To learn more about what we are offering every semester, you can consult the Humanities and Social Sciences course availability search interface. 

Upcoming Creative Writing Course Offerings Winter 2026

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 15th.

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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)

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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