Explore Creative Writing Courses this Winter!

Non-degree students are welcome to apply to these enriching creative writing courses offered by Memorial University’s English Department - without committing to a full degree program. Whether you're looking to deepen your poetry, sharpen your fiction, or start exploring creative writing for the first time, our upcoming Winter 2026 courses offer an exciting opportunity for all levels. Apply now as a non-degree student!

ENGL 2905 - Introduction to Creative Writing

Introduces students to the basic techniques and tools in the writer’s tool box in order to write original fiction, non-fiction and poetry. This course, led by Dr. Aaron Tucker, will explore examples of literature from these three genres and give students the opportunity to participate in peer-assessment and workshop critiques in order to develop the necessary skills for critical reading and creative writing.
Prerequisites: 6 credit hours of English including ENGL 1090 or the former 1080, or permission of the instructor, Aaron Tucker (aaron.tucker@mun.ca).

Instructor Bio: Aaron Tucker is the author of two novels, three collections of poetry, and two film studies monographs. His latest novel, Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys, was published by Coach House books in 2023. His expanded writing practice includes works of e-literature and conceptual poetry, including The ChessBard, a co-created app that translates chess games into poems.

ENGL 3906 - Introduction to Creative Writing: Oral Storytelling

A creative writing workshop for writers and storytellers who want to explore story structures through oral storytelling practices. We will examine Indigenous and non-Indigenous traditional and contemporary stories and examine techniques used by a range of storytellers, starting with Métis oral traditions and working out from there. We will study a range of materials, with a focus on Métis stories and storytellers, Newfoundland stories and storytellers, and other traditional and contemporary stories and storytellers. You will work through topics and approaches to create your own foundational oral story repertoire made of selections from personal narrative stories, nonfiction, and traditional stories including myth, folk and fairy tales. By the end of the course, you will have a sense of what a range of oral story practices look and sound like and which techniques work for your stories. In this class we will use the concept of traditional Métis visiting as an approach to listening to and responding to each other’s work. This class does not teach Indigenous stories and performance styles but instead leads students to develop stories that emerge from their own cultures and backgrounds.
This class will be lead by Dr. Michelle Porter.
Students are asked to please submit up to two pages of writing in any genre or an audio clip of a story they’ve told to michelleporter@mun.ca by November 15^th. 

ENGL 7207 - Telling it Crooked: Oral Storytelling and The Shape of Stories

Oral storytelling is at the centre of all our literary arts and we’re all natural storytellers. In this class students will explore oral literature as a practice and as a literary art. We begin with the ida that oral stories are the foundation of literature and that we all know how to tell a story, but we’ve lost touch with the shape of oral storytelling. This class will examine academic literature on oral storytelling alongside Indigenous and non-Indigenous traditional and contemporary stories in order to understand the approaches to telling a story used by a range of storytellers, starting with Métis oral traditions and working out from there. Classes will alternate between intimate storytelling sessions and discussion-based seminars. At the end of this class students will have an in-depth understanding of stories that are spoken “from your lips” and the relationship of oral stories to their written work and have created a portfolio of stories to tell.
This course will be taught by Dr. Michelle Porter, who can be reached at michelleporter@mun.ca

Instructor Bio: Michelle Porter is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers (the Goulet family), most of whom told their stories with music and she continues that tradition using words. Her first novel A Grandmother Begins the Story won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and long listed for the Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize 2023. She is the author of two books of nonfiction, Approaching Fire and Scratching River, and one book of poetry, Inquiries, which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry 2020. 

Enroll Today!

Take a MUN creative writing course without committing to a full degree program, apply as a non-degree student! For more details, contact the course instructors or the Department of English.