食物寫作 (Food Writing)

我愛吃, 愛拍照, 也愛寫 — 越吃嘴越刁, 也漸漸的講究起燈光及拍照角度, 唯獨不見文筆進步.  寫作, 的確是最難的一環, 如何讓讀者透過閱讀文字, 達到感同身受的境界, 不僅用英文難, 用中文也一樣難.  不過起碼中文是我土生土長的語言, 上了十二年的中文教育, 看過的中文刊物絕對比英文要多 (起碼目前是這樣), 所以用中文寫食物應該要比用英文寫要簡單一點.  在美國受過四年大學教育, 寫的多半是研究報告類型的文章, 工作上寫的合約, 多半是事實 (Facts) 及合法語言(Legal Language), 需要用的形容詞不多, 所以要我用英文形容食物的美味, 實在困難.      

一直希望加強英文寫作的能力, 尤其對食物及旅行為主題的特別有興趣, 近日收到史丹福大學再進修教育的課程目錄 (Continuing Studies Program), 其中就有一堂是網路的食物寫作課程 (Online Food Writing), 為期十週 (Jan 14 – Mar 23), 只收十七名, 12/3開始接受報名.  我很有興趣參加, 但是還不確定我的時間, 不過貼上來和大家分享, 也許有人也有興趣, 以下是課程簡介:

Food Writing: The Literary Gourmet (Online Course) (EGL 243 W)

If you love to eat, cook and read about great food, and you’d like to learn more about the many different forms of food writing, then this is the course for you. In this course, you will read a wide variety of food writing by some the most successful practitioners at work today, including former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, food blogger and bestselling author Julie Powell, chef Anthony Bourdain, science and food writer Michael Pollan, and Vogue contributor Jeffrey Steingarten. Using their work as models, you will learn how to write restaurant reviews, how to test and develop written recipes, and how to write travel stories focused on food. You will also each write one personal essay and one magazine article in which food—either dining out or dining in—takes center stage. We will discuss practical aspects of the business as well, such as how to submit your short pieces to publications and how to write book proposals. This is an online writing workshop, so be prepared to respond to other students’ writing in an editorial capacity, and to receive great feedback on your own.

Created in close partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program, this online course will be useful for students looking to improve their craft. Because this course can be taken anywhere, anytime, it is designed to be attractive to those students who live far from campus, or who lead busy lives and can benefit from the flexibility of the online format.

Malena Watrous
Former Stegner Fellow
Malena Watrous is a fiction and nonfiction writer based in San Francisco. She has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Iowa. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Truman Capote fellow. Her fiction has been published in such literary journals as Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and The Massachussetts Review, and her nonfiction has appeared on Salon.com, and in The Believer, Real Simple, Organic Style, and other magazines.

還有其他網路寫作課程, 請按這裡.