Text Box: Literary Types: Short Fiction Professor Christina Milletti TTh 2:00 - 3:20 Reg. No. 022357 Text Box: 251 Text Box: When asked why he writes fiction, Robert Coover remarks, “Because truth, the elusive joker, hides himself in fiction and should therefore be sought there....” In this course, we will investigate the apparent paradox Coover identifies. What is the relationship of truth to fiction? How is reality created on the page? In what ways do fictional phenomena become credible in the stories in which they exist? How is the implausible made possible through fictional language? Under what conditions does a fiction support, resist, or transform the notion of “story” by which it is often circumscribed? Students will explore the relation of fictional worlds to the words that create them through assigned exercises, workshop submissions, and discussions of selected readings. As a fiction writing course, this class has several objectives: first, to teach students how to attend to the basic craft elements of fiction (such as plot, character, voice, setting etc); second, to present students with an array of readings and exercises that will assist in designing specific, individualized approaches to their own work; and last, to give students multiple opportunities to contextualize and showcase their skills within short and long fictions. Students will try their hand at a wide range of techniques—from the traditional to the avant-garde—so that they can begin to situate their work and poetics. Methods of revision and invention will be considered at length so that students become skilled editors of their own work. Students must have completed their Writing Skills requirement. Permission of the instructor required.