Alan DeNiro

Creative Writing Exercises (2004)
"These writing exercises can be used, and modified, in any fiction writing workshop, but might have particular value in workshop settings which have an emphasis on nonrealistic storytelling forms."

Theodora Goss

Course Title: "Fantasy and the Fantastic"
Institution: Boston University
"Fantasy and the Fantastic" was a composition course taught through the Writing Program at Boston University. The class began by focusing on fantasy, and specifically the fairy tale… Throughout these discussions, I emphasized that the boundary crossings found in fantasy and the fantastic teach us something important about our own reality. Drawing boundaries seems to be an essential human activity, since bounded categories allow us to understand the world. However, boundaries are often drawn to exclude what we fear, and they can have important consequences for our perception of the world around us, particularly when we are confronted with other cultures…"

John Langan

Course Title: "Contemporary Fiction: Genre, Genre, Everywhere"
Institution: SUNY New Paltz.
"This class focused on introducing students to contemporary works that engaged fictional genres in interesting and provocative ways. In most cases, this meant that we read texts taken from within the various genres… I tried to include a mystery, a fantasy, a gothic, and a horror novel, and part of the focus of the class was in examining the (often shared) histories of these forms, how different narrative forms treat the same questions, and the ways these genres talk to one another. I was also interested in the ways that the genre writers were working with--and often against--the conventions of their forms."