Writing Creative Non-Fiction
Why does one Toronto professor leave money in random places throughout the streets of Athens? How does an everyday trip to an Eaton鈥檚 department store empower a Vancouver man to come to terms with the death of his best friend? What do the police want to question one young woman about when she wakes up outside a military dormitory on her nineteenth birthday? Why does a nattily dressed stranger on his bicycle suddenly shout out to no one in particular the word 鈥淵es!鈥?*
CWRI 273 is a study of creative non-fiction. Through a reading of representative works of Canadian creative non-fiction (drawn from Luanne Armstrong and Zo毛 Landale鈥檚 Slice Me Some Truth anthology) and an examination of one of the best known manuals on writing creative non-fiction and memoir (Lee Gutkind鈥檚 You Can鈥檛 Make This Stuff Up), students will learn creative non-fiction techniques such as balancing objective and subjective truth, performing research and immersion, developing compelling scenes, composing effective 鈥渉ooks,鈥 generating believable dialogue, and more. We will study a diversity of Canadian memoirists, including Fiona Timwei Lam, Shelley A. Leedahl, Myrna Kostash, Wayne Grady, Evelyn Lau, Mark Kingwell, and others.
*We will answer these and other questions when we study Susan Glickman鈥檚 鈥淔ound Money,鈥 Stephen Osborne鈥檚 鈥淭he Man Who Stole Christmas,鈥 Ayelet Tsabari鈥檚 鈥淵ou and What Army,鈥 and Jane Silcott鈥檚 鈥淣atty Man鈥!
As a final project, students will compose their own work of memoir for publication in a collected class anthology! Click here to read anthologies from past classes!
Seminar Hours
Wednesdays, 1.00 p.m. ET - 2.30 p.m. ET
Fridays, 11.30 p.m. ET - 1.00 p.m. ET
Seminar Location
Room 308,
Course Syllabus
Download the printer-friendly version of the Course Syllabus in .pdf by clicking on the thumbnail below. Be sure to download the correct Course Syllabus. This Course Syllabus is for the Winter 2026 on-campus version of CWRI 273.
