Creative Writing

Course will be devoted to the exploration of craft techniques and revision processes of poetry with student drafts as the primary texts and the workshop model of compliment and critique as the mode of education.

Course will be devoted to the exploration of craft techniques and revision processes of fiction with student drafts as the primary texts and the workshop model of compliment and critique as the mode of education.

An introduction to the theory and practice of prosody with particular attention to stanzaic and genre forms. Students will compose poems in the various forms that compose the English Poetic Tradition.

Study of the art and philosophy of Fiction and Dramatic Narrative ranging from the concrete and practical to the metaphysical, grounded in such texts as: Aristotle’s Poetics; Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners; William Lynch’s Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination; Caroline Gordon’s How to Read a Novel; Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext; Joan Silber's The Art of Time in Fiction; James Wood’s How Fiction Works; Douglas Bauer’s The Stuff of Fiction: Advice on Craft

Course will be devoted to the exploration of craft techniques and revision processes of non-fiction with student drafts as the primary texts and the workshop model of compliment and critique as the mode of education.

This course grant students a philosophical understanding of the nature of beauty, the nature of art, and the relationship between the two. Possible texts include: Plato’s Symposium; Pseudo-Dionysius; Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism; Etienne Gilson’s Arts of the Beautiful;

Students read philosophical theology alongside lyric poets and will write imitations of the authors read as exercises.

At the UST Houston campus, students will take a seminar in fiction.

At the UST Houston campus, students will take a seminar in poetics.

Study of major European literary works which embody, in exemplary ways, what makes the Catholic imagination distinctive, expansive, beautiful, and true. Catholic literary tradition. Prospective authors include: Leon Bloy, Georges Bernanos, Paul Claudel, T.S. Eliot, Francois Mauriac, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Muriel Spark, Evelyn Waugh, J.RR. Tolkien, Chesterton, and Sigrid Undset.

A study of the major American writers of the Catholic Literary Revival and the contemporary authors who succeeded them. Prospective authors include: George Santayana, Allen Tate, Robert Lowell, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, J.F. Powers, Helen Pinkerton, John Finlay, Alice McDermott, Christopher Beha, and Dana Gioia.

A close reading of foundational and seminal works that form the Catholic West: Virgil, The Aeneid; St. Augustine, Confessions; Dante, Divine Comedy; Manzoni, The Betrothed.

Students will learn to identify the aspects of craft at work in exemplary fiction.

Students will learn to identify the aspects of craft at work in exemplary poetry.

Introduction to classical and modern rhetoric, elements and refinement of style, and the various genres of literary non-fiction, including journalism, essay, review, biography, critical or historical study, and memoir.

In-Depth study of a range of advanced topics in the art of Literary Non-Fiction and Memoir.

An intensive course consisting primarily of a 10-day residency, during which time students convene for morning workshops in their chosen genres (poetry, fiction, or literary non-fiction and memoir); engage in an intensive afternoon seminar on an annual theme (e.g. major authors in contemporary literature; Catholic literature of eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia; the Sacramental imagination); and attend evening lectures and readings by distinguished writers and scholars complementary of the seminar theme.

Selected topics of mutual interest to faculty and students.

Students will complete an individuated tutorial, working with a faculty mentor, to complete a publishable manuscript (a collection of reviews and essays or a book-length study, biography, or memoir).

Under the direction of a professor, student completes a collection of poetry.

Under the direction of a professor, student completes a short story collection or novel.