Take a creative writing course with William Burroughs





So, you want to write but can’t afford those darned writing courses you see advertised online or in all those fancy cultural ‘zines you spend your hard earned dollars on?

Well, fret no more, for now you can have your very own creative writing class from William S. Burroughs, all thanks to the wonders of YouTube.

Burroughs gave these creative writing classes at Naropa University in 1979, where the author discussed works of literature, writing techniques and exercises for becoming a better writer.

Lecture One:

William S. Burroughs lecture on Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and A Short Trip Home, and Stephen King’s The Shining. Burroughs also discusses exercises for increasing awareness, books as mental film, codes of conduct, heroes, and the film of Burroughs’s novel Naked Lunch.







Lecture Two:

William S. Burroughs lectures on creative reading, including a discussion about various authors including Joseph Conrad, Denton Welch, Jane Bowles, Brion Gysin, and Julian Jaynes. Burroughs also addresses subjects such as art heroes, hemispheres of the brain, and the training of assassins.



Lecture Three:

William S. Burroughs’ lecture on creative reading - Burroughs mentions a wide variety of authors including Aleister Crowley, Paul Bowles, and many others. The class also discusses science fiction, non-fiction, General Semantics, scriptwriting, cloning, rotten ectoplasm, and judgement in cut-ups, as well as Burroughs’s novel The Soft Machine.

William Burroughs on writing and art.



Previously on Dangerous Minds

A word in your era: William Burroughs explains Brion Gysin’s Cut-Up Method