|MFA Core Reading List____________

Fiction

• Barth, John. Lost in the Fun House, Bantam, 1979.
• Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. Vintage, 1991.
• Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Vintage, 1989.
• Chekov, Anton. Anton Chekov's Short Stories, Norton Critical Edition, 1979
• William Faulkner. Go Down, Moses, Vintage, 1991.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby, Scribner, 1996.
• Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Perennial, 1999.
• Joyce, James, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Penguin, 1993.
• Morrison, Toni. Beloved, Plume, 1998.
• Munro, Alice. Selected Stories. New York: Vintage, 1997.
• O'Connor, Flannery. Complete Stories, Noonday, 1996.
• Paley, Grace. Collected Stories, Noonday, 1995.
• Steinbeck, John. East of Eden, Penguin, 1992.
• Welty, Eudora, Collected Stories, Harvest Books, 1982.
• Woolf, Virginia, To the Lighthouse, Harvest Books, 1990.

Creative Non-Fiction

• Ackerman, Diane, A Natural History of the Senses, Vintage, 1991.
• Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring, Mariner Books, 1994.
• Capote, Truman, In Cold Blood, Vintage, 1994.
• Didion, Joan, The White Album, Noonday, 1990
• Dillard, Annie, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harper Perennial, 1989
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature, Beacon Press, 1994.
• Karr, Mary, Liar's Club: A Memoir, Penguin, 1998.
• Kingston, Maxine Hong, Woman Warrior, Vintage, 1989.
• Lopez, Barry, Arctic Dreams, Vintage, 2001.
• McCourt, Frank, Angela's Ashes, Touchstone, 1999.
• Muir, John. Mountains of California, Modern Library, 2001.
• Stegner, Wallace, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, Modern Library, 2002.
• Wolfe, Tom, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bantam, 1999.
• Wolff, Tobias, This Boy's Life, Grove Press, 2000.
• Wolff, Virginia, A Room of One's Own, Harvest, 1990.

Poetry

• Ashbery, John. Selected Poetry, Viking-Penguin, 1986.
• Auden, W.H. Selected Poems, Vintage, 1990.
• Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, Noonday Press, 1984.
• Dove, Rita, Selected Poems, Pantheon, 1993.
• Eliot, T. S. Selected Poems, Harvest Books, 1988.
• Frost, Robert. Selected Poems, Random House
• Ginsberg, Allen. Selected Poetry: 1947 - 1995, Harper Perennial.
• Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems, Vintage, 1990.
• Lowell, Robert. Selected Poems, Noonday Press, 1977.
• Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems, HarperCollins, 1986.
• Rich, Adrienne. Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose, Norton Critical Edition, 1993.
• Stevens, Wallace. The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems, Vintage, 1990.
• Williams, William Carlos. Charles Tomilinson, editor. Selected Poems, New Directions, 1985.
• Wright, James. Above the River: Complete Poems, Noonday Press, 1992.
• Yeats, William Butler. Collected Poems, Scribners, 1996.

Playwriting/Screenwriting

PLAYS

• Albee, Edward. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
• Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
• Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard.
• Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun.
• Ibsen, Henrik. Ghosts.
• Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
• O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night.
• Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
• Sophocles. Oedipus Rex.
• Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire.

FILMS

• Casablanca.
• Citizen Kane.
• The Grapes of Wrath.
• North by Northwest.
• Wild Strawberries.

Writers on Writing (Critical Writing: Background Reading)

• Aristotle, Poetics
• Baxter, Charles. Burning Down the House, Graywolf, 1998.
• Dunn, Stephen. Walking Light, BOA, 2001.
• Flaubert, Gustav. Francis Steegmuller, editor. Letters, Harvard, 1984.
• Frost, Robert. Selected Prose, MacMillan, 1968.
• Gardner, John. On Moral Fiction, Basic Books, 2000.
• Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction, Vintage, 1991.
• Goldman, William. Adventures in the Screen Trade
• Hass Robert. Twentieth Century Pleasures, Ecco Press, 1997.
• Hugo, Richard, Triggering Town, Norton, 1992.
• Jarrell, Randall. No Other Book, Harper Perennial, 2000.
• Kahn, David A. and Breed, Donna. Scriptwork: A Director’s Approach to New Play Development
• Lamott, Anne. Bird By Bird, Anchor, 1995.
• Maugham, Somerset. The Summing Up, Viking, 1992.
• O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being, Noonday Press, 1988.
• Pinsky, Robert, Poetry and the World, Ecco Press, 1992.
• Rich, Adrienne, Arts of the Possible, Norton, 2002.
• Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel, Random House, 1965.
• Williams, William Carlos. In the American Grain, New Directions, 1956.
• Woolf, Virginia. A Passionate Apprenticeship: The Early Journals 1897-1909, Harvest Book, 1992.

Supplemental Reading List

Fiction

• Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio, Bantam, 1995.
• Atwood, Margaret, Cat's Eye, Anchor Books, 1998.
• Barthelme, Donald. Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, Noonday, 1977.
• Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths, New Directions, 1988.
• Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. Trans. William Weaver. Harvest Books, 1981.
• Cather, Willa. My Antonia, Mariner Books, 1995.
• Cheever, John. Stories of John Cheever, Vintage, 2000.
• Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for The Barbarians, Penguin, 1999.
• Cortazar, Julio. Blow-Up and Other Stories, Random House, 1985.
• DeLillo, Don. Mao II, Penguin, 1992.
• Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine, Harper Perennial, 1993.
• Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom, Vintage, 1990.
• Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, Bantam, 1982.
• Gardner, John. Grendel, Vintage, 1989.
• Gordimer. Nadine. July's People, Penguin, 1982.
• Heller, Joseph, Catch-22, Scribner, 1996.
• Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises, Scribner's, 1996.
• James, Henry. The Turn of The Screw, New York: Bantam, 1981.
• Joyce, James. Ulysses, Vintage, 1990.
• Marquez, Gabriele Garcia. Tr. Gregory Rabassa. One Hundred Years of Solitude,
• Harper Perennial, 1998.
• Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire, Vintage Books, 1989.
• O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin, 1990.
• O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories, Noonday Press, 1996.
• Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Short Stories, Doubleday, 1966.
• Pynchon, Thomas. Crying of Lot 49, HarperCollins, 1999.
• Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, HarperCollins, 1998.
• Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony, Penguin, 1988.
• Updike, John. Trust Me: Stories, Bantam, 1996.
• Wharton, Edith. Age of Innocence, Modern Library, 1999.

Non-Fiction

• Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter, HarperCollins, 1999.
• Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son,
• Mary Carr, The Liar's Club, Penguin, 1998.
• Joan Didion, Political Fictions, Vintage, 2002.
• Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, HarperCollins, 1998.
• Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces, Penguin, 1986.
• Patricia Hampl, A Romantic Education, Norton, 1999.
• John Hersey, Hiroshima, Vintage, 1989.
• Hemmingway, Ernest. A Movable Feast, Touchstone, 1996.
• Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions, Mariner Books, 1999.
• Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000.
• Kingsolver, Barabara, High Tide in Tucson, Harper Perennial, 1996.
• Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Bantam, 1991.
• John McPhee, Coming Into the Country, Noonday Press, 1991.
• Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican
• Childhood, Arte Pueblo, 1990.
• Scott Russell Sanders, Writing From the Center, Indiana Univ. Press, 1997.
• May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude, W. W. Norton, 1992.
• Stein, Gertrude, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Vintage, 1990.
• Styron, William, Darkness Visible, Vintage, 1992.
• Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Time and Place, Vintage, 1992.

Poetry

• Ai, Vice: New and Selected Poems, Norton.
• Bidart, Frank. In the Western Night: Collected Poems: 1965 – 1990, Farrar, Straus.
• Clifton, Lucille. Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000, BOA.
• Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room, New and Selected Poems, Random House.
• Crane Hart. The Complete Poems, Liveright.
• Creeley, Robert. Selected Poems, University of California Press.
• Gluck, Louise. The First Four Books of Poems, Ecco Press. (Added)
• Graham, Jorie. The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974 – 1994, Ecco Press.
• Hass, Robert. Praise, HarperTrade.
• Jeffers, Robinson. Selected Poems, Stanford University Press.
• Kinnell, Galway. New Selected Poems, Houghton-Mifflin,
• Kizer, Carolyn. Cool, Calm, and Collected, Copper Canyon.
• Komunyakaa, Yusef. Pleasure Dome, Wesleyan University Press.
• Lee, Li-Young, The City In Which I Love You, BOA.
• Levertov, Denise. Poems 1960 – 1967, New Directions.
• Levine, Philip. New Selected Poems, Knopf.
• Merrill, James. Selected Poems: 1946 - 1985, Knopf.
• Merwin, W. S. Migration: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon.
• Milosz, Czeslaw. Colleted Poems, HarperTrade.
• Moore, Marianne. Complete Poems, McMillan.
• Pinsky, Robert. The Figured Wheel. Farrar, Straus.
• O’Hara, Frank. The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara, Random House.
• Snyder, Gary. No Nature: New and Selected Poems. Pantheon.
• Wright, C.D. Steal Away: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon.

Playwriting/Screenwriting

PLAYS

• Brecht, Bertolt. The Good Woman of Setzuan.
• Ionesco, Eugene. The Bald Soprano.
• Moliere. Tartuffe.
• Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party.
• Reza, Yasmina. Art.
• Sartre, Jean Paul. No Exit.
• Shaw, George Bernard. Candida.
• Sheridan. School for Scandal.
• Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead.
• Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest
• Valdez, Luis. Zoot Suit.
• Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.
• Wilson, August. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

FILMS

• All About Eve.
• Bicycle Thief, The.
• Rear Window.
• Rules of the Game.
• Singin’ in the Rain.
• Stagecoach.
• Seven Samauri.