John Howard
Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative and Fiction Writing
John T. Howard is a Colombian American writer of poetry and prose.
He has served as writer-in-residence at Wellspring House Retreat and as assistant director for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He has taught in the writing departments at Babson College, Grand Valley State University, Siena Heights University, and Hope College. He publishes all fiction as Thomas Maya, under his matrilineal surname, and all poetry under John T. Howard; his work can be found in the pages of Witness, Salamander, PANK Magazine, Saranac Review, Notre Dame Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. He is at work finishing three manuscripts while raising a daughter with his partner in the greater Boston area. Howard received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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When crafting short stories, a writer makes the crucial choice of what point of view to utilize. This decision is monumental as POV is the prism through which the world of the story takes form. When moving between POVs, any story is reconfigured, altering all other aspects of storytelling craft. Our class will experiment with writing short fiction as we wrestle with the following POV questions: Who's telling the story? How is it being told? How does that choice impact our understanding of the events? How does this illuminate or obscure the lives of our characters? We will read and discuss the work of accomplished writers of the short story form. To explore the practice, we will also engage in short writing prompts designed to help us write our first short stories, and we will share work together, to discuss our growing understanding and control of the craft. Keywords:Creative Writing, Fiction, Workshop, Short Story
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Hybrid creative writing and literature course examining the short story form to understand the myriad of Latinx voices encountered in the U.S. populace. This examination will allow us to consider competing categorical terms (e.g., Hispanic, Latino/a, Latin@, Latinx), and how such terms relate to the lived experiences and fictions of storytellers who come from such varied backgrounds. Our topics of discussion may include immigration, migration, marginalization, race and power, and assimilation. In addition, there will be an extensive focus on craft-based reading and writing skills. We will read short stories using techniques working writers embrace when reading, to learn how accomplished practitioners of short story craft engage in their practice. We will use these lessons to cultivate our own skills and our own stories. Writers we may consider include: John Manuel Arias, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya, Bryan Washington, and Justin Torres Keywords:Creative Writing, Literature, Workshop, Latino/a Studies, Latinx