English 4011:  Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction—Fall 2009

Kafka’s Father & Children

Brian Kiteley

● ● ●

Class meets Thursday 4-7:50 pm ● bkiteley@du.edu ● My office hours: Wednesday 3-5 or by appointment

NOTE: This graduate fiction workshop is OPEN ONLY to fiction writers in the Ph.D. program in the English Department.

TEXTS: Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, Schocken Books; Franz Kafka, The Sons, Schocken Books; Robert Walser, Selected Stories, New York Review of Books Classics; Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, Penguin; Brian Kiteley The 4 AM Breakthrough, Writer's Digest Books.

Schedule of workshop

ABOUT THE EXERCISES: I’ll ask you to write a handful of the exercises from The 4 AM Breakthrough during the term. We will also discuss the book as a teaching device.

ABOUT THE COURSE: In this course, we’ll read Kafka and look at an immediate influence (Robert Walser) and someone strongly influenced by him (Bruno Schulz). We’ll pay close attention to Kafka’s letter to his father and many of Kafka’s parables and paradoxes. We’ll also read some Beckett and Barthelme.

ASSIGNMENTS: You are each responsible for two 300-word critiques of each others’ work. You’ll write a critique of everybody’s work twice (of the three or four sets of writing everyone is producing). Give me a copy of these critiques. Bring these critiques to class the day of the discussion of your classmates’ work.

I will also ask you to write a brief essay on or creative response to one of these four texts (300-500 words), which we’ll discuss toward the end of the term.

And, of course, you’ll write fiction in the class, your own on-going projects or new material generated by the exercises. You will each submit four pieces of writing during the term (as well as the one exercise at the beginning). Your piece can be any length, although I suggest you try to stay under 25 pages. You may submit several smaller pieces. It would be best if these works were not completely new material, but they should also be writing that hasn’t seen too many workshops.

Brian Kiteley's home page