Spring 2027

Creative Nonfiction

Creative Nonfiction focuses on non-fiction storytelling elements to build writing skills for newspapers, magazines, and books.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 7

Past student reviews · Robert Schwoch

The course was rated as moderately difficult, with students receiving helpful feedback on each assignment.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Explain what creative nonfiction is – and what it is not.

  • Explore a wide variety of different kinds of creative nonfiction by wonderful reporters and writers.

  • Exchange, practice and revise creative writing in group workshops.

  • Analyze and critique creative nonfiction.

  • Cultivate trust to report these kinds of stories.

  • Produce creative nonfiction projects.

  • Critique traditional creative nonfiction with more sophisticated analysis techniques.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

JOURN 335 or graduate/professional standing

  • take one
JOURN 405

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Any of

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

JAMES BAUGHMAN is recorded teaching in Spring 2011, Fall 2014, Fall 2015. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

ROBERT SCHWOCH is recorded teaching in Fall 2020, Spring 2022. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

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Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Robert Schwoch

Students described the creative nonfiction course as one of the best writing classes they had taken, noting that the instructor covered a variety of material.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2022: 3.69 GPA, 92.3% A/AB (n=13 letter grades); Spring 2024: 3.97 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=15 letter grades); Fall 2024: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=15 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Robert Schwoch

The course was rated as moderately difficult, with students receiving helpful feedback on each assignment.

Past student reviews · James Baughman

A student found the teaching inspirational and looked forward to every class, expressing a wish to have taken more courses with that instructor.

Topics

  • Definitions and varieties of creative nonfiction
  • Journalistic writing across newspapers, magazines, and books
  • Group workshops for creative writing practice and revision

Skills

  • Developing creative nonfiction storytelling skills for various journalistic formats
  • Analyzing and critiquing creative nonfiction using sophisticated techniques
  • Cultivating trust for reporting creative nonfiction stories

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2024— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2024

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Not enough comparable courses for Spring 2027 in UW–Madison.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
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Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "e73291eda9316d58130bcbcad5999767c6431d7e87da07bad9026cc86fb45f03",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}