COURSE DESCRIPTIONThis seminar will investigate the challenges in writing real and imagined characters. We will study and discuss examples from creative nonfiction, literary fiction and genre fiction, as well as craft and theory about such issues as creating character arc in memoir; stories that hinge on unsympathetic characters or unreliable narrators; the lack of language and models for writing whiteness; cultural appropriation and tropes versus successfully writing outside one’s own identities; the ethics of writing about families and the subjects of nonfiction profiles; and strategies for writing non-human and collective characters. Students will present from their own genres, analyzing types of characters and methods and dimensions of characterization, the hallmarks of character-driven story, and how identity, history and environment can be leveraged to inform character action. Texts may include Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief, Justin Torres, We the Animals, Igoni Barrett, Blackass, Paisley Rekdal, Appropriate: A Provocation, and Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress.

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