How can students with widely varied levels of literary experience learn to write poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama — over the course of only one semester? In “Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief,” David Starkey offers some solutions to the challenges of teaching the introductory creative writing course: (1) concise, accessible instruction in literary basics; (2) “short” models of literature to analyze, admire and emulate; (3) inventive and imaginative assignments that inspire and motivate.

David Starkey is the Bye Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and winner of the W. H. Smith Prize and the Norton Medlicott Medal for Services to History presented by Britain's Historical Association. He is best known for writing and presenting the groundbreaking and hugely popular series “Elizabeth” and “The Six Wives of Henry VIII”. He lives in London.