UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAMME

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1 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAMME (Please note: All students must ensure that they have read and understood the instructions and information contained in this handbook) Convenor: Mark Slater Welcome to the Sussex Creative Writing Programme. We hope that you enjoy and benefit from this programme. We have worked hard to ensure that it gives you the support, input, guidance, structure and feedback to develop your creativity and writing skills. In addition to the programme we are now offering continuation courses, in response to student demand, for writers who have finished the programme but want to remain part of the writing community here at Sussex. We have also set up the Sussex Writers Network, which can be accessed via Facebook or via your internet browser. This site designed to keep you in touch with each other and with events that are taking place on the writing scene; courses, lectures on campus, one-off workshops, talks, competitions etc. is open to all. We hope you will subscribe and find it useful and, importantly, tell your friends about it. Your first point of contact with the university will usually be through your tutor, but please don t hesitate to contact me if you need to. Your tutors are practising writers and though they have experience of working at the university they are usually not permanent faculty and are not familiar with all the regulations and procedures in place at any one time. I have the overall responsibility for ensuring that, wherever possible, your academic needs are met whilst studying at Sussex. Student satisfaction is high but there are always areas of potential improvement and we value your thoughts and suggestions on the structure of the programme. Please contact me if you feel that any aspect of your learning environment is impeding your work. Don t leave it too late. It s always easier to solve a small problem than a large one. Mark PROGRAMME OVERVIEW The Creative Writing Programme is for writers who wish to write short stories, novellas or novels. It offers you the opportunity to understand the principles of structure and style whilst working with other writers and professionals both as an audience for your own writing and as a source of critical feedback. Workshops, writing exercises, group discussion and feedback, small-group and individual tutorials will form the pattern of the weekly meetings. You will need to read from the books on the essential reading list as they come up during the term, and work from home on

2 writing assignments, which will be set week by week. You will need to put aside up to eight hours a week for course related reading and writing. There will be a Saturday School each term, which will be led by tutors of the programme and by visiting professional writers. Use of and computers: Study Direct and Sussex Direct All students on university courses are now expected to be able to use computers for communication and the production of work. Please ensure that you register with the university s I.T. services and can access your university account. You will also need to arrange for s to be forwarded to your home account if you are not planning to look at your on campus regularly. Study Direct and Sussex Direct are your personalised access points to your course of study and the CCE website contains important course related information. Once your registration is complete you will be given the user codes to access these study sites. Sussex Direct holds information on your timetables etc. Study Direct will be your on course study site. On this site you will find information posted by your tutor, this Programme Handbook and Assessment Handbooks and you will be able to participate in forums and discussion with the other writers in your group. It is important that you regularly browse them otherwise important seminar time can be wasted dealing with information you should already know. If you feel that you need further training on computers or the internet, IT services run courses. Please contact them directly for more information on: ( ). You should go to the IT Services enquiries and help desk if you have any general queries about Information Technology, such as: You have a technical query about the use of one of IT Services' facilities You have forgotten your user identifier or password You are a new student at the University and wish to register with IT Services You wish to book a place on a training course You need validation of a form (to prove your membership of the university) e.g. for obtaining software at reduced prices Software orders You have any queries about printing systems The enquiries and help desk is open and provides its full range of services between 9.00am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday. The enquiries and help desk can be contacted by phone but the majority of the services offered require you to go to the IT enquiries and help desk in person and show some form of University of Sussex ID. IT Services Address: Shawcross (Engineering I) North South Road University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QT, UK

3 You should have received a leaflet, Essential Online Procedures, that explains how to use the IT facilities on offer to you as a University of Sussex student. The Student Life Centre As a student on the Creative Writing programme you are entitled to the same level of support as full-time students. If you find yourself in difficult circumstances and need help with health issues or issues related to your course of study, it is important that you contact a student advisor at the Student Life Centre. You will find the Student Life Centre on the Ground Floor Chichester 1 Open: Mondays to Fridays 9am 5pm T F Text slcentre to E studentlifecentre@sussex.ac.uk Twitter: sussexslc And on Sussex Mobile app. A note on our feedback on your work: Our aim is to help you become better writers. As part of this process we will encourage you to take risks and as a result our feedback on your work may vary for different parts of the course. The written comments you receive are intended to give you a realistic sense of what you have achieved with each particular piece of assessed work. Please remember that these comments are not necessarily an indication of what you are capable of achieving or of your future success. The creative writing submitted for your Tactics for Writing course will be annotated and returned to you. Who will mark your work? You should normally have two tutors who will work closely with you and run your creative writing seminars during the programme. Will you get any other written feedback apart from your accredited assignments? During each course your tutor will be setting some formative work (three pieces) and will return this work to you with a written comment On completion of the Creative Writing Programme you will be sent a transcript which will show you have completed the programme at the University of Sussex.

4 COURSES Course One Autumn term : Approaches to Writing Course Two Spring and Summer Terms: Tactics for Writing

5 Autumn term 2011: Approaches to Writing Autumn Term dates Week commencing: 3rd October Week ending: 9 th December Dates and Times University of Sussex: Morning Strand: Tuesdays 10am-12.30am University of Sussex: Evening Strand: Wednesday 6.30pm -9.00pm Saturday School 26 th November Tutors Mark Slater is the convenor of the University of Sussex Creative Writing Programme. He is a graduate of the University of East Anglia M.A. in Creative Writing where he produced and edited the first UEA M.A. anthology of creative writing. He is the Literature and Creative Writing Convenor in CCE and has taught courses on the MA in Creative Writing and Authorship and the BA in Creativity and the Arts. He is currently writing a doctoral paper ( Originality and the Creative Process ). He is a trustee of the Asham Fund, which supports new writing, a published short story writer and has written librettos, plays and educational material for radio. Catherine Smith writes poetry, fiction and drama. She s had numerous short stories published in the UK, two broadcast on BBC Radio Four. Her radio play, Jellybelly, was broadcast in Her first short poetry collection, The New Bride, (Smith/Doorstop), was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2001 and her first full collection, The Butcher s Hands (Smith/Doorstop), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2004 she was voted one of the top ten women poets in the UK by Mslexia magazine and, also in 2004, was included in the PBS/Arts Council Next Generation promotion to showcase the twenty most exhilarating poets to have published a first collection in the last ten years. Course Overview How do writers use the senses to evoke time and place? How do photographs stir the memory? How can you use your own experience to create fiction? How are fictional characters created from real or imagined models? How can you use your own obsessions to invigorate your writing? These and other questions will be explored through the course, through reading and discussing given texts, and writing sketches, memoirs and stories of your own, both in class and at home. You will be able to join in discussion and feedback on your own and your fellow students' work and there will be individual or small group tutorials with the tutor. The aim of the course is to enable students to develop their own writing voice, through the use of memory and personal experience.

6 Your tutor will give you with a week-by-week course outline at the beginning of the course that will provide you with more specific information on topics to be covered and will let you know when books and extracts from books on the reading list need to have been read. Reading Lists Reading list for Mark Slater Essential reading: Coetzee, J. M. Summertime, Vintage. Mansfield, K. Selected Stories, Oxford World s Classics. Queneau, R. Exercises in Style, Oneworld Classics. Greek Myths and Legends. There are many editions of these, from Robert Graves definitive The Greek Myths to abridged editions written for children (I personally prefer the simpler children s versions). Please read and familiarise yourself with some of these stories. Chekhov, A. Sleepyhead, from Forty Stories, Vintage (You can also read this story online at Robert Coover, The Magic Poker from Pricksongs and Descants, Penguin Modern Classics (Forward by Kate Atkinson). Franz Kafka. Metamorphosis from Metamorphosis and other Stories, Penguin Modern Classics. Recommended Reading: MacGregor, J. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Bloomsbury. Ashworth, A. Once in a House on Fire, Picador. Reading list for Catherine Smith Essential reading: Diski, Jenny, Skating to Antartica, Granta Mansfield, Katherine, Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics Michaels, Anne, Fugitive Pieces, Bloomsbury Gebbie, Vanessa, Words from a Glass Bubble, Salt. Suskind, Patrick, Perfume, Penguin McGregor, Jon, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Bloomsbury Additional reading- not essential but recommended if you have time: Prose, Francine, Reading Like A Writer, Harper Collins Truss, Lynne, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Profile Books

7 Spring and Summer Terms 2012: Tactics for Writing Spring Term dates Week commencing: 9th January Week ending: 16th March Summer Term dates Week commencing: 16th April Week ending: 22nd June Dates and Times University of Sussex: Evening Strand: Wednesday pm University of Sussex: Morning Strand: Tuesdays pm Saturday Schools 10 th March Tutors Mark Slater is the convenor of the University of Sussex Creative Writing Programme. He is a graduate of the University of East Anglia M.A. in Creative Writing where he produced and edited the first UEA M.A. anthology of creative writing. He is the Literature and Creative Writing Convenor in CCE and has taught courses on the MA in Creative Writing and Authorship and the BA in Creativity and the Arts. He is currently writing a doctoral paper ( Originality and the Creative Process ). He is a trustee of the Asham Fund, which supports new writing, a published short story writer and has written librettos, plays and educational material for radio. Susannah Waters is a novelist, playwright, and the artistic director of The Paddock, a performing arts organisation dedicated to creating new collaborations between artists working in different art-forms. Her first novel, Long Gone Anybody, was published by Black Swan in September 2004 and short-listed for the Pendleton May First Novel Award and her second novel, Cold Comfort, was published in February 2006 by Doubleday. Her commissioned dramatic writing includes The Regina Monologues, It s Your Funeral, Baby, The One I Love, for New Kent Opera, and Red All Over, a site-specific play performed in a hotel as part of the Lewes Live Literature Festival. She has had short stories published in Mslexia and The Stand, and is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Course Overview During this course you will experiment with different points of view, authorial positions, styles and forms of writing. Narrative techniques, both traditional and experimental, will be explored, taking examples from works of literature. You will also start formulating ideas for a longer piece of prose fiction and will be expected to present these ideas in the last week of the spring term. You will start writing this work over the five weeks of the Easter holiday.

8 The five weekly sessions of the summer term will concentrate on your work-in-progress. You will be given an induction into the workshop process and each student will be allocated a workshop session in which written work will be read and discussed by the group. There will also be one-to-one or small group tutorials and you will have a choice of Saturday schools led by visiting professional writers in the spring term and the Annual Creative Writing Lecture at the end of the summer term. Your tutor will give you with a week-by-week course outline at the beginning of the course that will provide you with more specific information on topics to be covered and will let you know when books and extracts from books on the reading list need to have been read. Reading Lists Reading List for Mark Slater Novels On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan, Vintage. The Invisible Worm, Jennifer Johnston, Headline Review To The Wedding, John Berger, Bloomsbury Being Dead, Jim Crace, Penguin Short Stories Tropical Fish, Rose Tremain, From: The Garden of the Villa Mollini, Sceptre. Hills Like White Elephants and The Light of This World, Ernest Hemingway, From: The Essential Hemingway, Penguin. Reading list for Susannah Waters Essential Reading: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy. Penguin Books. Translated by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky The Night Watch, Sarah Waters. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. The Road, Cormac McCarthy. Picador. ISBN-13: (HB) Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen Additional Reading: Mansfield, K. In A German Pension (Penguin) Where I'm Calling From. Selected Stories by Raymond Carver. Harvill imprint of Harper Collins, ISBN Cheating at Canasta. Stories by William Trevor General Reading (for both courses) The Art of Fiction. John Gardner. Vintage Books; Reissue edition (Jun 1991) ISBN-10: Lodge. D. (1993), The Art of Fiction, Penguin Truss, Lynne, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Profile Books. OR, Gordon, J (2000) Bloomsbury Grammar Guide, Bloomsbury

9 Your Feedback for Approaches to Writing You will be given written feedback on your coursework in the form of a Course Report. This will be your tutor's response both to a portfolio that you will deliver in class at the end of the course, consisting of a number of edited pieces of writing ( words) with an introduction (500 words), and also to your general progress through the term. In the introduction you will need to reflect on the development of your writing over the first ten weeks of the programme. Your Feedback for Tactics for Writing For this course you will submit two separate pieces of work: 1. A portfolio of creative writing (5000 words) 2. A reflexive essay (3000 words) The portfolio of creative writing can contain up to three pieces of prose fiction (5000 words). This should be work that you have developed during the year, either through your own writing or in response to practical work done in the sessions. You should aim to submit complete chapters or stories - though they don't have to be final drafts. Where you are submitting an extract - a chapter of a novel, for instance - you need to make sure that you have provided a synopsis that identifies its relationship to the larger body of work that it comes from. The essay (3000 words) is an opportunity for you to evaluate what you have learned on the course and how well you have applied this to your own writing. Your reflective essay could include: - A critique of your own submitted work - in workshops and assignments - An analysis of writing techniques studied and applied. - An evaluation of influences: stories studied, events, people and personal experiences, and discussions with and amongst members of the group. - A discussion of how you see your work developing in the future. You will have discussed a number of structural considerations and elements of technique during the Tactics for Writing course. In your essay you could consider whether these ideas have helped you develop your writing skills, discuss why they have been important to you and show how you have applied them to your writing. You will have been encouraged to experiment and to think about writing in ways that maybe you haven't before. You could show how this experimentation has affected your ideas about writing fiction. There is no strict format to this essay but it must reflect your development, both as a creative writer and a critical reader. Given the possible topics indicated above, you may like to consider these possible structures: - Work through the session's week-by-week commenting on the impact of the ideas on your writing. - Write about the pieces that you have written this term. Talk about how you write and how the discussions you've had have influenced your approach to writing. - Write a more general evaluation of your work and progress to date. - Take a number of the ideas you've discussed as a group that you have found personally interesting, develop these ideas through reading and research and apply them to your own work. Remember that you need to show that you are critically engaged with the process of

10 writing. It is important when writing the reflective essay to refer to your own work and analyse it or to offer extracts and show development through different drafts. You should be prepared to explain why and how you think your writing is effective and you should be critical of areas of weakness and suggest ways in which you might improve on your skills and understanding in these areas.

11 Creative Writing CEP Approved course details for courses offered in 2011/12: Approaches to Writing (X3032 morning, X3030 evening) Level 1, 24 credits, autumn term Course Outline The course aims to help you develop your own writing voice, through the use of memory and personal experience. You will be invited to mine your memories for the materials of narrative or poetic writing and to experiment with ways of using them. You will also explore ways in which writers of note have used autobiographical material as a basis for their poetry or fiction. You will have opportunities for sharing your written work with the group and for giving and receiving constructive criticism. Learning Outcomes On completion of this course, successful students will be able to: 1. Draw on a range of published autobiographical writings as a source of inspiration for their own writing 2. Use autobiography as a basis for their own writing 3. Write in a variety of forms 4. Reflect critically on the writing process 5. Demonstrate an understanding of aspects of creativity and creative process in discussion of texts and/or artworks and/or through creative practice and performance Assessment Type Timing Weighting Course Report Timing to be confirmed by Tutor at the start of the course 100%

12 Tactics for Writing (year 1) (X3092 morning, X evening) Level 1, 36 credits, spring/summer terms Course Outline During this course you will experiment with different points of view, authorial positions, styles and forms of writing, whether for the purpose of writing novels or short stories. You will begin work on the writing project that you will complete during the second year of the programme. Learning Outcomes On completion of this course, successful students will be able to: 1. Write with increased fluency and will be in the process of developing a novel, a non-fiction work or a collection of short stories or poems 3. Employ the techniques of their chosen genre and other formal elements of writing 4. Experiment with points of view and authorial positions and choose appropriately amongst them for particular pieces of work 5. Criticise their own and one another s work intelligently and constructively 6. Reflect on their own progress and development as writers 7. Demonstrate an understanding of aspects of creativity and creative process in discussion of texts and/or artworks and/or through creative practice and performance Assessment Type Timing Weighting Creative Project (5000 words) Essay (3000 words) Summer week 9, Tuesday 12 th June 2012, 17:00 50% Summer week 9, Tuesday 12 th June 2012, 17:00 50% 12