In this engaging new course, Declan Fry – a regular critic for the Saturday Paper, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – will guide you through close reading exercises that will help you pay attention to the details you will need to take from a book in order to form a convincing critique. How can you call upon your reading history to back up an opinion? How can you establish reading practices to improve your writing?

This course is designed to build your skills as both a reader and a writer. You will be shown ways that reading can inspire writing, discovering that reading is as much a generative exercise as writing itself.

Time and space will be given in class to produce creative responses to a series of set texts, while learning key lessons that you will be able to return to again in your writing practice.