57680 Creative Nonfiction Workshop
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particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source
of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.
Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.
Credit points: 8 cp
Subject level:
Postgraduate
Result type: Grade and marksThere are course requisites for this subject. See access conditions.
Anti-requisite(s): 57031 Creative Non-fiction AND 57600 Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Description
Creative nonfiction exists at the crossroads of the factual, the personal and the imagined. In this practice-based subject, students write sustained creative work as they explore this popular and growing area of international publishing. Students consider the forms, possibilities, ethics and debt to fact of creative nonfiction. Students analyse and practise key techniques of sentence craft, voice and close observation. Students workshop their drafts into a creative work ready for pitching or submission.
Subject learning objectives (SLOs)
| a. | Initiate, plan, and compose a sustained and coherent creative work, applying the specialist techniques and skills of creative nonfiction. |
|---|---|
| b. | Identify and evaluate a range of nonfiction genres and techniques and apply them appropriately to their chosen subject matter, audience, and context. |
| c. | Demonstrate advanced skills in navigating and applying the diverse formal and ethical possibilities of creative nonfiction, including its debt to the 'real'. |
| d. | Develop their own critical voice to reflect on their creative practice or the work of others. |
| e. | Critically assess key theoretical or formal developments in the practices of creative nonfiction or adjacent genres. |
Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)
This subject engages with the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), which are tailored to the Graduate Attributes set for all graduates of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences:
- Deploy flexible creative practices, tools and dispositions to confidently navigate dynamic professional contexts (1.1)
- Approach creative practice through deep engagement with a range of forms, traditions, processes, and generic possibilities (2.1)
- Contribute in a confident and informed manner to conversations about cultural and creative practice and industry and identify opportunities for cultural/creative leadership (5.1)
- Convey complex ideas clearly and effectively in professional contexts and to specialist and general audiences across a range of media formats (6.1)
Teaching and learning strategies
Face-to-face classes will incorporate a range of teaching and learning strategies, including discussion of lectures and set texts, in-class writing exercises that simulate selected genres and key techniques, and collaborative group work (workshopping in-class writing exercises and work-in-progress). Asynchronous recorded lectures and readings accessed via the subject site and the UTS Library will supplement classes and provide students with the materials for independent class preparation. Workshopping of writing exercises and drafts of work in progress during class will ensure there are opportunities for formative feedback before census date and throughout the semester. Students will be able to participate in online workshop discussion groups. Summative feedback is delivered via authentic assessment of assignments, which are designed to meet industry expectations.
Content (topics)
The subject is designed to introduce students to the breadth and diversity of this increasingly popular area of creative practice. The subject will explore why creative nonfiction is a growth area of global twenty-first century publishing and its potential to give voice to a wide range of experiences and worldviews.
Students will study key techniques of writing effective and impactful nonfiction, including shaping sentences, sustaining clarity and narrative logic throughout a creative work, and using material objects and facts to convey and control emotion. As they study a range of formal and generic approaches (such as personal and lyric essays, literary journalism, and longform and life writing) students will be encouraged to identify and experiment with the expectations and techniques specific to each. Students will develop workshopping techniques to edit their own and others' nonfiction.
The subject will cover ongoing discussions and developments within the field, including whether creative nonfiction constitutes its own separate 'fourth genre', where the line can be drawn between fact, invention and 'truth' in fact-based writing, and the growing popularity of blended genres (such as autofiction and speculative biography) that blur the line between traditional nonfiction and fiction.
Assessment
Assessment task 1: The Essay
| Objective(s): | a, b and c | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Weight: | 40% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length: | 1500 words | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Criteria linkages: |
SLOs: subject learning objectives CILOs: course intended learning outcomes |
Assessment task 2: Creative Work and Short Critical Reflection
| Objective(s): | a, b, c, d and e | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Weight: | 60% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length: |
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| Criteria linkages: |
SLOs: subject learning objectives CILOs: course intended learning outcomes |
Minimum requirements
Students must pass both assessment tasks to pass this subject, as each task assesses unique subject learning objectives.
Required texts
There are no required texts for this subject. Readings will be available via UTS Library and through the subject site.
References
Bossiere, Z. and Trabold, E. et al. (Eds.) (2023). The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins. Wayne State University Press.
Carlin, D. (2017). The Essay in the Anthropocene: toward an entangled nonfiction. TEXT Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, Vol. 21 (1, Special Issue 31), 1-13.
Joseph, S. (2016). Behind the Text: Candid Conversations with Australian Creative Nonfiction Writers. Hybrid Publishers.
Lopate, P. (Ed.) (2013). To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. Free Press.
Miller, P. (2017). Writing True Stories: The Complete Guide to Writing Autobiography, Memoir, Personal Essay, Biography, Travel and Creative Nonfiction. Routledge.
Simpson, N. (2021). Gifts Across Space and Time: Journeying together in the speak/listen trade. Griffith Review 71, 275-283.
Singer, M. and Walker, N. (Eds.) (2022). Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction. Bloomsbury.
Tredinnick, M. (2006). The Little Red Writing Book. NewSouth Publishing.
Srikanth, S. (2019). Fictionality and Autofiction. Style (University Park, PA), 2019, Vol.53 (3), p.344-363.
Zinsser, S. (2019). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (30th Anniversary Edition). HarperCollins US.