Creative Writing: Degree Information

Some courses are not yet available. Please come check back later or check-in with your advisor.

This class involves a close study of novels and short stories that fit within the genre of magical realism within the context of an introductory writer’s workshop. Magical realism engages a combination of traditional realism infused with the fantastic, the mythical, and the nightmarish. Students will read novels and short fiction from different cultural contexts in order to compare the workings of magical realism around the world, examine other contemporary manifestations of magical realism in media, and create their own writing in the style of the genre.

This class combines a close study of the works of classic and contemporary fantasy/science fiction writers with a writing workshop component. The primary focus of this class is the creation of altered realities—worlds that present a reality as different, yet connected and meaningful to our own. A series of assigned writing exercises give participants in the class the chance to build their own worlds and begin the process of peopling them with appropriate characters. Class exploration focuses on developing students' own unique logic, questions, interrogations, and approaches to fantasy/science fiction genre writing. Class sessions are discussion-based.

This course offers students a hemispheric perspective on the study of literature, focusing on a range of works from underrepresented, marginalized, and outsider authors in the Americas from the nineteenth century to the present. Students have an opportunity to challenge conventional categorizations of writers from across the Americas—not just in the United States—by fostering transnational and transhistorical perspectives while considering concepts including identity, race, citizenship, hybridity, and nationhood.

This course provides an introduction to literature from a global and historical perspective, from Gilgamesh to Gabriel García Márquez, and from the poetry of classical China to that of Stalinist Russia. In the four thousand years of literary history that this course covers, students read epic and lyric poems, religious tracts, philosophical dialogues, short stories, novels, and plays. Along with a survey of literature of the world, this course introduces students to the methods and concepts of literary studies and analysis. Class sessions are a mixture of lecture, discussion, and group work.

For generations, the transformative and magical powers of traditional folktales and fairytales have defined and shaped identities and characters. Indeed, these literary forms have become part of everyday culture. In this course students examine why these tales have had such staying power, the controversies that have surrounded them, and how they relate to the historical, political, and social issues of their times. From the bloody chamber of Bluebeard to the coming of age of Little Red Riding Hood, students trace the evolution of these folk narratives to the current retellings of these tales in both literature and film. Objectives of the class include gaining the ability to: read and analyze select, key examples of traditional folktales and fairytales; explain folktales and fairytales in relation to historical, political, and social issues; identify the ways in which folktales and fairytales reflect and influence everyday culture; understand and use the methods of literary analysis; and demonstrate an awareness of the transformation of folktales and fairytales up to the present day.

The graphic novel is an art form that offers the best of both worlds. While gaining legitimacy as a literary/art form, it retains the excitement and unique properties of reading a comic book. Students in this course read, discuss, and analyze graphic novels, as well as engage in critical scholarship on and about the graphic novel form. Looking at graphic novels in genres like mystery, superhero, manga, memoir, history and politics, or works beyond categorization, students examine how these stories are structured: the forms of novel, novella, and short story help differentiate and explain the subtleties of these forms. The class focuses on social, structural, and thematic issues of these specific texts and explores the possibilities of the form itself.

In this course students have the opportunity to read and discuss a variety of examples of children’s literature and discuss the issues and theories that drive the scholarly field. Are literary genres defined by readers or authors? By tradition, critics, or markets? Students explore these questions and others while gaining a working knowledge of the critical skills necessary to articulate in writing and presentations an informed aesthetic and critical response to literature for children.

This course offers an introduction into the study of young adult literature. Students will read and critique an array of young adult novels while assessing how the genre constructs and deconstructs gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and other identity categories. Students will also consider the ways young adult literature informs our understanding of audience, genre, format and critical issues from the perspectives of publishers.

In this hands-on class, students read the work and advice of contemporary poets, along with selected examples from the past, to hone the crafts of sound, the line, metaphor, voice, imagery, and revision in their own poems. Through guided exercises students deepen their understanding of the creative process. By viewing live and videotaped interviews and readings and exploring the publishing process, students gain a sense of the many forms in which contemporary poets appear. Class sessions are discussion-based.

Storytelling is humankind's oldest art form, and in many ways we define and know ourselves best by the creation of a series of events that almost magically transform themselves into plot, characters, and themes. How we invent and tell a story is how we see the world. Narrative and Storytelling develops students’ appreciation for plot, story arc, and character development, and familiarizes students with the various techniques of sequential narrative, non-sequential narrative, and experimental narrative. This course fulfills the Creative and Professional Writing requirement for Humanities and Sciences.

This class provides powerful tools that help students understand how effective narratives written for time-based media or performances work from a range of perspectives. It teaches the basics of various film structures, writing dialogue, creating characters and dramatic situations, and experimental methodologies. Class sessions are discussion-based. Students turn in weekly assignments, starting with short scenes and problems and moving on to several short scripts.

This course investigates the aesthetic issues at the heart of writing as an art in itself. Course topics illuminate the kind of thinking that guides and inspires and require students to develop presentations and to explore creatively. Students engage in deep investigations into the nature of communication and inquiries about the role of language. The class may include trips to and possibly participation in local events to enhance the classroom experience and students’ understanding of the creative writing process. This course fulfills the Creative and Professional Writing requirement for Humanities and Sciences.

In this creative nonfiction and memoir writing class students develop their writing skills and interests by exploring the art of personal narrative. The class engages with lyric essay, literary journalism, and essay forms inclusive of visual media like comic/graphic memoirs, autotheory, and environmental memoir through writing, reading, and attending literary events in the Twin Cities. Students write their own creative nonfiction and hone elements of craft important to the genre. During the semester, ample class time is spent in workshops: offering and receiving encouraging peer-to-peer feedback on new and revised works of writing. Creative nonfiction topics are student led; class sessions are generative and discussion based. Prerequisite: Writing and Inquiry or its equivalent.

Professional experiences are critical to the BFA in Creative Writing. Two windows into the professional worlds of writing are the required Writing in the Twin Cities course, which brings student writers to local publishers and professional editors, local authors, and arts and literature critics into the classroom.

Writing in the Twin Cities is a pre-requisite to the required Literary Journal course where a faculty member will guide students in producing MCAD’s new, and as yet unnamed, annual literary and visual arts journal (debuting as both a print and digital publication in spring semester 2028). The journal will be a cross-disciplinary publication that will serve as a public humanities and arts platform for critical writing, graphic narratives, and editorial collaboration. Students will contribute critical essays, interviews, and visual narratives that connect humanistic and artistic inquiry to contemporary cultural, environmental, and social issues. Faculty and students will work with MCAD staff on an editorial team that will manage peer review, layout, and public release—developing transferable skills in editing, publication, and arts journalism.