Class Schedule and Course Descriptions

Spring 2026 Course Schedule and Descriptions

This course is an introduction to the creative writing process, in which you’ll do exercises in writing poetry, fiction, and dramatic scripts. There will also be selected readings of exemplary stories, poems, and plays. Open to all students. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Priority enrollment given to Eng: Creative Writing, Eng: Ed w/ Creative Writing concentration and Cinema majors. Instruction and extensive practice in writing poetry, fiction, and plays, with selected readings of exemplary stories, poems, and plays. This course is the prerequisite to Short Story Writing, Poetry Writing, and Playwriting.  Instructors’ names will be published in June. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

Prerequisite:  Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Every creative writer needs to be a creative reader. Knowing how to write means knowing how to read. As beginning writers, we learn our craft by reading the works of established writers, drawing inspiration from their examples. In this class, we will read stories, poems, and plays by a diversity of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Octavia Butler, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sally Wen Mao and others. We will also explore a diversity of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror and contemporary realism. Students will discover that creative reading is often the first and most important step to creative writing. 

Prerequisites: Restricted to Creative Writing majors and minors; C W 101 or C W 301 with a grade of C or better; or permission of the instructor. Examination of the creative process, emphasizing techniques, style, and structure. Topics to be specified in the Class Schedule. May be repeated when topics vary.

Prerequisites: C W 301; ENG 114; ENG 214; B.A. majors in ENG, Creative Writing and ENG, Edu. (Creative Writing). Explore craft elements of fiction: plot, dialogue, character, point of view, place, etc. Focus is on published writing and exercises. Some student work is discussed. Satisfies the General Education GWAR/C WEP requirement. An exploration of how writers translate their vision onto the page. (Emphasis on HOW). Emphasis is on assigned reading material, but some student work will also be discussed in small groups.

Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.  Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing, Creative Writing, and English: Education (Creative Writing). Work In Progress is an advanced process course that offers senior creative writing majors the opportunity to work on their capstone project, a series of revisions and re-envisionings of creative pieces that they have initiated during their time in the Creative Writing program. The class will explore ways to sustain a creative practice, by re-envisioning their own creative works and by examining works by emerging and established writers. We will also discuss various pathways for publication and creative careers. CROSS GENRE COURSE. 

Prerequisites: C W 301; C W 511GW or C W 512 GW or CW 513GW. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. In this class students will be encouraged to experiment with form and craft. We’ll read and discuss new and award-winning stories in a variety of styles and genres and hybrid forms. Students will have opportunities to generate new work and to give and receive feedback on their new creative work. We’ll have one Zoom visit from an established author. Authors to be studied include Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, K-Ming Chang, Elaine Hsieh Chou, Carmen Maria Machado, Manuel Muñoz and Charles Yu among others.

Prerequisites: C W 101 or C W 301; C W 302; C W 512GW or C W 603.Examine and experiment with the artistic processes of published writers (and a variety of other artists) who've taken a project from idea to completion. Study interviews, process notes, and "middle drafts" of these artists. Include analyses of the draft process, genre across artistic and literary forms, and creation and revision of student work.

Prerequisite:  C W 301; C W 302; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW; or consent of instructor. Join the staff of Transfer, the literary magazine of the Creative Writing Department, established in 1950, and one of the longest running student literary magazines in the US. The course is designed to give you a working taste of what it takes to put out a literary magazine (including critical analysis and discussion of short-listed submissions, proofreading, solicitation and distribution) and to make you think about the world of literary magazines and your own beliefs in literature. Come prepared to analyze and discuss text and investigate your own literary aesthetics. In order to bring Transfer into the 21st Century, in addition to assisting the editors publish the print magazine, class members will create, design, and edit their own literary magazine. If you’re interested in being an editor of Transfer, at the end of the semester you will be given the opportunity to apply for an editor position for the next issue. This is a process course (not a lab) and can be used to fulfill 3 units of the Creative Process requirement. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads at https://creativewriting.sfsu.edu/content/communityprojects-0. Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships at http://icce.sfsu.edu. These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions, please contact May-Lee Chai atchai@sfsu.edu . C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.                       

Prerequisite:  Consent of instructor and a 3.0 GPA.  Upper division students may enroll in a course of Independent Study under the supervision of a member of the Creative Writing department, with whom the course is planned, developed, and completed. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Independent Study forms are available online http://registrar.sfsu.edu/forms under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Please request a permit number from your instructor when they approve the 699 form.

GRADUATE CLASSES:

Note:  Preference in all Creative Writing graduate courses will be given to students admitted to either the M.A. or the M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing.  Preference in M.F.A. level courses will be given to students admitted to the M.F.A. program.  Priority in M.A. and M.F.A. writing workshops and creative process courses will be given to students admitted in the genre of the course.  Other Creative Writing M.A./M.F.A. students may enroll in these courses only with the permission of the instructor. 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Permission of the instructor is required to take this course; you will be dropped without prior consent of the instructor. The semester before you plan to enroll in Directed Writing, submit a sample of your writing in the instructor’s mailbox along with a note explaining that you want to take their Directed Writing class. Be sure you include your name, address, phone number and e-mail. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.Directed Writing is a course in which Creative Writing students meet one-on-one with a faculty member to engage in development and exploration of creative work. Interested students must submit a request to an instructor, by email, in the semester previous to the semester in which they seek to enroll. Students enroll in Directed Writing to fulfill one or more of the following objectives:  to complete a significant portion of a first draft of a book-length work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry or a first draft of a play; to engage in deep revision of a fully imagined first draft; to engage in research and exploration of a project the writer is beginning to imagine; to engage in assigned reading chosen by the instructor to inspire invention; to bring a later draft to final draft completion.  

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Students will be exploring exciting contemporary works of creative nonfiction in a variety of styles and forms. We’ll be reading essays, memoir, narrative nonfiction, text-and-image works as well as hybrid works that cross traditional genre boundaries. Students will have opportunities to experiment and generate new creative work. There will be at least one Zoom visit with an established author.

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or consent of the instructor. MA and M.F.A. students from all genres are welcome (should the course be over-enrolled, priority will be given to Playwriting students). Calling all playwrights, directors, actors, stage managers, production managers and graphic artists!  Greenhouse 2025 is looking for full length and short plays to be presented in a guerilla style theatre format in various indoor and outdoor spaces on the SF State campus for our annual festival of new work. Playwrights must be highly self-motivated in the creative process. They must be willing to help cast their own plays and do whatever it takes to get their work up. The festival will be held in April. Master classes with local professionals will guide students with helpful tools in dramaturgy, publicity and marketing, fundraising and grant writing. May be repeated for a total of 9 units.

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Fourteen Hills is a working small press as well as a graduate course in editing and literary publishing. Each year, in the spring, we publish one issue of Fourteen Hills: the SFSU Review, a nationally recognized literary print magazine, as well as in fall the Michael Rubin Book Award (MRBA) by an SFSU student or recent graduate. Fourteen Hills is run entirely by students with support from our Faculty Advisor and the Department of Creative Writing. The course is designed to give students an opportunity to observe and participate in many aspects of running a literary magazine, from editorial decisions to distribution logistics, from public relations and event planning to conducting author interviews. Students in the class serve as staff for the journal, working closely with the editors to consider and evaluate work for publication in the upcoming issue as well as learning about the copy-editing process, visual art selection, cover design, distribution, sales and promotion. The course is taught primarily by the Editor-in-Chief, with guidance from the Faculty Advisor. Small group work will be led by the Fiction and Poetry genre editors. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in MFA in Creative Writing, the MA in English; Creative Writing, or the new MA in Creative Writing. In this graduate Creative Nonfiction Workshop, you will submit 2-3 pieces of creative nonfiction—either separate shorter pieces or sections of something longer you are working on. You will hone your skills as critics, responding weekly to your classmates’ submissions, both in class and in feedback letters. The great majority of our time will be dedicated to discussing students’ work, with an eye toward drawing connections between craft principles and their own writing practice. We will workshop two writers’ submissions each week, examining such craft elements as structure, tension, dialogue, clarity, arc and character, paying particular attention to the ways in which conventions of craft are applied and understood—and oftentimes reinterpreted or subverted.

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Together, in this course, we’ll delve into the infinitely rich world of fiction—what it is, why it matters, how to shape and forge it. You are encouraged to experiment, push your own edges and take daring leaps toward your most vaulting goals as a writer. We’ll read some published work together to fill our wells, and then we’ll dive right in to a semester spent in the experiential crucible of workshop. Think of the workshop as an actual metaphor: a space where we all come together to practice this craft of writing, embodied by—let’s say—a blacksmith’s imagery, like the forge of Hephaestos where sublime artistry comes to life: there we find fire, hammers, metals, wrenches, wood, nails, heat and sweat, tools strewn everywhere. That’s the kind of place into which I’d like to invite us. A crucible of possibility and seriousness, chaos and patterns, power and play. You are encouraged to explore, to cross-pollinate and to let inspiration propel you to new realms. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. “As if your life depended on it. You must write and read as if your life depended on it…To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife…” This excerpted quote from Adrienne Rich’s “What is Found There” speaks to the sense of urgency and complexity guiding this writing workshop. What is it to make art when the world is on fire? Students will concentrate on the creation, revision, and radical revision of their poetry. The class format will include discussion of reading assignments, writing in response to readings, viewings, and music; group discussion of student work, and in-class and at-home writing and reading assignments. Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Maria Irene Fornes wrote: "My goal in workshops is always what will be advantageous for the growth of the individual writer, rather than for the writer to show the other people in the class what he or she has accomplished." In that spirit, we'll focus on generating new work and using craft and process triggers to explore work already under construction. We'll spend the first nine weeks of the semester reading new plays, setting out to discern each playwright's intentions and inquiring of their use of craft elements to excavate those intentions. We'll choose from among a wide array of writing exercises that spring from the plays under discussion. Having explored a range of works and shared a variety of theatrical experiments, students will each create a 35- to 45-minute body of work--which they'll also cast and direct--in our SPRING 2026 CHUNKFEST FESTIVAL.   

Prerequisite: Open to both MA and MFA Creative Writing students.  Repeatable once for credit.  Students working for the first time as Pedagogical Apprentices to instructors of undergraduate Creative Writing courses are required to take this Practicum course concurrent with their work with a teacher of record. Students meet as a group once every three weeks in tandem with asynchronous work on Canvas, posting teaching journals and case studies on a weekly basis. This course provides pedagogical grounding for pragmatic classroom teaching work and offers students a structured forum in which to discuss their teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher and in collaboration with other Pedagogical Apprentices. NB: Each student must make arrangements with an instructor to serve as a Pedagogical Apprentice. 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. This course engages Creative Writing graduate students in pragmatic and theoretical exploration of the teaching of Creative Writing. Our methods and activities will be diverse. We'll begin the semester in imaginative engagement in the student experience, here and now, the Spring of 2026. We'll create and present craft exegeses and craft and process lectures of varying length. We'll explore strategies for engaging in useful, generative analysis of student works-in-progress. We'll hold practice sessions in leading class discussions, setting out to use text models with creativity and adaptability. We'll also discuss aspects of Creative Writing pedagogy as stimulated by essays and interviews. By the end of the semester, each student will have prepared a detailed prospectus for a fifteen-week creative writing course. Course activities will be not only pragmatic but also diagnostic: as the semester progresses, each student will aim to unearth their own particular passions and priorities as writers, educators, and human beings--the prime movers in the discovery of each of our own teaching voices and styles.  

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads at https://creativewriting.sfsu.edu/content/communityprojects-0.  Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships at http://icce.sfsu.edu. These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions, please contact May-Lee Chai at chai@sfsu.edu. C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.   

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate M.F.A. in Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. This course investigates the creative and intellectual processes that shape the writing of speculative historical fiction, with particular attention to the relationship between research, imagination, and narrative design. We will explore how writers transform documented history into fiction, asking how actual events, people and time periods can serve as foundations for narrative invention and where the boundaries between the historical record and imaginative speculation might productively blur. Through readings in contemporary and canonical historical novels, author interviews, archival materials and craft essays, students will consider the aesthetic, ethical and methodological questions that arise when fiction engages with history. The course emphasizes the dual practices of discovery through historical research, archival exploration and contextual study, and development through sustained work on character, setting and plot. Students will conduct independent research related to their own projects and translate those discoveries into narrative form. The ideal participant will either be interested in beginning a novel or will already be at work on a novel-in-progress and prepared to use the course as a space for meaningful progress in conceiving, structuring and deepening their manuscript. For the purposes of this course, the term speculative historical fiction refers to works of fiction that engage with gaps, silences and omissions within the historical record. These absences may result from intentional erasure by those who shaped or controlled documentation, or from the inadvertent neglect of perspectives and details deemed peripheral to dominant narratives. In this context, “speculative” does not denote the inclusion of fantastical, surreal, or magical elements set against historical backdrops. Rather, it signals a mode of imaginative inquiry through which the writer interrogates and reimagines what history has overlooked or suppressed. The aim is to analyze the limits of the archival record and to employ the tools of fiction to articulate what might have been excluded, forgotten or left unsaid. This type of approach can be used, for example, to reimagine the lives of queer people throughout history.

Prerequisite: Restricted to MFA in Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. Denise Ferreira Da Silva proposes recomposition as a necessary practice for making new ways of being. Da Silva’s recomposition “requires that we release thinking from the grip of certainty and embrace the imagination’s power to create with unclear and confused, or uncertain impressions. ”The title for this seminar-workshop draws upon Marjorie Perloff’s 1981 book The Poetics of Indeterminancy: Rimbaud to Cage. In this book, Perloff challenges what poet and scholar Joan Retallack describes as “the empty predictability of the workshop-honed, weakly Symbolist poem — arguing for the importance of [a] kind of complexity and indeterminacy.” This seminar-workshop focuses on the ways that artists create the “disorder and mayhem” that redraft our “geometries of attention.” We will focus on creative art (writing, visual art, music) as “recomposition.” We will read and write and make and think.

C W 893 Written M.A. Creative Project (3 units) 
Prerequisite:  advancement to M.A. candidacy in English: Creative Writing.  Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 3 units M.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which may be a collection of short stories, a group of poems, a novel or a play.  Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or your will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 893 Written M.F.A. Creative Work (6 units)
Prerequisite:  advancement to M.F.A. candidacy in Creative Writing; Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 6 units M.F.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which is expected to be a book length collection of short stories, or poems, or a novel or a play of publishable quality.  Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or your will not receive credit for your thesis.

C W 899 Independent Study                             ARR
Prerequisite:  consent of instructor and a minimum GPA of 3.25.  A special study is planned, developed, and completed under the direction of a faculty member. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Independent Study forms are available online http://registrar.sfsu.edu/forms under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Your instructor will give you a permit number once they have approved the 899 petition.  

Archived Class Schedules

• Fall 2025 Class Schedule
• Spring 2025 Class Schedule
• Fall 2024 Class Schedule
• Spring 2024 Class Schedule
• Fall 2023 Class Schedule
• Spring 2023 Class Schedule
• Fall 2022 Class Schedule
• Summer 2022 Class Schedule
• Spring 2022 Class Schedule
• Fall 2021 Class Schedule
• Spring 2021 Class Schedule
• Fall 2020 Class Schedule 
• Spring 2020 Class Schedule
• Fall 2019 Class Schedule
• Summer 2019 Class Schedule
• Spring 2019 Class Schedule
• Winter 2019 Class Schedule
• Fall 2018 Class Schedule
• Summer 2018 Class Schedule
• Spring 2018 Class Schedule
• Winter 2018 Class Schedule
• Fall 2017 Class Schedule