- Learn new ways for telling stories by combining different narrative forms and designs.
- Invent impossible languages and narratives to sing in prose and rupture traditional expectations.
- Experiment with teasing the skin of genre.
- Explore ways to play with the poetics of desire.
- This workshop will culminate in a public reading of student work.
Undergraduate: ENGLISH 422, 3 units
Graduate: ENGLISH 622, 3 units
none
All writers (memoirists, fiction writers, poets) interested in experimenting in playful ways with narrative forms and desires are encouraged to apply. Students who enjoy blending and interrupting genres and forms. Writers who blend poetry with prose, who allow photographs to fall into their narratives. Students who want to break the boundaries of the page and to disobey old teachers who urged them to conform. Students who enjoy or need to break every rule in order to make their stories visible and heard.
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Submit a letter of interest and three to five pages of recent writing.
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Send the materials listed in Step One with your completed Registration Form to the
Summer Arts Registration Office by
May 17, 2010.
The deadline to apply for this course has passed.
Professor Doug Rice
rice@saclink.csus.edu
916-278-5435
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her most recent published book of poetry is Saga / Circus (2008). Other books include A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001), Slowly, and The Beginner (both published by Tuumba Press, 2002), and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003). The University of California Press published a collection of her essays entitled The Language of Inquiry in 2000. Ms. Hejinian is also actively involved in collaboratively written works, the most recent examples of which include a major collection of poems by Ms. Hejinian and Jack Collom titled Situations, Sings (Adventures in Poetry, 2008). Translations of her work have been published in Denmark, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Russia, Sweden, China, Serbia, Holland, China, and Finland. She is the recipient of a Writing Fellowship from the California Arts Council, a grant from the Poetry Fund, and a Translation Fellowship (for her Russian translations) from the National Endowment for the Arts; she received an Award for Independent Literature from the Soviet literary organization Poetic Function in Leningrad in 1989. She has traveled and lectured extensively in Russia as well as Europe. Description (1990) and Xenia (1994), two volumes of her translations from the work of the contemporary Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, have been published by Sun and Moon Press.
Since 1976 Ms. Hejinian has been the editor of Tuumba Press and from 1981 to 1999 she was the co-editor (with Barrett Watten) of Poetics Journal. She is currently the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Other collaborative projects include a work entitled The Eye of Enduring undertaken with the painter Diane Andrews Hall and exhibited in 1996; a composition entitled Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Ms. Hejinian; two mixed media books (The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill and The Lake) created with the painter Emilie Clark; the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs; and The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, co-written with nine other poets. She is currently serving as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her most recent published book of poetry is Saga / Circus (2008). Other books include A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001), Slowly, and The Beginner (both published by Tuumba Press, 2002), and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003). The University of California Press published a collection of her essays entitled The Language of Inquiry in 2000. Ms. Hejinian is also actively involved in collaboratively written works, the most recent examples of which include a major collection of poems by Ms. Hejinian and Jack Collom titled Situations, Sings (Adventures in Poetry, 2008). Translations of her work have been published in Denmark, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Russia, Sweden, China, Serbia, Holland, China, and Finland. She is the recipient of a Writing Fellowship from the California Arts Council, a grant from the Poetry Fund, and a Translation Fellowship (for her Russian translations) from the National Endowment for the Arts; she received an Award for Independent Literature from the Soviet literary organization Poetic Function in Leningrad in 1989. She has traveled and lectured extensively in Russia as well as Europe. Description (1990) and Xenia (1994), two volumes of her translations from the work of the contemporary Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, have been published by Sun and Moon Press.
Since 1976 Ms. Hejinian has been the editor of Tuumba Press and from 1981 to 1999 she was the co-editor (with Barrett Watten) of Poetics Journal. She is currently the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Other collaborative projects include a work entitled The Eye of Enduring undertaken with the painter Diane Andrews Hall and exhibited in 1996; a composition entitled Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Ms. Hejinian; two mixed media books (The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill and The Lake) created with the painter Emilie Clark; the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs; and The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, co-written with nine other poets. She is currently serving as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Debra Di Blasi
Debra Di Blasi’s books include The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions, Prayers of an Accidental Nature, Drought & Say What You Like, Ugly Town: the movie, and What the Body Requires. Her awards include a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, a Thorpe Menn Book Award, and a Diagram Innovative Fiction Award. The short film based on Drought won a host of national and international awards, and was one of only six American films invited to the Universe Elle section of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Ms. Di Blasi’s innovative fiction has been anthologized and adapted to film, radio, theatre, and audio CD in the United States and abroad, and her essays, art reviews and articles published in a variety of international, national and regional publications. She is publisher-in-chief at Jaded Ibis Press, and president of Jaded Ibis Productions that produces fictive audio interviews and music, videos, print, web and visual art, ironic consumer products, and the innovative literature and arts channel, BLEED. Creator of the Diem® wordplay device, she lectures on its use in education and on innovative literature, in general.
Check out her website at www.debradiblasi.com.
Debra Di Blasi’s books include The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions, Prayers of an Accidental Nature, Drought & Say What You Like, Ugly Town: the movie, and What the Body Requires. Her awards include a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, a Thorpe Menn Book Award, and a Diagram Innovative Fiction Award. The short film based on Drought won a host of national and international awards, and was one of only six American films invited to the Universe Elle section of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Ms. Di Blasi’s innovative fiction has been anthologized and adapted to film, radio, theatre, and audio CD in the United States and abroad, and her essays, art reviews and articles published in a variety of international, national and regional publications. She is publisher-in-chief at Jaded Ibis Press, and president of Jaded Ibis Productions that produces fictive audio interviews and music, videos, print, web and visual art, ironic consumer products, and the innovative literature and arts channel, BLEED. Creator of the Diem® wordplay device, she lectures on its use in education and on innovative literature, in general.
Check out her website at www.debradiblasi.com.
Camille Roy
Camille Roy is a writer and performer of plays, poetry, and fiction. Her two most recent books are Cheap Speech, a play, from Leroy, and Craquer, from 2nd Story Books (both 2002). Her book Swarm (two novellas) was published by San Francisco’s Black Star. Earlier books include The Rosy Medallions (poetry and prose, from Kelsey St Press) and Cold Heaven (plays, from O Books). In 1998 she was the recipient of a Lannan Writers At Work Residency at Just Buffalo Literary Center. She is a founding editor of the online journal Narrativity (www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity), and is an editor of the anthology Biting the Error: Writers On Experimental Narrative. She has taught fiction and playwriting at San Francisco State University and at the University of San Francisco, and has conducted a private workshop for six years.
Check out her website at www.camilleroy.com.
Camille Roy is a writer and performer of plays, poetry, and fiction. Her two most recent books are Cheap Speech, a play, from Leroy, and Craquer, from 2nd Story Books (both 2002). Her book Swarm (two novellas) was published by San Francisco’s Black Star. Earlier books include The Rosy Medallions (poetry and prose, from Kelsey St Press) and Cold Heaven (plays, from O Books). In 1998 she was the recipient of a Lannan Writers At Work Residency at Just Buffalo Literary Center. She is a founding editor of the online journal Narrativity (www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity), and is an editor of the anthology Biting the Error: Writers On Experimental Narrative. She has taught fiction and playwriting at San Francisco State University and at the University of San Francisco, and has conducted a private workshop for six years.
Check out her website at www.camilleroy.com.
Check out our other writing course:
Writing the Memoir: Transforming Truth into Art
Remember, California residents can take two courses (up to six units) for the same tuition dollars!