Creative Writing: the Tools of the Profession or first Read, then Write

A more accurate title for this course could be «Creative Reading». It implies, in fact, a strong interest in literature, in the pleasure of reading stories, poems, and essays – in a word, of reading books. A direct and close contact with some entertaining texts authored by the best contemporary Italian writers will lead the student to grow conscious of her/his voice and achieve a deeper understanding of it. We will read and comment the texts of the writers and also the texts produced by the students during the course. Our attention will be focused on the structure of Italian sentences, on the meanings of Italian words. We will examine many subtle features of the Italian written and spoken language. We will speak about Italian society, history and politics – all phenomena that give birth to new words. Together we will look for a style, in the pages we read and in the pages we write. Active participation in class is warmly required.


Required texts (to be read before the course starts)

Fruttero & Lucentini, I ferri del mestiere. Manuale involontario di scrittura con esercizi svolti, Tascabili Einaudi, n. 1279, Torino 2004.

Additional reading material will be provided by the instructor, possibly including short texts by Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Beppe Fenoglio, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Natalia Ginzburg, Tommaso Landolfi, Primo Levi, Leo Longanesi, Goffredo Parise, and others.