English 91
Creative Nonfiction
Autumn 2015
Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-3:20
Room 20-21G
Instructor: Nina Schloesser Tárano
nst@stanford.edu
Office: 330 Margaret Jacks Hall
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday, 4-5:30
“Every man has within himself the entire human condition.”
—Michel de Montaigne
Say you want to tell a story. Say the story really happened. You want to be faithful to events; you undertake
to pursue and to tell the truth, however slippery that goal may turn out to be. Where and how does
creativity fit into the telling?
English 91 introduces the genre of creative nonfiction, a term we will here understand to mean
factual narrative as a literary art form. We’ll read classic and contemporary works of nonfiction, focusing
on the many forms of the personal essay. We’ll study these wide-ranging works for their craft, with the
goal of understanding how writers create vivid and compelling nonfiction narratives using a variety of
techniques, including those commonly found in fiction. We’ll discuss the ethics of factual narrative and the
particular challenges nonfiction writers face.
In the first half of the quarter, you’ll complete a series of short writing exercises. You will also
begin work on a full-length personal essay. In the second half of the quarter, our class will convene as a
workshop in which you and your fellow writers will read and discuss each other’s essays. The workshop is
the real heart of this course. It’s a kind of living laboratory in which you can test your control over your
prose. Just as importantly, it’s a supportive, trust-based community of fellow writers.
Required Materials
 Course reader. Readers will be for sale by the printer, CopyAmerica, in the lobby of Thornton
Center (379 Santa Teresa Street), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the first seven school days of the
quarter. Thereafter, readers will be available at CopyAmerica, 344 South California Avenue, Palo
Alto.
 Notebook and pen. (No laptops allowed—more on this later.)
 Access to a printer.
 In the second half of the quarter you’ll be asked to provide hard copies of your essay for everyone
in the class. Please budget for this expense.
Important Dates
 Thursday, October 22: First drafts of personal essays due.
 Thursday, December 3: Last day of class. Final portfolio due.
Course Blog
You will all receive invitations to join the course blog. That’s where you’ll find the important stuff: the
course calendar and all assignments. Occasionally, I will require you to post on the blog.
Grading: Breakdown
 Class Participation:
 Creative Work:
 Response Letters:
 Creative Writing Program Reading Attendance:
20%
55%
15%
10%
Grading: Details
 Class Participation (20%).
You will receive full credit for class participation when you:
o Come to every class on time.
o Come to class prepared, which means: having read the assigned material carefully and in a
spirit of curiosity and intellectual engagement.
o Offer your thoughts in class discussion.
o Listen attentively and open-mindedly to your fellow writers and to me.
o Help create a supportive but challenging atmosphere in the writing workshop.
o Complete all required blog posts (including comments on others’ posts) thoughtfully and
on time.
 Creative Work (55%)
o Three brief writing exercises (700 words)
o First draft of your personal essay (10-20 pages)
o Final portfolio
 Response Letters (15%)
When a fellow writer’s essay is up for workshop, you will respond to it in a letter (2-3 paragraphs).
Late response letters will affect your grade. Missing a response letter is not an option.
 CW Reading Attendance (10%)
Attendance at three Creative Writing Program events is required.
The Workshop
When we come together in workshop, we become part of a community of and for writers. Our goal is to
create an environment that is supportive, challenging, collaborative, and fun. Discretion is of the utmost
importance. Everything you read in workshop should be considered private information, received in
confidence. Our workshop dynamic will only be as good as the trust we have in one another.
Your Personal Essay
You will write a 10- to 20-page personal essay on a topic of your choosing. It must be new work, written
this quarter for this class. It must be a self-contained piece, able to stand on its own, not conceived as part
of a larger work. Your piece must make use of:
 The personal presence of the author.
 An engagement between self and world.
 The author’s self-exploration and self-discovery.
 The sense of intellectual plot or quest.
The First Draft of Your Essay
On Thursday, October 22, you will need to bring in a hard copy of your first draft for everyone in the
class, including me. Please adhere to the formatting guidelines in this syllabus.
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Your Final Portfolio
The deadline for turning in your final portfolio is Thursday, December 3 (the last day of class). Please
turn in a hard copy. Your final portfolio should include:
 A substantive revision of your personal essay. (We’ll spend a lot of time in class talking about
revision, including what makes it substantive.)
 The physical manuscript of the first draft of your essay, with my line edits.
 A 1- to 2-page process paper in which you tell me: (a) what you have learned about your writing
process; (b) why you chose to revise your piece as you did (including what specific advice from the
workshop proved helpful to you); (c) how you have grown as a writer; (d) what you will take with
you from this class; (e) what you still want to learn; (f) how you plan to keep developing as a
writer; and (g) which three Creative Writing events you attended during the quarter.
Response Letters
When a fellow writer’s essay is up for workshop, you will respond to it in a letter. It should be 2-3
paragraphs long, typed, single-spaced. Please bring two copies of the letter to class—one for the student
being workshopped and one for me. We will have a detailed discussion in class about how to write a
helpful response letter. In general, you should make every effort to discern the writer’s vision for the
piece. Be critical, but be invested in helping the author accomplish his or her desired effect. Remember to
praise what’s well done, or the author may not realize it’s working. Keep an open mind, and always be
respectful. Cruel comments are unhelpful and unacceptable.
Line Edits
Along with your response letter, the student being workshopped should also receive your copy of his or
her manuscript, with your line edits. We’ll talk in class about line edits and how to make useful ones.
Creative Writing Program Event Attendance
Attendance at three Creative Writing Program events is required. You’ll receive email announcements of
upcoming events (including readings, conversations with writers, book clubs, and writing groups). An upto-date list of most events may be found at http://creativewriting.stanford.edu/event-list. It is your
responsibility to let me know which events you attend.
My Expectations
I expect you to do your absolute best creative work for this class. However, you won’t be graded on talent!
Your grade is based on your development as a writer over the course of the quarter and the extent to
which you contribute meaningfully to workshop and discussion.
Attendance
I take attendance at the beginning of each class. If you’re late, it’s up to you to remind me at the end of
class to mark you as present. Your final grade will drop by one part of a letter with each unexcused
absence. If you’re absent four times, you fail the course. If you must miss class (due to illness or other dire
circumstances) and you believe your absence should be excused, contact me as soon as you know you will be
absent, not five minutes before class. Remember to check the blog for handouts distributed or work
assigned in your absence, and contact one of your classmates so that you can catch up on discussion.
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Punctuality
Workshop is a group effort, so punctuality is very important! If, after the first day, you are more than ten
minutes late to class (or leave early without my prior permission), it’ll count as an absence. If there’s a valid
reason why you may sometimes be late—e.g. a class immediately before on the other side of campus—
please let me know.
Late Assignments
A late writing exercise or late response letter will be graded down, even if you’ve just forgotten to print it
out for class. It is not an option for the first draft of your project or for your revision to be late. Your
grade for the whole course will drop at least a letter if this occurs.
Office Hours and Conferences
I encourage you to stop by during my office hours to talk about the class, your work, books, or life in
general. I’d love to get to know you, and having a sense of you will help me be a more useful reader of
your work. If my office hours don’t work with your schedule, we can make an appointment. I also highly
recommend setting up a conference with me to talk about your piece immediately after your workshop.
While it’s not required, conference is a great opportunity for us to sit down together and work on an
individualized revision strategy for your piece.
Email and My Presence Online
I do not accept work submitted via email. However, I encourage you to email me if you have a question or
concern or just want to share your thoughts about class. I check email twice a day and respond as
promptly as I am able. I will send all email communication to your Stanford address and expect you to
check your email at least daily.
Formatting
 Exercises and stories are double-spaced. Response letters are single-spaced.
 Use 12-point font.
 Margins should be reasonable (1" or close).
 Use print, not web, formatting. That means: indent your paragraphs; no double line breaks
between paragraphs.
 Number your document on every page.
 Write your name on your document.
 Double-sided printing is encouraged.
 Staple anything over one page.
 Please spell-check and proofread.
Laptop and Phone Policy
Laptops must be closed (the one exception is on lab days, when you’re working on your piece in class).
Closing your laptops helps minimize distractions and create an environment conducive to sustained
concentration. I ask that you use plain old paper and pen for your notes. Phones must not make sounds. If
for some reason you must be phone-reachable, please talk to me before class.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, using ideas, information or quotes from published work or online
sources without providing proper citations; copying all or part of an assignment from someone else; and
turning in work you did for other classes. Again, all assignments turned in for this class should be written during
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the course of this quarter. If you are in any way uncertain as to whether or not something constitutes
plagiarism, err on the side of caution, check the university policy, or ask me.
Meeting Your Needs
Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the
request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with
required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter
for faculty dated in the current quarter. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible, since timely
notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (voice: 7231066, TTY: 723-1067, http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae).
Honor Code
The Honor Code is the University’s statement on academic integrity, written by students in 1921. It
articulates University expectations of students and faculty in establishing and maintaining the highest
standards in academic work.
1. The Honor Code is an undertaking of the students, individually and collectively:
1. that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive
unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation of reports, or in any other work that is
to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;
2. that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as
themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the Honor Code.
2. The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from
proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent the
forms of dishonesty mentioned above. The faculty will also avoid, as far as
practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code.
3. While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic requirements, the students
and faculty will work together to establish optimal conditions for honorable academic work.
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