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Average Course Rating

In this craft elective, fiction and nonfiction students will take as a premise the words of novelist Alice LaPlante: “[O]ur first job as writers” is “to notice.” We all notice things as we make our way through each day, but “noticing” as a writer is different. Whether working on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or any other genre, the writer needs to pay attention to the very small, to zoom in on the specific detail or insight that can make even the most mundane moment feel entirely new and surprising. Noticing in this way is a skill that, like most skills, is developed with practice. In this class, students will practice with weekly writing prompts designed to help them describe their physical and emotional worlds in concrete language. Along the way, students will review each their writing as a group and read works by great contemporary noticers, including Karl Ove Knausgaard, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ben Lerner, and Weike Wang.