ENG 611 Writers on Writing (3 credits)

Most of us have at least a vague idea of why we write: to discover more about ourselves, for instance, or to help improve society. This course offers a chance to reflect more deeply on our purposes as writers by studying what other writers have said about theirs. We will study a variety of writers such as Eudora Welty, Richard Selzer, William Gass and Annie Dillard, and read a variety of genres and styles including modernists like Langston Hughes, experimentalists like Donald Barthelme, and contemporaries like Stuart Dybeck, Richard Bausch, Linda Hogan, Amy Hempel, and Edwidge Danticat.