Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Chicago

This writing and reading course will allow us to explore the city of Chicago and many approaches to studying it and responding to it in prose both fictional and nonfictional. We'll think about issues like crises in housing, asylum, incarceration; about art and space in photographs, public murals, sculpture, architecture; and about plants, animals, and waterways. Students will write shorter exercises, keep a Chicago notebook, and write a longer piece for workshop. Readings may include Eve Ewing, Lori Waxman, Frank London Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rosalyn LaPier, Stuart Dybek, Saul Bellow, Sandra Cisneros, Aleksandar Hemon, Jeanne Gang, Rebecca Zorach, Studs Terkel and more.