Course Objectives

This component – the creative, literary work – will be the backbone of the programme of study. The workshop is the main arena for exploration of one’s own production of fiction, and of one’s own authorship.

Course Description

The students’ own texts, produced before or during the course, will form both the basis and the focal point of the study. The texts will be discussed and analysed both in small groups and in plenary, thus allowing an interaction between individual creativity and joint analyses. This will yield new perspectives and a heightened critical sense of literary production.

The workshop will be based on co-operation and the creation of an environment where literary ideas can develop and evolve – not on normative teaching of different literary techniques and strategies. The approach will be open and experimental, based on respect for each student’s individual literary expression.

In addition to the author(s) regularly associated with the workshop, a host of specially invited authors from other Nordic countries will participate in the course. Some of these will be important to the students as tutors and inspirers.

Larger, individual writing projects may also be addressed in plenary, so that students from an early stage can receive feedback on their work.

An anthology with contributions from all students will be edited and issued at the end of the course. In the spring term, students will be given the opportunity of meeting publishing agents and representatives from different authors’ unions and organisations.

Learning Methods

The course will be in the form of lectures and group discussions, with individual creative work, work in small groups, textual analyses, and individual tutorials.

Assessment Methods

In the anthology, a joint project compiled and edited by the students at the end of the academic year, each student will contribute around 15 pages of text. To pass the course, students must have their texts approved by an external examiner. Further, three written home assignments, given in connection with three elective sections of three weeks each, must be approved. Pass/fail evaluation.

Minor adjustments may occur during the academic year, subject to the decision of the Dean