaboratively work our way towards a final public performance and, hopefully, the tools to better move the crowds we face, which are the tools to change the world one poem at a time.

Advanced practice in the original composition of poetry for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the places of literature among the liberal arts.

Advanced practice in the original composition of fiction for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student's growth as both creator and reader of literature.

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

The focus of this course will be on Italian women writers from the early 20th century to the present day. We will work with a mix of voices from the established canon, such as Grazia Deledda and Natalia Ginzburg, and those emerging in more recent years and who write from a culturally and linguistically hybrid perspective, such as Igiaba Scego and Ornella Vorpsi. Though the bulk of the translation will be out of Italian, we will also consider published English translations of these authors and revert them into Italian for the purpose of deepening the understanding of linguistic structures and more nuanced questions of translation.

The Body: we all have one and inhabit it in a myriad of ways, as a source of joy, a contradiction to be reckoned with, a failed experiment, an inadequate container for all that we are, and an unending mystery. In traditional workshops we don't discuss what we are writing about and why; content and context come second to craft. In Vital Signs we will explore narratives of the body, beginning by reading material illustrative of a wide-range of expression and experience while working toward finding language for our individual physical and emotional experience.

A reading-intensive advanced fiction workshop dedicated to a close reading of Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, an indefinable masterpiece of Italian literature which combines autobiographical and fictional elements, calling into question the equivocal relationship between truth and invention. Careful analysis of this text will serve as an ongoing frame of reference for class discussion and creative inspiration.

This course will introduce students to the foundational principles and techniques of screenwriting, taking into account the practical considerations of film production. Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence in the form by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences.

How can screenwriters prepare for the evolving challenges of our global media world? What types of content, as well as form, will emerging technologies make possible? Do fields like neuroscience help us understand the universal principals behind screenwriting and do tech advances that alter the distance between audience and creator, man and machine, also influence content of our stories? This class will use fairytales, films, games and new media to illustrate universal script principles while creating a rich interdisciplinary lens to explore the innovative intersection of narrative screenwriting, science and technology.

This workshop class will introduce students to the fundamental elements of developing and writing a TV series in the current "golden age of television." Students will watch television pilots, read pilot episodes and engage in in-depth discussions about story, series engine, season arcs, character, structure, tone and dialogue, which will be applied to their work. Each student will formulate and pitch an original series idea, write and rewrite a detailed treatment of the concept, and complete the first 30 pages of the pilot episode by end of semester. Students will read all drafts of each other's work and give verbal feedback every week.

In this course, which is both a creative writing course and a literature course, students will study canonical French-language essays and newer forms of essayistic production (the essay film, photo essay, blog, and podcast) and will use these texts as models for their own writing. Beginning in the Renaissance with Montaigne's famous Essais and continuing to the present day with essays written throughout France and the Francophone world, students will analyze the stylistic and formal features of this compelling genre and seek to understand how the essay has maintained its relevance throughout the centuries.

The Writers' Room will replicate the fast-paced environment of a Hollywood writers room. Students will be assigned to a writing team and will pen two complete scripts with their fellow writers. They will also be required to submit an original work for their final project that they have written solo. It can be a play, a short film, or a series pilot.

Every life delivers a story (or three) worth telling well. This workshop rehearses the writing and performance skills necessary to remake the raw material drawn from lived experience into compelling autobiographical storytelling. As we engage the thematic focus of "Princeton, History and Me," we will explore autobiographical storytelling as both a practice and a process as we also evince (and confront) the personal, moral, ethical and artistic dimensions of the stories we choose to tell about ourselves, about Princeton, and the stories that remain to be told about both.

A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.

This course will explore ways that language can take on material properties and how objects can have syntax and be "read". Through studio assignments, readings, and discussions, students will investigate the idea of language as a tangible material that can be sliced, bent, inserted, reproduced, embedded, and scattered, as in the work of such modern artists as Guillaume Apollinaire, Susan Howe, Marcel Broodthaers, or Jenny Holzer. In each instance, our perception of meaning through language, and our perception of lived experience through material form, are both altered by their engagement with the other.