THE WRITING PROGRAM  |  UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH  

Narrative Audio Workshop (MFA)

In this course, you should expect to dedicate yourself to a single, substantive work of narrative audio—documentary, reported essay, etc.—which you’ll carry from concept to completion with support and insight from your fellow students. While your ideas may evolve over the semester, you should plan to come to the workshop with a concept for a project that you’d like to pursue, which you’ll then pitch, record, script, edit, mix, and polish, aiming to leave the class with a roughly 20-minute broadcast-quality story.  

ENGWRT 2110 / Spring 2019

Listening to Narrative Audio (MFA)

A twist on the traditional graduate "readings" course, this "listenings" course explores the present-day landscape of narrative podcasting against the backdrop of 20th-century radio greats. Students are exposed to a variety of audio styles and genres, including narrative journalism, personal essays, non-narrated documentaries, and serial (non)fiction. Through discussion, critical writing, and creative imitation, we'll use these born-audio stories to reimagine the possibilities of our writing—whether it’s for the ear or for the page.

ENGWRT 2390: Readings in Contemporary Nonfiction / Fall 2017

Digital Nonfiction Workshop (MFA)

In this exploratory workshop, we consider how words can be combined with and interpreted through sounds and images to create rich multi-sensory narratives. Through a mix of discussion, workshops, and hands-on production activities, students come away with a set of technical and conceptual tools for translating their writing into a range of audiovisual genres, while considering how their encounters with these media might, in turn, inform and enrich their craft as writers in traditional textual forms.

ENGWRT 2310: Graduate Nonfiction Workshop / Spring 2017