Loading...

ENGL 270X: Introduction to Creative Writing


Welcome! This is the website for ENGL 270X – Introduction to Creative Writing, for the Spring 2021 semester.

Hi! I’m Sara In addition to being a writer, I am a professor in the Creative Writing Program at UAF. I’m the author of the poetry book BONE MAP. I’m excited to get to know you all through your work. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions. I’m here to help! Contact me at sejohnson16@alaska.edu.

You may have once received that old writing advice to “write what you know,’ but, to quote Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (RIP), “I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, ‘cause you don’t know anything.’ Writing creatively is a process of continual exploration, discovery, risk, and invention.  

In this course, we will explore and develop our personal, intellectual, and artistic interests alongside our creative writing practice, which will include creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.

We will push ourselves to write work that matters to us, and to engage our curiosities and obsessions. To this end, we will read a wide variety of works by contemporary authors, critique the writing of our peers in workshops, and learn the primary techniques–image, metaphor, character, plot, and more–that writers use to create literary art.

Throughout the semester, you will build an understanding of creative writing craft and technique through a variety of exercises and writing tools. We will focus on the development of the “habit’ of writing, emphasizing exploration and risk taking, in order to push you to write in new and imaginative ways.  

I encourage you to adapt exercises and assignments  in order to write what is most urgent and essential to you. Personal narratives and essays need a pulse, a life beneath the surface. Finding that pulse is the challenge we as writers face.


Start Here!

Here’s what you’ll need to do to get started:

  • Head over to the Blackboard Discussion Board and introduce yourself in about 250-500 words. You might include where you’re from, major, hobbies, what makes you interesting. Include one specific memory that sticks with you and reveals something about how you see the world – a recent activity, a memory that stands out, or something you witnessed. Be specific.
  • Make sure you have the correct books (ebooks are fine, and usually much more affordable):

Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller

The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass

The Poet’s Companion by Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio

  • Read the syllabus, under “Resources.”
  • Check out the course schedule – print or bookmark the page, so that you have easy access –  and always know what your assignments are, and when they are due.
  • Spend some time skimming through the various pages of this website in order to grow familiar with it. This will make it easier to find things later.
  • Click on Assignments>Reading Responses in the header menu at the top of the site to see your first Lesson/Reading Response post. Each week there will be a new Lesson/Reading Response post under that category.