Instructor: Sam Marks
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

This workshop introduces the television pilot with a focus on prestige drama and serialized comedy.  Students will excavate their own voice and explore the structure and execution of pilot writing through a first draft of their own original script. With intensive reading and discussion of student work we will examine elements of TV writing, such as treatments and outlines as well as character, dialogue, tone, plot, and, most importantly, vision.  Over the semester, we’ll turn ideas into worlds and worlds into scripts. 

Supplemental Application Information: Prior experience in dramatic writing is encouraged, though not necessary. Please submit a 5-10 page writing sample (preferably a play or screenplay, but all genres are acceptable). Also, write a few sentences about one of your favorite television shows and why you wish to write for TV.

Instructor: Musa Syeed
Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
 

The short film, with its relatively lower costs of production and expanded distribution opportunities, has become one of the most disruptive, innovative modes of storytelling--and is often an emerging filmmaker's first step into a career. This course will introduce students to the basics of short form screenwriting, including narrative theory/structure, character design, and dialogue/voice. In the first quarter of the semester, we will hone dramatic techniques through several craft exercise assignments and in-class writing. In the following weeks, students will write two short screenplays. Throughout the semester, we will be workshopping and doing table reads of student work, discussing screenplays and craft texts, and screening a wide array of short films. The emphasis will be on discovering a sense of personal voice and completing two short screenplays (under 20 pages).

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a 3-5 page writing sample. Screenplays are preferred, but fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and plays are acceptable as well. Also, please write a short note to introduce yourself. Include a couple films/filmmakers that have inspired you, your goals for the class, as well as any themes/subject matter/ideas you might be interested in exploring in your writing for film.

Instructor: Sam Marks
Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

This workshop is a continued exploration of writing for the stage, with an eye towards presentation.  The semester will culminate in a staged reading of each student's work for the Harvard Playwrights Festival. Each reading will be directed by a professional director and presented to the public.  Students will be encouraged to excavate their own voice in playwriting and learn from the final presentation. The class will examine the design of the stage, the playworld, and the page. Students will attempt multiple narrative strategies and dialogue techniques. They will bolster their craft of playwriting through generating short scripts and a completed one act. Readings will include significant contributors to the theatrical form such as Caryl Churchill and Samuel Beckett as well as contemporary dramatists such as Annie Baker, Jackie Sibbles Drury, Branden Jacobs Jenkins, and Jeremy O. Harris.

Supplemental Application Information: Prior experience in writing the dramatic form is strongly encouraged. Please submit a 5-10 page writing sample (preferably a play or screenplay, but all genres are acceptable). Also, please write a few sentences about a significant theatrical experience (a play read or seen) and how it affected you.

Instructor: Musa Syeed
Wednesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
 

The feature-length script is an opportunity to tell a story on a larger scale, and, therefore, requires additional preparation. In this class, we will move from writing a pitch, to a synopsis, to a treatment/outline, to the first 10 pages, to the first act of a feature screenplay. We will analyze produced scripts and discuss various elements of craft, including research, writing layered dialogue, world-building, creating an engaging cast of characters. As an advanced class, we will also look at ways both mainstream and independent films attempt to subvert genre and structure.
Students will end the semester with a first act (20-30 pages) of their feature, an outline, and strategy to complete the full script.

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a 3-5 page writing sample. Screenplays are preferred, but fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and plays are acceptable as well. Also, please write a short note to introduce yourself. Include a couple films/filmmakers that have inspired you, your goals for the class, as well as any themes/subject matter/ideas you might be interested in exploring in your writing for film.

Instructor: Tina Chang
Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

Magic: [maj-ik] (noun): power or influence exerted through art; any extraordinary or mystical influence, charm, power.

The name of this course pays tribute to a class that poet Jack Gilbert took with Jack Spicer. What summons us to a poem or a poet? Is it lyricism, a singular voice, an undeniable image, incantation, song, material so raw that we cannot turn away? Though one can certainly view poems as well-oiled machines to perfect and hone, we might also view poems as living energy that requires creation, motion, resuscitation, heartbeat. In these poems, we are immediately under the poem’s spell as we are asked to walk into their imagined dwellings. So how do we tap into this magic as writers? We will read writers from different schools, cultures and traditions, examining how they define themselves. This class teaches students to analyze and interpret written texts, and to craft clear writing that exerts a quiet, magical influence on the reader. Class work will be comprised of student writing and critique, formal experiments, and creative play. Writing is produced and discussed each week, followed by a revision portfolio and a final chapbook

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a a short letter of introduction and three poems.

Instructor: Tina Chang
Wednesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

The tradition of poetry is widening, drawing from many art forms, blending and fusing to create contemporary cross-pollinated forms. In this class we will explore the many ways in which poetry is increasingly a hybrid beast, as innovative projects are envisioned across genres. We will begin with some traditional forms and move toward discussing the process by which poets work with visual art, comics, research and white space. We will practice the ekphrastic poem, long poem, zuihitsu, mosaic poem, erasure, collage, ghazal, pecha kucha, and the many formal experiments that make the current environment of poetry so eclectic and exciting. Class work will be comprised of student writing and critique, linguistic adventure, wild meanderings, in order to understand future possibilities for one’s own poems. The final project is a multi-disciplinary chapbook (no previous chapbook experience necessary) and an optional class reading. 

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a short letter of introduction and three poems.

Instructor: Josh Bell
Monday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

By guided reading, classroom discussion, one on one conference, and formal and structural experimentation, members of the Advanced Poetry Workshop will look to hone, deepen, and challenge the development of their poetic inquiry and aesthetic. Students will be required to write and submit one new poem each week and to perform in-depth, weekly critiques of their colleagues' work.

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.

Instructor: Josh Bell
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
 

Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work.

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.

Instructor: Darcy Frey
Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

Whether it takes the form of literary journalism, essay, memoir, or environmental writing, creative nonfiction is a powerful genre that allows writers to break free from the constraints commonly associated with nonfiction prose and reach for the breadth of thought and feeling usually accomplished only in fiction: the narration of a vivid story, the probing of a complex character, the argument of an idea, or the evocation of a place. Students will work on several short assignments to hone their mastery of the craft, then write a longer piece that will be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from published authors such as Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, and Virginia Woolf. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required.

Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with creative/literary nonfiction; what excites you about nonfiction in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of creative/literary nonfiction (essay, memoir, narrative journalism, etc, but NOT academic writing) or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

Instructor: Darcy Frey
Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

In this hands-on writing workshop, we will study the art of narrative journalism in many different forms: Profile writing, investigative reportage, magazine features. How can a work of journalism be fashioned to tell a captivating story? How can the writer of nonfiction narratives employ the scene-by-scene construction usually found in fiction? How can facts become the building blocks of literature? Students will work on several short assignments to practice the nuts-and-bolts of reporting, then write a longer magazine feature to be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from the published work of literary journalists such as Joan Didion, John McPhee, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and John Jeremiah Sullivan. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required.

Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with journalism or narrative nonfiction; what excites you about narrative journalism in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of journalism or narrative nonfiction or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff
Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

In this workshop-based class, students will think deeply about how music is often at the center of their experiences, may it be as a song, an album, an artist, their own relationship with an instrument, etc. This class will entail writing true stories about one's life in which the personal and music orbit and/or entangle each other. This will include some journalism and criticism, but above all it will ask you to describe how and why music matters to your lived life. We will read work by Hayao Miyazaki, Jia Tolentino, Kaveh Akbar, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, Adrian Matejka, among many others, (as well as invite and talk with guest speaker(s)). This class is open to all levels.

Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff

Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD

Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

As memoirist and author Melissa Febos puts it: “The narrator is never you, and the sooner we can start thinking of ourselves on the page that way, the better for our work. That character on the page is just this shaving off of the person that was within a very particular context, intermingled with bits of perspective from all the time since — it’s a very specific little cocktail of pieces of the self and memory and art … it’s a very weird thing. And then it’s frozen in the pages.” With each essay and work of nonfiction we produce in this workshop-based class, the character we portray, the narrator we locate, is never stagnant, instead we are developing a persona, wrought from the experience of our vast selves and our vast experiences. To that end, in this course, you will use the tools and stylistic elements of creative nonfiction, namely fragmentation, narrative, scene, point of view, speculation, and research to remix and retell all aspects of your experience and selfhood in a multiplicity of ways. I will ask that you focus on a particular time period or connected events, and through the course of the semester, you will reimagine and reify these events using different modes and techniques as modeled in the published and various works we read. We will also read, in their entireties, Melissa Febos's Body Work: The Radical Work of Personal Narrative, as well as Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which will aid our discussions and help us to better understand the difference between persona(s) and the many versions of self that inhabit us. 

Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

Instructor: Louisa Thomas
Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students 

In newsrooms, the sports section is sometimes referred to as the “toy department” -- frivolous and unserious, unlike the stuff of politics, business, and war. In this course, we will take the toys seriously. After all, for millions of people, sports and other so-called trivial pursuits (video games, chess, board games, and so on) are a source of endless fascination. For us, they will be a source of stories about human achievements and frustrations. These stories can involve economic, social, and political issues. They can draw upon history, statistics, psychology, and philosophy. They can be reported or ruminative, formally experimental or straightforward, richly descriptive or tense and spare. They can be fun. Over the course of the semester, students will read and discuss exemplary profiles, essays, articles, and blog posts, while also writing and discussing their own. While much (but not all) of the reading will come from the world of sports, no knowledge about sports is required; our focus will be on writing for a broad audience.

Supplemental Application Information: To apply, please submit a brief writing sample of 200-500 words on any sport or game. (This can be a mini-profile, or a meditation on a particular sport written in the first person, or a dispatch, or a description of a singularly important moment in a game -- feel free to interpret the assignment broadly. Have fun with it.)  

Instructor: Maggie Doherty
Thursday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

How do we know why we like, or don’t like, a book, or a TV show, or a play? What are the different ways we can write about art? What is taste, and does it matter who has it? In this workshop, we’ll consider these questions and more as we develop our skills as critics and reviewers. We’ll read and discuss criticism and reviews from a wide variety of publications, paying attention to the ways outlets and audience shape critical work. The majority of our readings will be from the last few years and will include pieces from big publications (The New York Times, The New Yorker) and smaller ones (n+1, The Drift). Students will write several short writing assignments (500-1000 words), including a straight review, during the first half of the semester and share them with peers. During the second half of the semester, each student will write and workshop a longer piece of criticism about a work of art or an artist of their choosing. Students will be expected to read and provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. Students will revise their longer pieces based on workshop feedback and submit them for the final assignment of the class.

Supplemental Application Information: Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. Please also describe your relationship to the art forms and/or genres you're interested in engaging in the course. You may also list any writers or publications whose criticism you enjoy reading. Please also include a 500-750-word sample writing sample of any kind of prose writing. This could be an academic paper or it could be creative fiction or nonfiction.

Instructor: Nick White
Thursday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

This is a fiction workshop for those who are interested in retellings. In this class, we will learn how other writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have taken fairy tales, epic poetry, problematic horror, and Chekov’s short fiction, and retooled them for their own purposes. You will also practice the art of retelling in two ways: first, you will write your own flash piece inspired by some fairy tale of your choosing, and second, you will select another “story” (I use this term broadly – you can select just about anything you wish, within limitation, of course) to retell in a full-length short story or novel chapter. This workshop is open to beginning and advanced writers. 

Supplemental Application Information: Prior experience writing fiction is helpful but not required. Please submit a writing sample of 3-5 pages of fiction, along with an application letter explaining your interest in this course, any writing experience you feel is relevant, and listing examples of work that moves and/or influences you, explaining why it does.

Instructor: Namwali Serpell
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

This course offers an education in the origins of what is now known as genre fiction: romance, the Gothic, science fiction, mystery, thriller, detective fiction, the children’s book, horror fiction, spy fiction, fantasy, etc. During the first part of the semester, we will read a set of classic works of genre fiction to consider their history, formal tropes, affective tendencies, and political implications; the selection of these texts will depend on the specific interests of admitted students. We will then workshop two pieces of fiction a piece, each in a different genre.

Please note: This course is geared toward genre fiction, so we are unlikely to read many works of traditional realist fiction. It is a reading intensive course, as we will be reading both short stories and books. And prior experience in writing fiction of any kind is helpful but not required. 

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a writing sample of fiction (three pages; it doesn’t have to be genre fiction, but fiction is preferable to nonfiction for this sample) and an application letter (one page) detailing your interest in this course, any relevant writing experience you have, and up to three types of genre fiction you’re interested in reading and/or writing.

Instructor: Namwali Serpell
Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

In this course, we will learn about representing the “real” self and “real” life in prose fiction. The use of confessional, autobiographical, and memoiristic elements in fiction arguably begins with the very origins of the European novel. The specific term autofiction was coined in 1977 by the French writer, Serge Doubrovsky, to describe his novel Fils. He wrote: “Autobiography? No, that is a privilege reserved for the important people of the world, at the dusk of their lives, in a fine style. Fiction, about events and strictly real facts; if one prefers, autofiction, having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of language.” During the first part of the semester, we will read older and recent versions of autofiction, as well as essays analyzing its possibilities. We will then workshop our own efforts at writing in this difficult and fascinating form. 

Please note: This course does not address or encourage the writing of nonfiction autobiography or memoir. It is a reading intensive course, as autofiction is predominantly written in the form of books. And prior experience with writing fiction is helpful but not required. 

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a writing sample of fiction (three pages) and an application letter (one page) detailing your interest in this course, any relevant writing experience you have, and up to three authors whose work inspires you.

Instructor: Nick White
Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

In this workshop, we will study the art and craft of writing novels. We’ll consider published work in order to get a better sense of the multiple choices writers can make when they shape a book-length narrative. Our objectives will be the following: (1) to prepare you for writing a novel, (2) to deepen your reading of other writers’ work,  (3) to workshop the opening chapter(s) of your novel, (4) to help you create a working outline for the kind of book you want to write. While some workshop experience would be useful, it is not required. Students who wish to apply for a creative thesis focused on fiction / a novel-length project are strongly encouraged to take this workshop. 

Supplemental Application Information: Prior experience writing fiction is helpful but not required. Please submit a writing sample of 3-5 pages of fiction, along with an application letter explaining your interest in this course, any writing experience you feel is relevant, and listing examples of work that moves and/or influences you, explaining why it does.

Instructor: Laura van den Berg
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

Have you ever written a promising draft of a story or novel, only to realize you have no idea what to do next? This course aims to illuminate how revision can be every bit as creative and exhilarating as getting the first draft down—and how time spent re-imagining our early drafts is the ultimate show of faith in our work. We will explore the art of revision—of realizing the promise of that first draft—through reading, craft discussion, exercises, and workshop. Students can expect to leave the semester with two polished short stories or 40-50 polished novel pages; a deeper understanding of their own writing process; and a plan for where to take their work next. Prerequisite: one creative writing course at Harvard (or at another institution). 

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter—1-2 pages—that discusses your interest in revision. What are you interested in working on and learning more about? Please also submit a short—2-3 page—writing sample (the first 2 pages of a short story or novel, for example). This workshop will be most useful for writers who have material that they want to bring to fruition (a short story, for example, or several chapters of a novel). As such, students should have taken one creative writing course at Harvard (or at another institution) before applying to this workshop.

Instructor: Neel Mukherjee
Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings/literary-critical analyses of an assigned text (see below, ‘Course Syllabus & Schedule’, for all the reading material for the semester), with the aim of isolating some aspect of the craft of writing in order to take bearings for your own. We will be looking at technical things such as point of view, free indirect discourse, narration, character, interiority, style, movement, affect, but also at broader issues: metaphysics, politics, inequality, race, colonialism/imperialism, the white gaze. You will not only have read the assigned text with critical rigor but also taken notes of the points you want to raise in class. Each week, two students will lead the discussions on the text for the week, and raise discussion topics, which the remaining students in the class will engage with. We are aiming for engaged, alert discussions, so it may help to have something written down to facilitate our conversations. 

Please note: Reading the assigned text is obligatory. Previous Creative Writing workshop experience is desirable. Also, having taken a critical class on novels in any humanities department will be an advantage. If you’re writing YA fantasy, there are other courses on offer that would be a better fit.

In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of 55 minutes each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. To this end, every week two students will hand in something they have written, to the tune of 2,500-5,000 words, to me and to everyone in the group, ideally one week before their turn. At our first meeting, I will circulate a rota for you to put down your names and walk you through the syllabus, the aims and objectives of the course, workshop rules, expectations, requirements etc. For our first workshopping session, two students should hand in work five to seven days before. Our goal is for each of you to have two turns, and approximately 5-10,000 words of your work critiqued, by the time semester ends. Copies of these writing samples will be returned to you at the end of each workshop with comments from me and from everyone in class. You are also expected to hand in to me the letters that you write to your peers, giving feedback on their work; 25% of your grade depends on this (see ‘Course policies, assignments, grading’ document. Work submitted must be single-sided, double-spaced, paginated and, ideally, bearing a title. It must have your name on it and, on the top right-hand corner of the first page, my name and ‘Advanced Fiction, Spring 2026’.

Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a substantive letter of introduction in which you write about why you’re interested in this course; what experience you’ve had writing, especially what Creative Writing workshops and literature classes on fiction you’ve already taken at Harvard; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favourite works of fiction are and why.