In this class, we will consider themes of social justice and identity alongside craft and structure when it comes to reading and writing prose and poetry. The books are chosen for their complex observations and revisions of past and present, their hopes and visions for the future under difficult or impossible circumstances. We will look at real and imagined dystopias, experimental and classically structured works, the spare and the ornate. Many of our discussions will center on contrast, truth, possibility, aesthetics, the many modes and manifestations of creativity, textual and otherwise, and what they have to do with life as we are living it now. Representative authors: Clarice Lispector, Steven Dunn, Erika Wurth, Roland Barthes, Octavia Butler, Eden Robinson, Muriel Rukeyser, Marjane Satrapi and others.