When you sit down and write - a poem, dashed off, or a quick character description, or a moment you witnessed on the bus that you think would make an excellent opener to a short story - what are you doing? Assembling sentences, stringing words together in a way you find pleasing, in a way that means those words do the precise job you employed them to do. You are expressing yourself, pouring your imagination into existence.
But how is that something we can study? Isn’t writing something you can either do or can’t? Aren’t we born with the innate talent required to be a writer?
Not at all. Storytelling is an artform. There are building blocks and moving parts, there are relationships with literature and culture and language that can be learnt and deepened. You can learn to write, just like you can learn to play the piano or learn to act.
When we talk about Creative Writing as a field of study, we’re going beyond the activity of expressive writing - something we all did to varying degrees at school, and many of us for fun in our diaries and notebooks - and concerning ourselves with questions of literary craft. As well as that, we’re digging into language, positioning our works culturally, and learning how to re-write and refine our writing with the help of our peers’ feedback and critiques.
At the heart of our class is the workshop and effectively participating in one is a key skill you will begin working on the moment you join us. The workshop is a space in which you present your writing for thorough, constructive critique and in which you thoroughly and constructively critique the writing of others. You do this using the elements of craft as a framework. Elements of craft are things like character and plot and setting, and you will learn how they form a story’s building blocks. Through workshopping, you’ll develop your own skills as a writer at the same time as helping others develop theirs.
Who can take the class? Creative Writing is an elective class open to students studying English at the EUF. If this sounds like something you would like more information on, please get in touch.
Interested in joining us? Email olivia.hambrett-PleaseRemoveIncludingDashes-@uni-flensburg.de
Your instructor: Olivia (Liv) Hambrett
Born and raised in sunny Sydney, Liv Hambrett obtained her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Creative Writing at Macquarie University. Soon after, on a wing and a prayer, she left for Germany. She’s still here. From 2017 to 2019, she worked at Kiel's University of Applied Sciences for both the Centre for Languages and Intercultural Studies and the Media Department, implementing original English-language seminars for the latter. At the end of 2019, she joined the University of Flensburg as a lecturer in Practical English and has been here ever since. Alongside practical English lecturing at the EUF, Liv has been building this very Creative Writing course for English language students and looking at what role the workshop can play in the language learning space. Liv also holds her Cambridge CELTA and Certificate IV in TESOL. You can read more about her own writing projects here.
What’s New
- International Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language Conference, 2024
Click here to view the poster from this year’s IATEFL Conference, titled: Bringing Creative Writing into the EFL Classroom at Universities
- Literary Journal Project
In the spring semester of 2024, we’re working towards an exciting goal. Alongside the KSM Project students, we are going to create the first edition of a literary journal. It will be available for purchase in the summer of 2024. More details to follow.