All courses are three credits, unless otherwise indicated.

CNF 600. Narrative Design  | 3 credits

This course is an wide-ranging survey of storytelling and its applications in nonfiction writing. It is designed to offer fluency in established craft principles of storytelling and familiarity with nonfiction works that embody these principles.

CNF 611. Readings in Nonfiction | 3 credits

This course offers a foundation and deeper literacy in nonfiction literature to improve their reading, writing, and critical skills. Class conversation and writing assignments help students to develop tools to analyze and evaluate reading done on the page and in discussion. Group assignments, along with individual reading lists developed with the instructor, will focus on nonfiction classics, contemporary works, and selections in forms such as essay, memoir, and literary journalism.

CNF 612. Style: Editing & Revision in Nonfiction | 3 credits

This is a master class in learning prose styling. It provides students with immersion in the techniques of editing and polishing their work. They also will learn the foundations of sentence construction, clear expression, and other tools of craft.

CNF 614. Poetry and Nonfiction | 3 credits

This elective is a course in reading and writing poetry, and how those pursuits intersect with and influence the writing of nonfiction prose.

CNF 618. Essay Forms: From Familiar to Lyric | 3 credits

This course explores the many forms an essay can take. It begins by looking briefly at the familiar (or personal) essay and then delves into more experimental forms of the lyric essay. Students will closely examine examples of each form, including flash, segmented, braided, and hermit crab essays. There is also a great deal of writing, starting with a series of generative prompts for each form and ending with a draft of a lyric essay in the form(s) of the student’s choice

CNF 625. Research and Reporting | 3 credits

In this course, students learn skills to conduct in-depth research, interviews, and reporting for works of literary journalism and other nonfiction forms. They also will explore strategies for weaving data and other information into narrative or other forms, organizing materials, and using interviews to help define character portraits. This course does not contain a writing component.

CNF 633. The Book Proposal | 3 credits

In this elective, students build a book proposal under the one-on-one supervision of a faculty member who is also a literary agent or editor with publishing experience.

CNF 635. Reported Memoir | 3 credits 

Databases, documents, and other resources, and practices can enrich a memoir and verify the accuracy of a writer’s work. In this course, students conduct in-depth research and interviews under the supervision of an MFA faculty mentor. This elective teaches the skills to deepen personal writing through research; it does not contain a writing component.

CNF 641. Directed Study in Nonfiction |1.5 credits  

This course gives students additional time and space outside the formal curriculum of the program to write, polish manuscripts, begin new projects, or initiate other work.

CNF 650. Fieldwork in Nonfiction | 3 credits

Students learn to work more independently and create a research and writing plan outside of the CNF program’s core course structure. Students will also submit a final written project that demonstrates mastery of a chosen focus of writing and research. Unlike electives that focus solely on research, this course emphasizes writing.

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Alumni of the CNF program may take any of the above electives. New documentation must be completed and submitted to the program.