Module description
Students must have taken 5AAEB065 Creative Non-Fiction (or equivalent) to take this module.
This workshop-based module will enable students to combine the critical skills developed over the course of their degree with the formal and technical skills involved in writing for a general audience. It will introduce a variety of innovative approaches in contemporary nonfiction, and will develop students’ understanding of literary craft and technique. Students will be encouraged to experiment with form – for example by blending elements of memoir, reportage and cultural criticism in their work – and to develop their own distinctive critical and journalistic voices. They will hone their evaluative skills, and will develop strategies and techniques for editing and redrafting their own work.
The first hour of every workshop will be devoted to the critique of student work-in-progress.
The second hour of every workshop will be devoted to discussion of an established author’s work, with particular attention paid to style, craft, and technical innovation.
Assessment details
4,000-word creative critical essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to:
- Expand students' awareness of some of the main contemporary forms and technical strategies of literary nonfiction
- Equip students with the tools necessary to research, plan and write their own works of creative nonfiction
- Develop students’ authorial voices
- Develop students’ evaluative skills
- Develop students’ writing skills across a variety of nonfictional forms – including memoir and reportage – and introduce ways of productively combining these with critical writing
- Equip students with the tools necessary to evaluate and edit their own writing
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to demonstrate their ability to:
- Demonstrate awareness of some of the key modes and forms of contemporary nonfiction
- Deploy a variety of technical strategies and devices in their own writing
- Produce evaluative writing about a range of cultural artefacts
- Write with increased style and persuasiveness
- Discuss and evaluate the work of fellow students and established writers in relation to craft
- Implement the practice of redrafting and self-editing
Teaching pattern
1 x 2-hour seminar, weekly
Suggested reading list
Lockwood, Patricia – Priestdaddy (New York: Riverhead, 2017)
Luiselli, Valeria – Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (New York: Coffee House Press, 2017)
Coates, Ta-Nehisi – Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015)
Srinivasan, Amia – The Right to Sex (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)
Batuman, Elif – The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (New York: FSG, 2010)
Tolentino, Jia – Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (New York: Random House, 2019)
McDonald, Helen: H is for Hawk (London: Jonathan Cape, 2014)
Knight, Sam – The Premonitions Bureau (London: Faber & Faber, 2022)
Nelson, Maggie – The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (London: Vintage, 2017)
Ronson, Jon – The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (London: Riverhead, 2011)