Fall 2025 Courses at a Glance
WR-320-01 Internship/Fieldwork – Adrian Shirk – By Appointment
WR-320-02 Keep Me In Suspense – Gina Zucker – Weds 10:00 am – 12:50 pm CANN 128
WR-320-03 Journalism – Gabriel Cohen – Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm DEK 208
WR-320-04 Journalism – Gabriel Cohen – Thurs 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm DEK 208
WR-320-05 Children’s Book Writing – Peter Catalanotto – Mon 10:00 am – 12:50 pm NH 306
WR-320-06 Plays and Movies – James Hannaham – Tues 10:30 am – 1:20 pm DEK 208
WR-320-07 Stand Up Comedy for Writers – Kath Barbadoro – Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm CANN 128
WR-320-08 Poetry and Psychoanalysis – Claire Donato – Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm ENG 117
WR-320-09 Fantastic Voyagers – David Gordon – Weds 5:00 – 7:50 pm NH 306
WR-320-10 Fantastic Voyagers – David Gordon – Thurs 5:00 – 7:50 pm NH 306
WR-320-11 Secret Locations on the Lower East Side & Elsewheres – Anselm Berrigan – Fri 10:00 am – 12:50 pm CANN 128
WR-320-12 Body Horror: Abjection as Craft – Dianca Potts – Fri 10:00 am – 12:50 pm DEK 208
WR-320-13 Publishing Lab: Ubiquitous – Alysia Slocum – Weds 4:00 pm – 6:50 pm CANN 128
WR-320-14 Images In Between Images – Silvina Lopez Medin – Tues 11:00 am – 1:50 pm CANN 135
WR-320-15 Screenwriting – Don Andreason – Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm NH 306
WR-320-16 Obsessed! The Poetics of Devotion, Fixation, and Transgression – Laura Henriksen – Weds 10:00 am – 12:50 pm – CANN 128
WR 320-17 The History and Practice of the Writer’s Walk – Rachel Levitsky – Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm CANN 135
WR-320-18 Storytelling Lab – Ellery Washington – Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm ENG 305
WR-320-19 When You’re Not Writing – Sincere Brooks – Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm DEK 408
WR-320-21 The Bigger Picture – Adrian Shirk – Weds 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm – Online
WR-320-1B Berlin Fieldwork – Christian Hawkey – By Appointment
WR-325A Prattler Workshop I – Eric Rosenblum Mon 9:30 am – 12:20 pm CANN 128
WR-320-01 By Appointment
INTERNSHIP/FIELDWORK
Adrian Shirk
This course is designed for BFA Writing students (and occasionally students from other departments) who choose to pursue an independent fieldwork project that relates to an area of professional or artistic development that they want to gain new skills and experience in. Fieldwork allows the student to design a semester-length project with the supervising instructor in light of the students’ goals, which otherwise aren’t reflected in an existing course or internship. These projects may range from starting a literary journal, publishing project, podcast, video series, event, community arts workshop, collaboration with a local organization, performance production, specific form of professional development through research and mentoring (i.e. agenting, running a nonprofit, developing a business plan, etc), and many other possibilities. (All students who wish to register for this course must contact the instructor and declare the specific content and scope of their project for approval).
Similar to Internship/Seminar, this course asks: What can we learn from a fieldwork project if we treat it as an alternative type of classroom? How can we analyze and engage with our experiences “out in the field” with the rigor and curiosity we bring to other kinds of texts? Viewed this way, the fieldwork project becomes an educational opportunity that allows us to gain experiential knowledge about a particular professional, artistic and/or material sphere, and from which we can determine the kind of work-life conditions we will need as writers/artists, now and in the future. However, in even more ways than Internship/Seminar, this course offers self-reflexive assignments that reflect the project’s progress, and a journal that allows students to look critically and constructively at the content of their lives and work “outside” of their conventional classrooms, specifically pertaining to the parts of their lives that the fieldwork overlaps with.
At its core, this course offers a guided professional exploration while students carry out the labor of their independent fieldwork project. The class is designed around a seminar model with two primary goals: 1) to enable students to get the most out of their own projects as modes of education; and 2) to foster communication between students about their experiences and the fields/skills/vocations they are exploring, so that each comes away with a more nuanced picture of the variety of professions, experiences and choices available to writers in the current culture and economy. Above all, this course asks students to engage critically with their experiences and to complete specific self-styled projects based on the professional and creative inquiries / excursions they’re undertaking, resulting in a significant final project that stands as a measure of their fifteen-week activity.
WR-320-02 Weds 10:00 am – 12:50 pm CANN 128
KEEP ME IN SUSPENSE
Gina Zucker
We’ve seen the blurbs on the covers of certain books, shouting about the page turner within, a story that sets you on the edge of your seat, or takes you on a roller coaster ride, or keeps you guessing until the very end so that you can’t put it down! But the technique of crafting suspense in fiction writing isn’t just for murder mysteries and thrillers. Suspenseful storytelling plays an essential role in narrative fiction of any genre, style, or time period, be it pulp, literary, or whispered by the campfire. Without suspense, however subtle, the book is set down on the bedside table, never to be opened again. Suspense, per the dictionary definition, is a state of excitement or anxious uncertainty about what might happen. Human minds are wired to feel discomfort in uncertainty, probably for reasons connected to our survival. We want to see, to know, to understand; we want answers, we want an outcome we can grasp quickly, so we can get on with things. But many of us also feel energized and transported by not knowing, while at the same time desperately wanting to know. We storytellers get that contradiction, and we use it as a mechanism to make our readers keep reading. In this class we will learn some of the tried and true techniques writers use to create suspense in fiction, such as cliffhangers and foreshadowing, as well as less obvious ones, such as ambiguity and unfinished sentences in “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James, or vulnerability and misunderstanding in “Apollo” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We’ll practice our own expressions of this storytelling power, in writing exercises and, for the final project, in writing a complete story modeled on one of our class readings. In the latter part of the semester, students will choose readings for the class. Students will also deliver regular oral presentations on our readings, workshop their stories, and may write occasional short analytical responses.
WR-320-03 Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm DEK 208
WR-320-04 Thurs 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm DEK 208
JOURNALISM
Gabriel Cohen
Do you want your writing to have a positive effect in the world? These days, good journalists are more important than ever: they help defend our democracy, preserve the environment, champion the oppressed, and give readers a deeper understanding of what’s going on in our volatile world. In this course we’ll read powerful examples of journalistic writing, and you’ll get a chance to practice essential skills, including how to come up with interesting topics for articles—we’ll find them in Pratt, our local neighborhoods, and our fascinating city. Students will also learn how to do research, conduct interviews, write lively prose, and make strong arguments. Last but not least, you’ll find out how to pick appropriate venues for your story ideas and how to pitch them to editors. Who knows: you might even get published!
Gabriel Cohen is the author of a literary novel, four crime novels, and a nonfiction book, and was a finalist for an Edgar award. He has written for the New York Times, Poets & Writers, TimeOut New York, Gourmet. com, and many other publications. Now in his 15th year of teaching at Pratt, he has also taught writing at New York University, the Center for Fiction, and Long Island University; worked as a staff writer at the New Haven Advocate weekly newspaper; and was profiled in the New York Times for publishing three different kinds of books in one year.
WR-320-05 Mon 10:00 am – 12:50 pm NH 306
CHILDREN’S BOOK WRITING
Peter Catalanotto
This course will focus on writing a timeless story that will appeal to children and resonate with adults. Through exercises, in-class assignments, and the workshop method, students will mine their lives and imaginations for a story that will enchant and empower children; a story that will provoke discussion stemming from the adult and child’s shared experience. Students will discover the importance of brevity, pattern, and cadence, and how to create writing that inspires, supports, and enhances imagery. This course will also offer avenues for submitting stories to agents and editors for those interested in publishing.
WR-320-06 Tues 10:30 am – 1:20 pm DEK 208
PLAYS AND MOVIES
James Hannaham
In this class, students will read plays and film scripts out loud, occasionally in goofy voices. No acting skills are required, but reading skills will be appreciated. Please be eager to embarrass yourself. Some of the scripts will have been written by known playwrights and screenwriters, others will be written by you. We may read transcripts of real events. Some of the movies will have been made by professionals, some of the movies will be made by you. A portion of the material will be suggested/chosen by the class. As we read, we will also do research. Before we make movies or finish plays, we will read and revise scripts. The final project will be a short play or a short film made by you. There might be special guests.
WR-320-07 Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm CANN 128
STAND UP COMEDY FOR WRITERS
Kath Barbadoro
What makes a joke a joke? This class aims to provide a supportive environment to learn and practice the fundamentals of joke writing and comedic performance in the context of stand up comedy. Through analyzing the work of comedians like Wanda Sykes, Mitch Hedberg and John Mulaney, as well as that of up and coming comedians working locally in Brooklyn, we’ll learn to identify and use comedic devices like repetition, incongruity, and character-based perspective in our own work. Through structured and unstructured writing and performance exercises, we’ll learn to use the rhetorical structures of comedy to help us express our own unique perspectives. In performing our material for each other in class, we’ll get more comfortable speaking in front of others, and the satisfaction of making each other laugh. The final for the course will be a stand up comedy performance open to the public.
WR-320-08 Tues 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm ENG 117
POETRY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Claire Donato
Poetry and Psychoanalysis will explore the unconscious mind’s relation to creative writing praxis, with emphasis on how psychoanalytic concepts—e.g., free association, dream interpretation, the uncanny, dream interpretation, transitional phenomena, holding, desire, attachment, mourning, and so forth—may be adapted toward literary experiments. Together, we will consider what it means to be what Jacques Lacan neologized as the parlêtre—the speaking being, the body gripped by language—and will explore speech’s relationship to writing, revelation, and transformation. The course will provide background on and contemporary context of psychoanalysis as a discipline, with emphasis on how psychoanalysis may be an emancipatory practice and a potential tool for liberation, particularly in relation to issues of social justice and sustainability. The course will present a selection of psychoanalytic writing and case studies as literature in conversation with other literary art.
WR-320-09 Weds 5:00 – 7:50 pm NH 306
WR-320-10 Thurs 5:00 – 7:50 pm NH 306
FANTASTIC VOYAGERS
David Gordon
This course will explore works that engage with the “fantastic,” – fantasy, magic, the supernatural, futuristic or speculative – but which lie outside the conventional genres of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. These outlier writers and artists, drawing on their different cultures as well as on religion, folk tales, history science, move freely between “realistic” and “imaginary,” between the “literary” and “popular” even between the “earthly” and the “spiritual” to create powerful, original, and deeply effective work. We will consider how fantastic elements can be integrated with both traditional narratives, realism and experimental writing with a view toward enriching our own practice. Authors/works might include: The Arabian Nights, Amos Tutola, Bruno Schulz, Muriel Spark, Shirley Jackson, Cesar Aira, Angela Carter, Izumi Suzuki, and Mariana Enriquez. Film, video and visual art will also be viewed and discussed.
WR-320-11 Fri 10:00 am – 12:50 pm CANN 128
SECRET LOCATIONS ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE AND ELSEWHERE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE AND ELSEWHERES
Anselm Berrigan
This elective course will focus on small press and magazine poetry publishing from 1960 through the present, with an emphasis on physical magazines and journals over books and e-publications. Along the way we will look at different magazines and presses from different eras up through the present, and gather details and idiosyncrasies to put to use as we invent a new poetry-centered magazine to be edited, bound and printed collectively by the end of the semester. The title of the course is based on an exhibition at the New York Public Library in the late 1990s and an accompanying anthology, which will serve as a source text for our more archival conversations and points of study. Some magazines we will likely encounter include: “C”, the White Dove Review, Yugen/Floating Bear, Sulfur, Mandorla, Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, Chicago, L=A=N=G=U=A=G-E, and Hambone, among many others.
WR-320-12 Fri 10:00 am – 12:50 pm DEK 208
BODY HORROR: ABJECTION AS CRAFT
Dianca Potts
Through a diverse selection of creative works, revelatory prompts, and engaged discussion, students will collectively explore the possibilities of abjection, body horror, and the sensory as generative and analytical praxis. Students will unearth and excavate new ways to invoke and center the body through narrative design and experimentation with form. Throughout this course, students will be encouraged to uncover new approaches to their creative practice and spark the cultivation of new works and approaches to revision and craft. Participants will also learn how to incorporate artifacts, new media, and theory into their work to further excavate, channel, and conjure new thresholds and topographies within their writing. Together, we’ll uncover the narrative potential of what disturbs, rattles, and haunts. Students will engage with works by Natalie Diaz, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Claire Cronin, Jennifer Reeder, Audre Lorde, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed, Michelle Garza Cervera, Rachel Yoder, Agustina Bazterrica, and more.
WR-320-13 Weds 4:00 pm – 6:50 pm CANN 128
PUBLISHING LAB: UBIQUITOUS
Alysia Slocum
Publishing Laboratory: Ubiquitous will introduce each student to the creative and editorial process of generating Ubiquitous, a literary and arts magazine with an over 30 year history at Pratt Institute. The literary magazine’s aim is to publish original works from the Pratt Institute community in areas of poetry, prose, visual arts, and design. The course will culminate with one published issue, with each student serving an editorial role.
WR-320-14 Tues 11:00 am – 1:50 pm CANN 135
IMAGES IN BETWEEN IMAGES: WRITING POETRY WITH PHOTOS AS POINTS OF DEPARTURE, ARRIVAL, OR ORBIT
Silvina Lopez Medin
In this workshop we will read, discuss, and write poetry in conversation with photographs. We will consider the space of the page and what effects and affects are set in motion by bringing together image and text. We will look at excerpts from books by authors whose work is directly or indirectly connected with photography, such as Anne Carson, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Don Mee Choi, Reina María Rodríguez, and Robin Coste Lewis. We will observe the formal elements of each poet’s work, and pay attention to which aspects resonate as we fill the space of the page with our own creative pieces.
WR-320-15 Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm NH 306
SCREENWRITING
Don Andreasen
This course will introduce students to the fundamental techniques of screenwriting. We will study formatting, the use of setting, location, narrative structure, conflict, character development and dialogue. In the first half each student will write short scenes in order to explore and develop various aspects of screenwriting. In the second half students choose one scene to develop into a script for a short film approximately 7-15 minutes in length. Throughout the semester, students will read and discuss their work in class as well as view and discuss various films and topics. The class will be divided into 2 groups who submit their work on alternating weeks. Each script is read aloud by fellow classmates who are assigned their characters by the writer of the script. A discussion and critique immediately follows each reading.
WR-320-16 Weds 10:00 am – 12:50 pm – CANN 128
OBSESSED: THE POETICS OF DEVOTION, FIXATION, AND TRANSGRESSION
Laura Henriksen
The song you hate or the one you love. The town your family passed through that summer, how the sky looked different there. Your crush. Your celebrity crush. Fear of the social gathering, fear of the unknown. Love of the unknown, love of the ocean. The candle you lit that won’t stop burning. History, fantasy, wish, and curse. I’m sure you already have obsessions. And with the right abandon, anything can take its place on your list.
In this generative course, we will approach obsession as a gift, an opportunity, a risk, a sigil, a vehicle, a trance state, a social eruption. Through research and experimentation, we will tumble courageously into the wormhole of fixation, grateful to be transported.
Obsessed guides will include: Chantal Akerman, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Raúl Zurita, Kate Durbin, Courtney Bush, Nora Treatbaby, Etel Adnan, Saidiya Hartman, Robert Glück, Sophie Calle, Anelise Chen, and others.
WR 320-17 Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm CANN 135
THE HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF THE WRITER’S WALK
Rachel Levitsky
Writers are famous walkers and walking is a famous practice for writers. In this elective we will read writing on walking and from walking, and we will study and practice contemporary non-ableist adaptations on “the walk”. For each text we read, we will take a walk, and we will produce some sort of text. Texts will be multi-form and will include mapping, collage, video, performance and straight up text on the page. Walks will be made accessible for all bodies and minds.
WR-320-18 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm ENG 305
STORYTELLING LAB
Ellery Washington
The Storytelling Lab is an interdisciplinary, project-based course in which students engage in “building” the narrative structures within a visual, literary, poetic, design, film, multiple-form or other type of piece. The course combines narrative theory and practice in a studio environment where the emphasis is on the exploratory, pushing beyond the original forms of inquiry in a setting where the development of varied projects can benefit from both individual and collective feedback.
WR-320-19 Weds 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm DEK 408
WHEN YOU’RE NOT WRITING
Sincere Brooks
This course challenges students to see writing as an active, immersive process that extends beyond the page. Through engaging with the world around them—be it conversations, social media, pop culture, historical events, documentaries, news archives, or personal experiences—students will discover ways to generate ideas and construct compelling narratives. They will explore how seemingly unrelated topics intersect, using research and creative thinking to form nuanced perspectives. Assignments will include written pieces, multimedia presentations, and short-form audio or visual recordings, culminating in a final project that synthesizes their work. Through in-class discussions, peer collaboration, and critical analysis of narrative techniques, students will refine their storytelling skills and develop their unique voices.
WR-320-21 Weds 5:00 pm – 7:50 pm – Online
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Adrian Shirk
Are you drawn to personal narratives that blur the experiential and the critical, the formal and the idiosyncratic, the private and the public? This course takes a close look at the research-driven personal essay—that genre somewhere between, or within, memoir, reportage, philosophy, history, ethnography, etc. What kinds of narratives can you find in your own life? What are the elements of craft that elevate these forms to the level of art? How can research frame those experiences—and further, can those experiences illuminate social, political, global narratives? How do you situate yourself as narrator within a “bigger picture”? These are a few of the questions the course will address. Students will be required to read selected materials, and generate lots of new nonfiction writing—both in and out of class—and will above all develop and workshop their own researched personal essays. Reading material will include 21st century works by authors such as Rebecca Solnit, Kiese Laymon, Valeria Luiselli, Eula Biss, and Ta-Nehisi Coates; 20th century works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, James Baldwin, Joan Didion and MFK Fisher; and maybe some turn-of-the-century stuff (Woolf, Twain). We’ll also look at other narrative media in this genre, such as audio essay and documentary.
WR-320-1B By Appointment
BERLIN FIELDWORK
Christian Hawkey
Berlin Fieldwork invites students to explore their practice and professional goals by pairing them with an outside organization or cultural institution in Berlin. Berlin is a city with numerous reading series, cultural centers, bookstores, magazines, writers, and activist organizations, many of which operate across numerous languages, including English. This is your chance to get hands-on experience in a chosen literary and/or professional field.
WR-325A Mon 9:30 am – 12:20 pm CANN 128
PRATTLER WORKSHOP I
Eric Rosenblum
This unique journalism workshop gives students the chance to think broadly about the art of newspaper and magazine writing and to develop their own articles for Pratt’s nearly century-old publication, The Prattler. Most classes take the form of editorial meetings in which the group discusses the upcoming Prattler issue and workshops student contributions, often consisting of personal essays, opinion pieces, news stories, and art, music and film criticism. Assigned readings from publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and Vice, as well as visiting journalists, help students to understand the ethics and process of writing for publication.
WR-360-01 Sat 8:30-1:20 The Art Of Teaching Writing
Saturdays 8:30 am – 1:20 pm
Engineering 3rd floor
Pratt’s Saturday Writing School is a teaching laboratory that provides writing classes for local adolescents. Depending on program enrollment, each pair of writing major undergraduates is assigned a class of between three and six middle school students. Writing undergrads are responsible for the planning and teaching of a ten-week sequence of writing lessons guided by the theory and strategies presented by the instructor. The instructor supervises and advises student teachers and will visit them in their classroom during each two-hour session. A seminar immediately following each class is a forum for reflection on common issues and problems, both classroom and societal, emerging from the Saturday Writing School experience.
Fall 2025 Inquiry, Practice, and Writing Live menus (for Writing majors)
Inquiry:
WR 320-02 Keep me in Suspense
WR 320-08 Poetry and Psychoanalysis
WR 320-09 and 10: Fantastic Voyagers
WR 320-11: Secret Locations
WR 320-12: Body Horror
WR 320-14: Images in between Images
WR 320-16: Obsessed
WR 320-17: History and Practice of the Writer’s Walk
WR 320-19: When You’re Not Writing
Practice:
WR 320–01 and 1B: Fieldwork and Berlin Fieldwork
WR 320-03 and 04: Journalism
WR 320-05: Children’s Book Writing
WR 320-06: Plays and Movies
WR 320-07: Stand Up Comedy for Writers
WR 320-13: Publishing Lab-Ubiquitous
WR 320-15: Screenwriting
WR 320-18: Storytelling Lab
WR 320-21: The Bigger Picture
WR 325a: The Prattler Workshop I
Writing Lives:
*any of the courses listed below automatically count for this requirement in the degree. However you are welcome to fulfill this requirement by selecting any other course that specifically supports your creative and/or professional goals post-graduation. That could include, for example, our electives in screenwriting, stand up comedy, journalism, or other subjects; or it could include a course in another program that helps you prepare for your working and writing life after graduation. Talk with your academic advisor or the department chair if you have any questions about fulfilling this requirement.
WR 320–01 and 1B: Fieldwork and Berlin Fieldwork
WR 320-13: Publishing Lab-Ubiquitous
WR 325a: The Prattler Workshop I
WR 360: The Art of Teaching Writing