Department of English

Prerequisites: This is a course for students who have completed either ENGLISH 121 or at least one other Creative Writing class.

Like the Slow Food movement, Advanced Writing for Children is a response to our fast-and-faster learning culture. We’ll take the term to write two pieces for children or teens. Let’s call it Slow Write. The idea is to take time to write better, deeper, more beautifully, funnier, to respect stories and how you choose and render them. Using community—among ourselves and with select partners outside the university—we will work to help you harness various intelligences to figure out the stories you need to write. Trips and collaborations will refresh and surprise. You’ll be writing, but also taking time: to remember, sketch, research, meditate, assess, develop, discard. Slow writing respects difference. Some of us need to get honest, others to pull back; some to learn fluency and others restraint. Most of us need support to work harder, but as Thomas Wolfe defined it for artists: “an integrity of purpose, a spiritual intensity, and a fine expenditure of energy that most people have no conception of.” When stories are ready, you will be invited to submit them to SafeKidsStories.com, because as Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lungren has said: “Children perform miracles when they read.” On the side, for funsies, and to assuage the must-write fast urge, you’ll also write a weekly blog. This course is cross-listed with Africana Studies 123.