Courses in Writing

Application to the writing courses requires a typed sample of creative work in a relevant genre. Please submit copies of these samples; the Courses in Writing program cannot return the submissions of students not accepted. Critical essays and term papers should not be submitted. Complete applications must be received by May 10. Decisions will be mailed by May 20. Applications received after May 10 will be processed on a space-available basis.

Courses:

(Click on a specific link for course information.)

Session A:

ENGL S-463, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction (John Crowley)

ENGL S-456, Investigative Journalism (Bruce Shapiro)

ENGL S-458, Reviewing Theater, Film, Dance, and Music (Margaret Spillane)

ENGL S-459, Novel Writing: Chapter One (Marian Thurm)

Session B:

ENGL S-143, Writing Narrative: A Fiction and Nonfiction Workshop (Marian Thurm) - course is full, no longer accepting applications

ENGL S-453, Screenwriting and Playwriting (Forrest Stone)

Yale Summer Guest Speakers 2009

Each of these writers will be on campus for a conversation with Summer Session writing students, in addition to a free reading open to the public in the evening. Details will be posted as they become available.

JOAN ACOCELLA
June 9 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101 - 7pm

Joan Acocella is our premier critic of dance. Long a reviewer for the New Yorker, she is also a wide-ranging writer, author of Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (1999), a biography of modern dancer and choreographer Mark Morris (1993), Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism (2004), and Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints (2007), which explores the virtues common among extraordinary artists.

GEORGE SAUNDERS
June 16 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 - 7pm

George Saunders’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and GQ, among others. His first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline marked a decided swerve in American fiction. His story collection In Persuasion Nation was a finalist for The Story Prize in 2007. Saunders has received a MacArthur Fellowship, the “genius grant” given only to certified geniuses and others.

NICK McDONELL
June 17 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 - 7pm

Nick McDonell attended Riverdale Country School and graduated from Harvard College in January 2007. He wrote the novel Twelve in 2002, at age 17. The subject of the novel is violence and drug use among wealthy Manhattan teenagers. The publication of McDonell's novel at such a young age was the subject of many articles in high-profile publications such The New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly. "Twelve" was compared to Jay McInerney's debut novel Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. Michiko Kakutani from The New York Times called it "as fast as speed, as relentless as acid."

CURTIS SITTENFELD
June 23 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 - 7pm

Curtis Sittenfeld, born in Ohio, won the Seventeen magazine fiction prize as a senior at Groton. Her first novel, Prep, is about a Groton-like school and a student from Indiana. Her second novel was The Man of my Dreams (2006), and her third book, the best-selling American Wife (2008), was also drawn from life, but not Sittenfeld’s own: the story and characters were unmistakably and vividly those of George and Laura Bush.

LUC SANTE
June 30 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 - 7pm

Luc Sante, Belgian-born writer and critic, is one of our most insightful commentators on modern life and its roots in the past. His books include Low Life (1991), about New York City in the 1890s, and Evidence (1992), a study of police crime photos. His essays are collected in Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007). He’s received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and even a Grammy, for his album notes for the 1997 re-issue of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

RICK MOODY
July 9 - Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 - 7pm

Rick Moody was born in New York City and grew up in several of the Connecticut suburbs, including Darien and New Canaan, where he later set his stories and novels. Moody is the author of Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, and The Diviners. Esquire describes Moody as “that rare writer who can make the language do tricks and still suffuse his narrative with soul."