HENK13132U Writing in English: Creative Non-Fiction in English

This is a course for students from any disciplinary background and institute who are interested in exploring what it means to read and write creative non-fiction in the present moment. We will be looking at several aspects and sub-genres of creative non-fiction – from the personal essay, to memoir, to literary journalism and beyond – with an eye for their respective ways of responding to the challenges of a current moment, not least: 1) the construction of nature, 2) current political challenges from asylum law to race politics in the US, 3) the dynamics of gender, 4) the possibility of empathy/difference.

We will be reading both longer and shorter texts by masters of the craft – stand out figures in the worlds of nature writing, literary journalism, and the essay as polemic – alongside essays by celebrated writers. However, this course is also about the mechanisms of writing. We will be developing our own pieces of creative non-fiction in tandem with looking at the course-texts with an eye for their delivery of narrative, the issues both raised by the text and the craft involved in making them readable/true/reliable/controversial. In practicing this aspect of writing, you will be thinking about questions like: how do you position yourself as a narrator? For what kind of audience? How do journalistic topics work to generate and sustain interest?

The class structure is divided between lectures or talks by visiting writers, critical discussion on the assigned texts and writing prompts to explore to explore specific techniques, look at how the writers we read use them, and share work with each other. The lectures will be held either by Lupton or Grøn, both published writers, or by a visiting writer who will share their practiced perspective on writing nonfiction. Visitors in the past have included writers like Sarah Moss, Kirsten Tranter, Lisa Abend, Kevin Brazil and Hakon Mosbech as well as leading literary scholars. In 2024, we expect to host Moss again, as well as writer and literary scholar Harry Stecopoulos. There will also be four intensive writing workshops, deep diving into a specific technique/topic or way of approaching creative non-fiction. These are usually held at venues outside of campus. In previous years, these have ranged from cultural institutions like Thorvaldsens Museum, to a workshop on writing other people’s stories with Menneskebiblioteket.