CRW 5130 - Fall 2026 - Butler

This course is intended to develop the nascent literary artist’s deep sense of the sources and nature of the creative process. This will be done by an examination of the aesthetic philosophy voiced in From Where You Dream, and by the subsequent creation of literary work for the workshop. There are a few cautions. Unlike most workshops, there will be no peer criticism in class. Craft and technique, as such, will be discussed only incidentally and ad hoc, being instead relegated to the place where it belongs: the compost of the imagination. The workshop will be divided into two groups, which will begin by alternating in the presentation of the opening 500 to 700 words of a piece of literary fiction. These will be carefully, aesthetically critiqued in class by the instructor.