LIBRARY COURSES
CORE LIBRARY // Intentional Craft: Writing Outside Your Lived Experience with Ayana Gray
New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray guides students through approaching their writing craft with respect, responsibility, and accountability at every stage of the process.
Intentional Craft: Writing Outside Your Lived Experience will inspire you to create interesting, diverse stories by teaching students the importance and skill of crafting characters outside your own lived experiences. Storytellers have the unique power to open doors and build bridges when they write stories that are inclusive and encompass more than one community. In this foundational course, Ayana addresses how to respectfully and responsibly write characters of different races, ethnicities, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, disabilities, and neurodiversities. From her own experiences and research, Ayana includes best practices, dos and don’ts, as well as practical ways to avoid stereotypes when venturing out into new territory.
FANTASY LIBRARY // Fantasy Gateways: Approaches to Magical Worldbuilding with Zoraida Córdova
Prolific author Zoraida Córdova guides students through the different entry points of science fiction and fantasy worlds in Fantasy Gateways: Approaches to Magical Worldbuilding.Drawing from her extensive experience, Zoraida Córdova walks students through her worldbuilding process, including character, setting, and magic system development. Presenting her own works as case studies, Córdova shows students how to bridge the fantastic to reality through research and cultural analogs. Students will join Córdova as they map a hero’s quest using her preferred story beats, research checklist, and worldbuilding questions. This course applies to all writing genres, expanding beyond novels into screenplays, comics, video games, and more.
