I've taught courses and independent studies at Missouri Southern State University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the University of South Dakota, and at the University of Windsor. Recent creative writing courses include:

introduction to creative writing.

By exploring creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, we tease out and blur the lines between genres. During the Maymester 2018, we focused exclusively on short-short forms, studying chapbooks by writers such as Jenny Yang Cropp, Danez Smith, Chen Chen, Jacqueline Doyle, Caroline Picard, and others. In Spring 2018, we focused on flash fiction, flash essays, and the prose poem, reading selections from Brevity, Roxane Gay's Ayiti (always a student favourite), Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Zachary Schomburg's Fjords Vol 1., and others. In Fall 2018, we focused on poetry and short stories exclusively, reading works such as Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, Toni Jensen's From Hilltop, Lauren K. Alleyne's Difficult Fruit, and selections from The Best American Short Stories 2016, Best American Poetry 2016, and Best of the Net 2016.

---

shaping the story: magic and metaphor.

Diving into fabulist fiction, we hold metaphor and magic as tools for exploring reality and the strange with writers such as Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Amber Sparks, Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, Livia Llewellyn, and others in this intermediate fiction workshop.

---

writing the young adult novel.

In this Independent Study, we focused on reading recently published young adult novels across genres in order to study current tropes in YA fiction alongside plot, character, setting, theme, and subtext in the novel form. Rounding out our reading list were The Marrow Thieves (Cherie Dimaline), Speak Easy, Speak Love (McKelle George), The Last Namsara (Kristen Cicarelli), The Girl From Everywhere (Heidi Heilig), You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, (Rachel Lynn Solomon) and others.

advanced short story writing.

In this Independent Study, the short story, especially those that explore speculative and fabulist narratives, became our bread and butter. We discussed stories by Helen Oyeyemi, Neil Gaiman, Maureen McHugh, Ken Liu, Livia Llewellyn, and Ted Chiang alongside an exploration of the details of writing contemporary short fiction that flirts with genre while also remaining in a literary space.