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Reading List

Fiction (updated Fall 2011)

  • Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. 1979.
  • Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre. 1847.
  • Carver, Raymond, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. 1981.
  • Chekov, Anton. Anton Chekov’s Short Stories, Norton Critical Edition, 1979.
  • DeLillo, Don. White Noise. 1985.
  • Diaz, Junot. Drown. 1996.
  • Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. 1942.
  • Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1857.
  • Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1967.
  • Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. 1925.
  • Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937.
  • James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. 1881.
  • Joyce, James, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1917.
  • Kafka, Franz. In the Penal Colony. 1914.
  • Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. 1999.
  • McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian. 1985.
  • Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987.
  • Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America. 1998.
  • Munro, Alice. Selected Stories. 1997.
  • Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 1955.
  • O’Connor, Flannery. Complete Stories. Noonday, 1996.
  • Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. 1966.
  • Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway. 1925.

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 (updated Fall 2011)

  • Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. 1919.
  • Atwood, Margaret, Cat’s Eye. 1988.
  • Barthelme, Donald. Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. 1968.
  • Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. 1964.
  • Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. 1968.
  • Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote. 1605-1615.
  • Cheever, John. Stories of John Cheever. 1978.
  • Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for The Barbarians. 1980.
  • Coover, Robert. Pricksongs and Descants. 1969.
  • Doctorow, E.L. Ragtime. 1975.
  • Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. 1984.
  • Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom. 1936.
  • Gordimer. Nadine. July’s People. 1982.
  • Jones, Edward P. Lost in the City. 1992.
  • Joyce, James. Ulysses. 1922.
  • O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. 1990.
  • Paley, Grace. Collected Stories. 1994.
  • Phillips, Jayne Anne. Black Tickets. 1979.
  • Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Short Stories, Doubleday, 1966.
  • Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. 1981.
  • Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. 1977.
  • Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy. 1759-1767.
  • Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897.
  • Welty, Eudora, Collected Stories. 1982.
  • Wharton, Edith. Age of Innocence. 1920.

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

  • A. R. Aamons, Selected Poems, Norton, 1987.
  • Ai, Vice: New and Selected Poems, Norton, 2000.
  • Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room, New and Selected Poems, Random House, 2001.
  • Crane Hart. Ed. Marc Simon. The Complete Poems, Liveright, 2001
  • Creeley, Robert. Selected Poems, Univ. of California Press, 1991.
  • Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, Norton, 1995.
  • Gluck, Louise. The First Four Books of Poems, Ecco Press, 1996.
  • Graham, Jorie. The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974 - 1994, Ecco Press, 1997.
  • Hass, Robert. Praise, Ecco Press, 1980.
  • Jeffers, Robinson. Selected Poems, Stanford University Press, 2001
  • Kinnell, Galway. New Selected Poems, Houghton-Mifflin, 2001.
  • Kizer, Carolyn. Cool, Calm, and Collected, Copper Canyon, 2000.
  • Komunyakaa, Yusef. Pleasure Dome, Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
  • Levertov, Denise. Poems 1960 - 1967, New Directions, 1983.
  • Levine, Philip. New Selected Poems, Knopf, 1992.
  • Merrill, James. Selected Poems: 1946 - 1985, Knopf, 1995.
  • Merwin, W. S. Second Four Books of Poems, Copper Canyon, 1993.
  • Milosz, Czeslaw. The Collected Poems, 1931-1987, Ecco Press, 1990.
  • Moore, Marianne. Complete Poems, McMillan, 1994.
  • O'Hara, Frank. The Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Univ. of California, 1995.
  • Roethke, Theodore. The Collected Poems, Doubleday/Anchor, 1975.
  • Soto, Gary. New and Selected, Chronicle Books, 1995.
  • Stafford, William. The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1999.

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.