WRT422 Writing London: Studies in Creative Nonfiction (Spring)

This spring-only course helps students develop their creative and nonfiction writing through exploring the importance of the global city of London in a variety of genres: travel writing, cultural criticism, personal essay, fiction, correspondence, biography, and memoir. Themes common in urban writing including alienation, mental health, belonging and/or dislocation, the crowd vs. the individual, and immigrant experiences will also be a focus.

This is a practice-based course: students will read and analyse a range of writing about London (and elsewhere, for comparative purposes) and develop their craft as writers. Every class session will centre around writing exercises as well as workshopping one another’s writing. The course may therefore be of particular interest to students with a Creative Writing focus, or those who have, or who wish to develop, a personal writing practice outside of an academic context.

London has been a focus, setting, or inspiration for the work of countless writers across time. In what ways are the stories we tell a response to the different locales that we find ourselves in? How is the authorial voice, the ‘I’ of the writer-narrator, affected by different contexts, and how does it in turn affect the way that such places are understood and portrayed? How does a sense of place ground prose and bring it to life?

Prereq: WRT 205 or WRT 209 or ENL 213

Department: Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition

Location: London

Semester: Spring

Credits: 3