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Certificate in Creative Writing

About the Online Creative Writing Certificate

The Certificate in Creative Writing offers an innovative, collaborative course of study for those who have always wanted to unlock their creativity. Each online course is designed as a workshop in which you explore new ideas, tackle new writing tools, generate original insights and discover your own powers of expression. You create, collaboratively discuss and revise your original writing with feedback from your instructors and your peers. You also engage with a range of assigned readings and multimedia that inform and grow your innovative practice.

The Certificate in Creative Writing offers both basic and advanced workshops and appeals to students new to creative writing as well as students with writing experience who want to learn new skills. Through a series of online courses in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting, the Certificate in Creative Writing focuses on creative writing as a form of critical thinking as a way to reimagine audience and as a space of innovation. Taught by professionals in the field, our courses cultivate both individual and group learning, providing an overview of the field as well as deep dives into literary genres. These online creative writing courses are designed as hands-on, intensive study of the subtleties and power of language.

Creative Writing Certificate Requirements

The Certificate in Creative Writing is a 4-course, 4 c.u.* credit program of study taught by University of Pennsylvania faculty. To earn a certificate, students complete any four courses offered, in any order.  Students who complete the basic certificate may pursue an advanced certificate (6-course, 6 c.u.*) by adding two additional creative writing courses.

Flexible Course Schedule and Tuition

Penn LPS Online courses in the Certificate in Creative Writing are offered in accelerated 8-week terms and full terms. Courses in the online certificate program are largely asynchronous with some optional synchronous sessions to be scheduled by the instructors.

You have the option to enroll in individual creative writing courses without committing to the entire online certificate, enjoying the flexibility and expertise offered by Penn LPS Online to suit your schedule and interests. Visit the Cost of Attendance page for course tuition and fee rates.

Watch a video of a recent virtual information session to hear from the program team about the Certificate in Creative Writing.

If you are having trouble viewing this video, watch it on YouTube .

*Academic credit is defined by the University of Pennsylvania as a course unit (c.u.). A course unit (c.u.) is a general measure of academic work over a period of time, typically a term (semester or summer). A c.u. (or a fraction of a c.u.) represents different types of academic work across different types of academic programs and is the basic unit of progress toward a degree. One c.u. is usually converted to a four-semester-hour course.

The Certificate in Creative Writing prepares you to:

• Understand how text conveys meaning across a variety of literary genres and styles
• Explore how to use innovation, flexibility, and collaboration to cultivate a creative writing practice
• Create, revise and edit your original writing in multiple literary genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and screenwriting

Online Creative Writing Courses

Certificate students who complete four of the online courses listed below earn a Certificate in Creative Writing. Those students are then eligible to pursue an Advanced Certificate in Creative Writing by taking two additional courses.

• CRWR 1010: The Craft of Creative Writing
• CRWR 1600: Modern and Contemporary US Poetry
• CRWR 2010: Poetry Workshop
• CRWR 2400: The Art of Editing
• CRWR 2500: Writing and Meditation
• CRWR 2600: Fiction Workshop
• CRWR 2800: Narrative Collage
• CRWR 3000: Writing About Place
• CRWR 3200: Screenwriting
• CRWR 3600: Advanced Nonfiction *
• CRWR 3700: Journalism

*This course may not be offered every academic year. Check the course page or our course guide to see when upcoming terms are added.

Courses are subject to change.

See Course Tuition

Meet The Faculty

Julia Bloch

• Faculty Director, Penn LPS Online Certificate in Creative Writing
• Director, Creative Writing Program

• Director, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing

Laynie Browne

• Poet, prose writer, teacher and editor

Scott Burkhardt

• Lecturer in cinema and media studies

Christy Davids

• Teacher, poet and assistant editor at The Conversant

Lise Funderburg

• Lecturer in creative writing

• 2017-2018 Digital Studies Fellow at Rutgers University-Camden

Dick Polman

• Povich Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW)

• Writer, editor, teacher

Zachary Tyler Vickers

Careers related to creative writing.

The Certificate in Creative Writing is designed to enhance your writing and storytelling skills and provide a framework for a creative process that can be applied to a myriad of professional roles including:

• Advertising copywriter
• Fundraising/development consultant
• Author and journalist

Course Catalog

All Creative Writing courses are now open bid. Pre-registration for all course types is available through  my.uchicago.edu . 

Pre-registration for Fundamentals in Creative Writing, Technical Seminars, and Advanced Workshops prioritizes students who have officially declared the Creative Writing major, minor, or MAPH Creative Writing Option.

Contact instructors to be added to a waitlist. Additional details, including course times and locations, are listed on  my.uchicago.edu . 

Beginning Autumn Quarter 2023, students are no longer required to submit a separate application or writing sample for Creative Writing courses.

Autumn Quarter begins Tuesday, September 26. Creative Writing courses are offered once per week for two hours and 50 minutes. The current canonical hours policy is here ; view the academic calendar here .

Please sign up for the program's listserv for additional information and course application updates. 

CRWR Course Archive

For classes offered before the 2017-18 academic year, browse our Course Archive . 

CRWR 20412/40412 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: The Writer as Researcher

Research is an essential and imaginative process for the nonfiction story, but in what ways are the writer’s methods unique to literary practice? This course will explore the role of research in writing creative nonfiction. Students will develop methods that play a role in writing essays, memoir, and literary journalism. The seminar will be conducted in four sequential parts: immersion research; interview techniques; library research; translating technical jargon for a public readership. Assignments will equip students with the practical steps for completing each style of research. We will also discuss how to integrate research into the descriptions, narrative, and subtext of the writing. Students will experiment with: dramatizing research through scene-building; using reflection to respond to their findings; and inviting research to become part of the plot. Research, we will find, generates some of the most dramatic and surprising moments in the writing process. We will read texts that correspond to the areas of focus, including works by Eula Biss, Daisy Hernandez, and Sarah Viren. Students will leave the course equipped to include research into their writing process for advanced writing workshops and thesis projects.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 20224/40224 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Tempo

"At certain moments," writes Italo Calvino of his early literary efforts, "I felt that the entire world was turning into stone."  Slowness and speed govern not just the experience of writing but also the texture of our fictional worlds.  And this is something we can control.  Sublimely slow writers like Sebald or Duras can make time melt; spritely magicians like Aira and Rushdie seem to shuffle planes of reality with a snap of their fingers.  This seminar gathers fictions that pulse on eclectic wavelengths, asking in each case how narrative tempo embodies a fiction's character.  Our exercises will play with the dial of compositional speed, testing writing quick and slow; alternately, we'll try to recreate the effects of signature texts.  Weekly creative and critical responses will culminate in a final project.

CRWR 20221/40221 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Detail

John Gardner said that the writer’s task is to create “a vivid and continuous fictional dream.” This technical seminar will focus on the role of detail in maintaining this  dream. In this course we will deconstruct and rebuild our understanding of concepts like simile, showing vs. telling, and symbolism, asking what these tools do and what purpose they serve. Drawing from fiction and essays from Ottessa Moshfegh, Barbara Comyns, Zadie Smith, and others, students will practice noticing, seeing anew, and finding fresh and unexpected ways of describing. We will also examine what is worthy of detail in the first place, how detail functions outside of traditional scene, and the merits and limits of specificity, mimesis, and verisimilitude. Finally we will consider what it means to travel across a landscape of vagueness and euphemism as we search for the quality of “thisness” that James Wood claims all great details possess. In addition to assigned readings, students will be responsible for reading responses, short craft analyses, vigorous class participation, and several creative exercises and peer critiques applying these lessons.

CRWR 12159 Reading as a Writer: The Bad Girls Club

Jezebels, witches, femme fatales, nasty women, sirens, madwomen, and murderesses: the world over, these women of many names—whom we’ll collectively refer to as the Bad Girls Club—have alternately inspired the disdain and delight of multitudes. Whether jailed, expelled, excommunicated, or burned at the stake, their (anti)heroic antics have challenged, critiqued, or, some might say, corrupted the laws, mores, and sensibilities of societies. If it is true that polite, well-behaved women rarely make history, then what do impolite, badly-behaved women teach us about the construction of (his) story? In this course, we’ll examine literature from around the world featuring members of the Bad Girls Club, who in opposing complimentary constructions of femininity, femaleness, and power invite introspection on the gendered nature of story and storytelling. In short critical papers, we’ll analyze the tropes, features, and conventions of literature featuring these bad characters, and in short exercises, you’ll write stories, poems, and essays inspired by them.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. 

CRWR 12145 Reading as a Writer: Re-vision

To revise a piece of writing isn’t merely to polish it. Revision is transformation and yields an alternate reality. A new view, a re-vision. This course will start by tracking compositional process, looking at brilliant and disastrous drafts to compare the aesthetic and political consequences of different choices on the page. We’ll then study poems, essays, and stories that refute themselves and self-revise as they unfold, dramatizing mixed feelings and changing minds. We’ll end by considering erasure poetry as a form of critical revision. Our conversations will inspire weekly writing exercises and invite you to experiment with various creative revision strategies. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to share their writing for group discussion.

CRWR 12160 Reading as a Writer: Exploring the Weird

In 1917 the Russian critic Viktor Shklovsky coined the word 'ostranenie,'—translating roughly as 'defamiliarization'—to illustrate a concept that asks the writer or artist to see the everyday in new and unfamiliar ways. In fiction writing this means avoiding cliché while cultivating elements of surprise, the unexpected, the strange. It means the author offering a new perspective on something familiar, something surprising and, often, yes, a little weird. So what does it mean to follow the weird as a fiction or creative non-fiction writer? As a poet? How can we indulge that strange, uncanny, often suppressed side of ourselves in a way that not only serves a work of literary art but opens it up to new possibilities? This class will look at ways writers use defamiliarization and other techniques to create unexpected and sometimes jarring effects and will encourage students to take similar risks in their own writing. Students will view read various works of fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, view films, and read critical and craft- oriented texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list.

CRWR 12154 Reading as a Writer: Brevity

This course will consider brevity as an artistic mode curiously capable of articulating the unspeakable, the abyssal, the endless. Reading very brief works from a long list of writers, we will ask: when is less more? When is less less? What is minimalism? What is the impact of the fragment? Can a sentence be a narrative? Can a word comprise a poem? Our readings will include short poems, short essays, and short short stories by Yannis Ritsos, francine j. harris, Aram Saroyan, Richard Wright, Cecilia Vicuña, Kobayashi Issa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton, Lydia Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Franz Kafka, Joy Williams, Jenny Xie, Venita Blackburn, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Valentine, Samuel Beckett, and others. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to write critical and creative responses for group discussion.

CRWR 12147 Intro to Genres: The River's Running Course

Rivers move--over land, through history, among peoples--and they make: landscapes and civilizations. They are the boundaries on our maps, the dividers of nations, of families, of the living and the dead, but they are also the arteries that connect us. They are meditative, meandering journeys and implacable, surging power. They are metaphors but also so plainly, corporeally themselves. In this course, we will encounter creative work about rivers, real and imaginary, from the Styx to the Amazon. Through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama, we will consider what rivers are, what they mean to us, and how they are represented in art and literature. Rivers will be the topic and inspiration for our own creative writing, too. The goal for this course is to further your understanding of creative writing genres and the techniques that creative writers employ to produce meaningful work in each of those genres. You will also practice those techniques yourselves as write your own creative work in each genre.  Our weekly sessions will involve a mixture of discussions, brief lectures, student presentations, mini-workshops and in-class exercises. Most weeks, you will be responsible for a creative and/or critical response (300-500 words) to the reading, and the quarter will culminate in a final project (7-10 pages) in the genre of your choice, inspired by the Chicago River. 

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 17003 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Truth

In this class we'll study how writers define and make use of truth--whatever that is. In some cases it's the truth, singular; in others a truth, only one among many. Some writers tell it straight, others slant. Some, like Tim O'Brien, advocate story-truth, the idea that fiction tells deeper truths than facts. To get at the heart of these and other unanswerable questions we'll read writers who've written about one event in two or more modes. Nick Flynn's poems about his father, for example, which he's also set down as comic strips as well as in prose. Jeanette Winterson's first novel as well as her memoir, sixteen years later, about what she'd been too afraid to say in it. Karl Marlantes' novel about the Vietnam war, then his essays about the events he'd fictionalized. Through weekly responses, creative exercises, and longer analytic essays you'll begin to figure out your own writerly truths, as well as the differences-and intersections-between them.

This is class is restricted to students who have declared a major in Creative Writing or a minor in English and Creative Writing. Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 17015 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Sincerity (and Irony)

What does it mean for a piece of writing to be “sincere”? How do we know a (character, poem, “I,” essay) is “sincere”? What does it mean to make that judgment, and what does it commit us to? How does that judgment change a reader’s orientation to the object? We will approach these questions obliquely first, by thinking about how irony works. Are irony and sincerity opposites? We’ll look at a range of contemporary and historical objects in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This will include essays by Kierkegaard, Oscar Wilde, Wayne Booth, Jonathan Swift, and R. Magill Jr., fiction by Vladimir Nabokov, Joanna Ruocco, and Kathy Acker, and poetry by Chelsey Minnis, Jenny Zhang, Amiri Baraka, and others. We’ll also consider certain internet objects and think about their relationship to sincerity (and irony). This course will give students a more nuanced and historically grounded handle on these questions, and will help them develop a style of writing that’s able to more intentionally (and interestingly) choose its tonal legibilities.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Shaping Poems

This course introduces students to poetry writing first by exploring various ways of generating material, then by shaping that material into poems. We’ll refine devices such as image, rhythm, and metaphor while we also explore the musical movements of mind that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, we will focus primarily on readings and in class writing. As we move forward, we will spend most of class time workshopping student poems. Students can expect to turn in several drafts of poems, serve as discussion leaders, provide written comments to their peers, and assemble a final portfolio.

CRWR 10306 Section 2/30306 Section 2 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Making and Breaking Form

In this course we will investigate the many forms poets have invented, remixed, and remade across time to sing their songs and express the news of the day. We will read poems ancient and contemporary, and also turn to song, video, dance, architecture, and other modes of expression to find inspiration to create our own new forms. We will study the components of a poem—syntax, music, imagery, sense, line—as we study larger structures a poem can take, and we will constantly be mindful of the historical dimension of our practice. We will become familiar with the campus arts calendar, as attendance at a minimum of two events (at least one literary) is required. Emphasis will be on writing exercises, student presentations on course readings, and student-led workshops of each other’s poems generated during the course. These writing efforts will be discussed by the class in workshops and revised for a final portfolio comprised of drafts of poems accompanied by a critical consideration and a clippings journal featuring other people’s poems, articles, and images gathered during the quarter.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: The Meditative Essay

It has been said that good questions outrank easy answers. The meditative essay gives us a tool to refine our curiosities again and again: Who are we? How did we get here? What keeps us going? What holds us back? Where are we headed, really? Students in this class will tackle some of life’s biggest questions in a “field notebook” with the goal of developing— and helping each other develop— true, bold, idea-driven essays that render us a little more lucid and in love with the act of wondering. We’ll read essayists and narrators who specialize in the art of reverie, such as Fernando Pessoa, Sei Shōnagon, and Lia Purpura. Half of class-time will be dedicated to student-led discussions of original works in progress with the goal of exchanging constructive feedback and practicing revision as a form of inquiry. Students will direct their own learning with self-evaluations and a conference with the instructor about their developing goals, culminating in a final portfolio that is something to write home about.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Oral History

We will study the theory and practice of Oral History, and we will create original oral accounts from a wide range of Chicago communities. We will work to understand the method and politics of Oral History, and to gain facility in practice and written presentation. Oral History, the poetry of the everyday, the literature of the street, is perfectly poised to open a narrative space where an interviewer, listening with empathy and identification, and a story-teller, seizing an occasion to perform an account of events and experiences, co-create and reveal a universe of meaning-making. Each student will create an original oral account, and each will have the opportunity to introduce a narrator (or a group of narrators) while making a presentation to the Class/Workshop, employing any of the many approaches that we will have studied—theater, poetry, narrative, documentary, comix, film, podcasting. Our goal is to understand the method and politics of Oral History, and to gain facility in practice and presentation.

CRWR 10206 Section 3/30206 Section 3 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Writing From Life

“Write what you know” is common and clichéd creative writing advice, but also happens to be quite helpful to those of us new to fiction. In this Beginning Fiction workshop, we’ll use memories as the raw material for our fiction, concerning ourselves with telling stories effectively rather than telling the truth and leveraging our deep impressions of real people, places and time to create convincing imagined worlds. Along the way, we’ll read the work of writers who have used their own experiences and impressions in fiction, such as Jayne Anne Phillips, Edward P. Jones, Annie Ernaux, and James Baldwin, among others, and discuss the benefits, limitations and ethical questions of writing fiction from lived experience. Many of our in-class activities and exercises will focus on training ourselves to remember more effectively in an effort to understand more deeply the relationship between memory and imagination. To be successful, students will read and write actively and share their well-informed opinions with enthusiasm, especially in our workshop discussions.

CRWR 10206 Section 1/30206 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Finding a Narrative Home

All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey toward a lost land.” So wrote Janet Frame, a singularly talented author who was institutionalized at the age of 21, then saved from a lobotomy only because she won a literary prize. In keeping with Frame’s reflection, this craft-based course will focus on strategies for saving our lives through fiction writing: how to cultivate a convincing voice; how to extract strength from our writerly weaknesses; and, ultimately, how to forge a home for ourselves in our own words. Through a combination of creative exercises, we will explore and examine the craft components of strong, original fictions, including character development, descriptive detail, compelling dialogue, and rich sentences. We’ll also learn how to read the works of published writers for creative inspiration, mining texts by masters such as Janet Frame, Alice Munro, Julio Cortazar, Sofia Samatar, and Yasunari Kawabata. Primarily, we will workshop original student writing throughout the term, developing a portfolio of stories that reflect our individual interests, desires, and needs as writers.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Crafting Complex Characters

In life and in fiction writing, character development is often synonymous with major challenges: obstacles that demand deep investigation, adaptation, and change. Using the character-driven models of Tove Ditlevsen, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lucia Berlin, Edwidge Danticat, Eileen Chang, and other writers, this Beginning Fiction Workshop will explore strategies for crafting complex characters: illustrating their motives, perspectives, and arcs of evolution. Through a combination of generative writing exercises and writing workshops (wherein students will share original work and receive critical feedback from the class), each student will produce at least one complete short story.

CRWR 10206 Section 4/30206 Section 4 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Basics of Narrative Design

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or woodworking, or gardening. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

CRWR 23132/43132 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poets' Prose

“Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose," wrote Charles Baudelaire in Paris Spleen,"... supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?” This genre-blurring workshop will explore elements of the history and practice of the prose poem, and other poems and texts that combine strategies, forms and gestures of prose (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) with those of poetry. We will also read texts that are difficult to classify in terms of genre. “Flash Fiction,” “Short Shorts,” the fable, the letter, the mini-essay, and the lyric essay will be examined, among others. We will discuss the literary usefulness (or lack of it) of genre and form labels. The class will be taught as a workshop: students will try their hand at writing in their choices of hybrid forms, and will be encouraged to experiment. Writers from all genres are welcome, as what we will be studying, discussing, and writing will involve the fruitful collision of literary genres.

Students must have taken both Fundamentals in Creative Writing and a Beginning Workshop in the same genre. 

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.

CRWR 23137/43137 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry, Archives, and History

This course introduces fundamental ideas about poetic form and approaches to poetic writing through close reading and discussion of poetry (modern and contemporary but not exclusively). We will consider poetic elements from the ground-up—reading closely for sound, image, syntax, and meaning—in order to enliven those elements in student writing. Likewise, we will consider how poems appear at a crossroads between history and experience (the past and present) in order to inspire students to write not only about themselves but about real and imagined social, cultural, historical, and intellectual locations and horizons (considering such aspects of poetry writing as geography, history, mythology, anthropology, kinship, science, visual media, audio media, etc). We will do so in conversation with our peers by way of regular presentations and workshops, in which students will give feedback to one another’s works, learning thus how to read critically while generously, and how to respond collegially while also constructively. At the end of the quarter students will revise drafts based on class writing exercises and workshop conversations, to produce a portfolio prefaced by a critical reflection. The arc of the class also involves the making of a collaborative syllabus (with a wide range of texts offered and guided by the instructor but available to the creative configuration of the students themselves), to strengthen our grasp of archival and curatorial aspects of poetry writing.

CRWR 24021/44021 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: The Trouble with Trauma

In “The Body Keeps the Score” Bessel van der Kolk writes, “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” Many trauma survivors begin writing reluctantly, even repulsed by the impulse to query their woundedness. The process is inhibited by stigma surrounding the notion of victimhood, entities that would prefer a survivor's silence, plus our tendency to dismiss and devalue one's suffering in relation to others. Students in this class will shed some of these constricting patterns of thinking about trauma so they may freely explore their stories with confidence, compassion, curiosity, and intention. We'll read authors who have found surprise, nuance, and yes, healing through art, honoring the heart-work that happens behind the scenes. Half of class-time will include student-led workshops of original works in progress. Paramount to our success will be an atmosphere of safety, supportiveness, respect, and confidentiality. By the quarter's end each student will leave with a piece of writing that feels both true to their experience and imbued with possibility. 

CRWR 24027/44027 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Environmental Writing, Editing, and Publication

Environmental writing is a quickly-expanding field in the literary and publishing community. It encompasses nonfiction sub-genres of traditional journalism, personal essay, and hybrid forms. This course is designed for students in creative writing with an interest in environmental reportage; it is also intended for students in environmental sciences (broadly speaking) with some writing experience who wish to practice presenting complex information to a non-expert audience. Reading contemporary environmental and science writing, students will develop nonfiction techniques relevant to writing environmental stories, like how to find and contact field experts, how to engage readers in complex topics, how to integrate research into narrative, how to use dialogue from interviews, how to weave the personal together with research material, and how to pitch environmental stories. The course will also cover the practical aspects* of the field by including a workshop with the Careers in Creative Writing Journalism program, guest lectures from editors and journalists in the field, and assignments that familiarize students with current environmental literary magazines. Readings will include Kerri Arsenault’s Mill Town and selections from The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

CRWR 22132/42132 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Strange Magic in Short Fiction

In this workshop based course we'll investigate how strangeness and magic function in short fiction. We'll read stories by authors like Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and Alice Sola Kim, examining how these writers portray the fantastical and impossible. We'll explore concepts like defamiliarization, versimilitude, and the uncanny. We will contemplate how magical realism and surrealism differ from sci-fi and fantasy genre writing, and ask how we, as writers, can make the quotidian seem extraordinary and the improbable seem inevitable, and to what end? Students will complete several short creative exercises and workshop one story that utilizes magic or strange effects. Students will also be expected to write thoughtful, constructive critiques of peer work. Throughout the course, we'll consider how the expectations of literary fiction might constrain such narratives, and we can engage with and transcend these archetypes. 

CRWR 22156/42156 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrator as Personality

While aspiring writers usually grasp quickly how to write direct dialog—we hear it all around us, in public and private spaces—narration is a trickier enterprise. In this writing workshop, we will look at the narrator as personality, a voice that exists to tell the story, but not always to enter it. The narrator can be a constant, like an elbow in the side, or effaced, touching down to only give us the basics of time and place. They can be all knowing, summarizing scenes, people and events from a distant, God-like vantage, or reportorial, speaking in present tense as events unfurl. Some narrators make us laugh but are conning us with their charm; others explain the psychology of events like a great therapist or moralize like a member of the clergy. We will read a wide range of examples from writers like Edward P. Jones, Anton Chekhov, Salman Rushdie, Amy Hempel, Yiyun Li, and Louise Erdrich. Students will be encouraged to experiment in both writing exercises and story revisions. By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and workshopped one story, which you will revise for the final.

CRWR 22140/42140 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Killing Cliché

It’s long been said that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling old ones, but how do writers reengage familiar genres, plots, and themes without being redundant? This course will confront the literary cliché at all levels, from the trappings of genre to predictable turns of plot to the subtly undermining forces of mundane language. We will consider not only how stories can fall victim to cliché but also how they may benefit from calling on recognizable content for the sake of efficiency, familiarity, or homage. Through an array of readings that represent unique concepts and styles as well as more conventional narratives we will examine how published writers embrace or subvert cliché through story craft. Meanwhile, student fiction will be discussed throughout the term in a supportive workshop atmosphere that will aim not to expose clichés in peer work, but to consider how an author can find balance—between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the predictable and the unpredictable—in order to maximize a story’s effect. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work.

CRWR 22117/42117 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Beginning a Novel

This workshop is for any student with a novel in progress or an interest in starting one. Our focus will be the opening chapter, arguably the most consequential one—for the reader naturally, but most importantly for us the writer. How might it introduce the people and world of the story, its premise or central conflict, its narrative tone and style? How might it intrigue, orient, or even challenge the reader and begin teaching them how to read the book? And if the opening chapter is our very starting point as the writer, how might it help us figure out the dramatic shape of our novel, its thematic concerns, its conceptual design? We’ll apply such questions to the opening chapters of an exemplary mix of novels— The Great Gatsby , The Age of Innocence, Invisible Man , Beloved , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , The Vegetarian , Normal People, etc.—and examine what they are expected to do as well as what they can unexpectedly do. And as everyone workshops the first chapter (or prologue) of their own novel, we’ll consider ways of adjusting or rethinking them so that the author can better understand their project overall and build on all the promise of the material they have.

CRWR 29300/49300 Thesis/Major Projects in Poetry (2)

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in poetry, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. Because it is a thesis workshop, the course will focus on various ways of organizing larger poetic “projects.” We will consider the poetic sequence, the chapbook, and the poetry collection as ways of extending the practice of poetry beyond the individual lyric text. We will also problematize the notion of broad poetic “projects,” considering the consequences of imposing a predetermined conceptual framework on the elusive, spontaneous, and subversive act of lyric writing. Because this class is designed as a poetry workshop, your fellow students’ work will be the primary text over the course of the quarter.

CRWR 29300/49300 Thesis/Major Projects in Poetry (1)

Crwr 29400/49400 thesis/major projects in nonfiction (2).

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in nonfiction, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. Student work can be an extended essay, memoir, travelogue, literary journalism, or an interrelated collection thereof. It’s a workshop, so come to the first day of class with your work underway and ready to submit. You’ll edit your classmates' writing as diligently as you edit your own. I focus on editing because writing is, in essence, rewriting. Only by learning to edit other people’s work will you gradually acquire the objectivity you need to skillfully edit your own. You’ll profit not only from the advice you receive, but from the advice you learn to give. I will teach you to teach each other and thus yourselves, preparing you for the real life of the writer outside the academy.

CRWR 29400/49400 Thesis/Major Projects in Nonfiction (1)

Crwr 29200/49200 thesis/major projects in fiction (5).

This thesis workshop is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in fiction, as well as creative writing minors completing the portfolio. It is primarily a workshop, so please come to our first class with your project in progress (a story collection, a novel, or a novella), ready for you to discuss and to submit some part of for critique. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. And as a supplement to our workshops, we will have brief student presentations on the writing life: our literary influences, potential avenues towards publication, etc.

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (4)

Crwr 29200/49200 thesis/major projects in fiction (3).

This advanced fiction course is for BA, MA, and Minor students writing a creative thesis or portfolio, as well as for any advanced student on campus working on a major fiction project. It is primarily a workshop, so we will spend the majority of the quarter reading excerpts from your projects in progress and offering ways of improving and moving them forward. As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft (like language, point of view, plot and character development), with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen. To supplement our workshops, everyone will give presentations on the authors and works of fiction that have informed their writing and on publishing, literary magazines, and the first steps of getting one’s work out into the world. If the schedule allows, we can also spend class-time in conversation on a topic of particular interest or urgency to the writers in the class, whether student-recommended or stemming from previous classes. 

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (2)

This Thesis/Major Projects Workshop is designed for students working on creative writing thesis projects in fiction. Together, we will use the workshop to create new material and to revise, exploring how fiction writers make readable structures out of the chaos of experience and imagination. Our guiding questions include: what stories can a work of fiction tell, and how? What is "true" in fiction, and what is the relationship between journalistic truth and artistic truth? You are already familiar with the fundamentals of plot and character; we will continue to hone the skills you've learned, toward writing characters who are multidimensional, plots that move, and contexts that matter. Narrative voice is an essential tool for creating coherence as well as raising (fictional) stakes. In every scene we read and write, we will consider the impact of the use of inside or outside perspective, declarative scenes and actions, and interiority. The perspectives and situations students write should be original, inimitable, and fresh; the prose should aim to keep lively even topics that are timeless: coming of age, culture, identity, death, and family. As students create and polish their capstone projects, their work will serve as an occasion on which to consider authorial perspective, structure, and craft. We will look carefully at the shapes of projects, exploring why some works organically belong to fiction and others to dramatic writing, poetry, or creative non-fiction. Sometimes students will adapt pages into other forms, in an effort to test their elasticity and allow them their fullest range of expression.

CRWR 29200/49200 Thesis/Major Projects in Fiction (1)

Crwr technical seminar in poetry: prosody.

This course will be a deep dive into prosody. What is prosody? Merriam-Webster describes it as “the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language” — we might also describe it as the way poems move, and how they move their reader. Arguably one of the most important (and least visible) aspects of poetic composition, prosody can teach you to see and write differently. We’ll begin with an introduction to historical metrics (the boring but necessary part), and then move on to studying more contemporary models. Readings will include a bit of scholarly work on prosody by Rosemary Gates and Boris Maslov, but mostly we’ll read poems, from the 12th century to the 21st, that foreground prosody and rhythmic structure. This will be a practice-intensive class—you will be asked to produce several exercises a week, in addition to a final paper or project.

CRWR 20410/40410 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Epistolary Form

When does a body of writing become “literary”? What stories might be found inside the hastily scrawled lines of a postcard buried in the attic or an incomplete to-do list drifting down the sidewalk? Beginning with the modern epistle and epistolary novel, this cross-genre seminar orbits the space where non- literary documents give way to artistic compositions that a given set of experts would otherwise neatly categorize and deposit somewhere literature is supposed to belong. As we practice the interplay of research and imagination toward the realization of a final project, we’ll examine how writers of nonfiction and documentary poetics have used everything from blueprints of a prison cell to vaudeville ephemera to frame, develop, and heighten true stories. We’ll consider ethics of authority such as information access, authentication, and journalistic objectivity alongside rhetorical matters of credibility, emotional truth, and the serviceability of facts. Come play in the archives and observe the power of repurposed material.

CRWR 20233/40233 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Who Sees and Who Speaks?

What is the nature of the encounter between a narrator and a character, and how do elements of character and plot play out in narrative points of view? Drawing on the narratological work of theorists such as Gérard Genette and Monika Fludernik and of critics such as James Wood, this technical seminar considers what point of view, perspective, and focalization can do or make possible. Readings may include stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Jenny Zhang, William Faulkner, Lorrie Moore, Jamil Jan Kochai, Italo Calvino, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Wharton, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Edwidge Danticat, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Virginia Woolf, among others, and will introduce instances of first-person-plural and second-person narrative, as well as modes of representing speech and thought such as free indirect discourse. Over the course of the quarter, students will write short analyses and creative exercises, culminating in a final project.

CRWR 20203/40203 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Research and World Building

Writing fiction is in large part a matter of convincing worldbuilding, no matter what genre you write in. And convincing worldbuilding is about creating a seamless reality within the elements of that world: from setting, to social systems, to character dynamics, to the story or novel’s conceptual conceit. And whether it be within a genre of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, or even contemporary realism, building a convincing world takes a good deal of research. So while we look closely at the tools and methods of successful worldbuilding, we will also dig into the process of research. From how and where to mine the right details, to what to look for. We will also focus on how research can make a fertile ground for harvesting ideas and even story. Students will read various works of long and short fiction with an eye to its worldbuilding, as well as critical and craft texts. They will write short weekly reading responses and some creative exercises as well. Each student will also be expected to make a brief presentation and turn in a final paper for the class.

CRWR 20217/40217 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Elements of Style

What we call style is more than literary flourish. Control of a story begins with a writer’s characteristic approach to the line. Style dictates and shapes immersive and impactful worlds of our creation. It’s also indicative of a work’s larger themes, philosophies, and aesthetic sensibility. In this class, we’ll examine fiction by wordsmiths such as James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, and Marguerite Duras in order to explore the influence that elements such as diction, syntax, rhythm, and punctuation have on a writer’s style.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins. 

CRWR 12143 Reading as a Writer: Embodied Language

This course studies how writers engage the senses to shape language into something actually felt and not just comprehended. We’ll track the sensual life of words—what they do to the mouth, to the ear, their musical kinships with one another—and learn how these qualities combine to generate mood and atmosphere. Alongside writing that renders embodiment and the physical world, we’ll read writing that makes abstraction feel concrete. Our weekly readings will guide our ongoing inquiry into questions such as: what constitutes an image? How does writing enact feeling? How do the sensory elements of a piece intensify or erode or expand its subject, and to what end? Texts will include poetry and prose by Sei Shōnagon, Francis Ponge, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wanda Coleman, Vasko Popa, Lorine Niedecker, Ai, Durga Chew-Bose, Shane McCrae, Jenny Zhang, Justin Torres, James Baldwin, Deborah Eisenberg, and many others. Each member of the class will be asked to write weekly critical and creative responses, to give one presentation, and to produce a final project at the end of the quarter.

Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12124 Reading as a Writer: Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

In this core course, students will investigate the complicated relationship between truth and art, by reading, watching, and writing works adapted from an historical record or “based on a true story.” Weekly reading assignments will include fiction, poetry, memoir, and film, and students will write both critical essays and creative exercises that explore the overlaps and divergences between journalistic and artistic truth. Readings: Aristotle, Baldwin, Bechdel, Carson, Northup, and Rankine.

CRWR 12151 Intro to Genres: The Gothic Lens

The Gothic is arguably the most evocative of all storytelling genres. As haunting as it is seductive in its ambiguities and luridly symbolic tropes, no form more powerfully captures our encounters with the irrational and the inexplicable, whether in nature, in others, or in ourselves. In this Arts Core course, we will approach the genre through all its forbidding yet intimate qualities. As we read Gothic fiction from different eras and cultures, from both a reader’s perspective and a writer’s perspective (the  why/how/who  of the author’s decisions), we’ll cover concepts like the sublime, the uncanny, and abjection, examining the work’s sociopolitical layers but aiming our brightest light on its psychological underpinnings. We’ll ask ourselves: in what ways does the Gothic mirror the most vulnerable and obscure aspects of the self? What might these extraordinary stories of transgression, violence, or supernatural conflict reveal about the horrors of ordinary life, the vagaries of our hidden desires, anxieties, and pathologies? Our focus on the psychological and evocative nature of the genre, especially from a writer’s point of view, will also help us write our Gothic Scenes, where everyone will apply their own intimate “gothic lens” to memorable encounters from their recent past. 

CRWR Intro to Genres: Speculative Women

Intro to Genres: Speculative Women Despite common misconceptions, women have been at the forefront of the speculative genre from its earliest inceptions. They have not merely defied the limitations and restraints of literature as defined by their contemporary society, but invented whole worlds and genres which continue to influence writers and writing as a whole today—from Mary Shelley’s 1818 publication of "Frankenstein" to Virginia Woolf’s 1928 publication of "Orlando," and even Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 novel, “The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World." This course will be a brief foray into the strange and yet familiar worlds of various women across the history of speculative writing, ranging from Mary Shelley to Ursula K. Leguin, from Lady Cavendish to Margaret Atwood, from Alice Walker to Octavia E. Butler.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins; contact the instructor for a spot in the class or on the waiting list.

CRWR 12165 Intro to Genres: Short Form Screenwriting

This course explores short form screenwriting, as distinct from feature-length or episodic screenwriting. In addition to studying the essential elements of a screenplay, we will read, view, and discuss approaches to scripting brief documentary, poetic, and fictional time-based works. This work will prepare us for in- and out-of-class writing exercises in these modes, which students will often discuss in a workshop environment. Students will respond in creative and critical ways to the screenings and readings; present on a specific time-based work or creator; and write in the short screenwriting formats under study, culminating in a final creative project.

CRWR 17012 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Creative Research/The Numinous Particulars

According to Philip Gerard, “Creative research is both a process and a habit of mind, an alertness to the human story as it lurks in unlikely places.” Creative writers may lean on research to sharpen the authenticity of their work; to liberate themselves from the confines of their personal experience; to mine existing stories and histories for details, plot, settings, characters; to generate new ideas and approaches to language, theme and story. The creative writer/researcher is on the hunt for the numinous particulars, the mysteries and human stories lurking in the finest grains of detail. In this course, we will explore the research methods used by creative writers and consider questions that range from the logistical (eg. How do I find what I need in an archive?) to the ethical (eg. How do I conscientiously write from a point of view outside my own experience?) to the aesthetic (eg. How do I incorporate all these researched details without waterlogging the poem/story/essay?). We will read poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that relies heavily on research and hear from established writers about the challenges of conducting and writing from research. Assignments will include reading responses, creative writing and research exercises, short essays and presentations.

Students must be a declared Creative Writing major or Minor in English and Creative Writing to enroll. Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. 

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop (1): Poetic Line in the Americas

This workshop-centered course introduces writers to foundational concepts and tools in the craft of poetry, including form, diction, voice, line, and meter. Regular assignments include both prompts and imitations in poetry writing, and will culminate in a final portfolio developed in working consultation with the instructor. In particular, we will explore formal adaptations of “the line” as “measure” within American poets' work. A short unit within the course will also be dedicated to the translation of poets writing outside of English. Poets whose work will be discussed include Emily Dickinson, Nate Marshall, Bernadette Mayer, Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Sappho, César Vallejo, Walt Whitman, and poets visiting the UChicago campus.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Art of the Fact

Though we live in an era glutted with data, facts don’t speak for themselves. It’s story that moves us. In this class, we will engage in an exploration of creative nonfiction, investigating how to repurpose lived experience and researched material for a memorable story. Together we will read exemplary forms of creative nonfiction—personal essay, memoir, lyric nonfiction, science writing, nature writing, and cultural criticism—to ask how events are shaped into stories, facts into truths. This course will be conducted as a writing workshop, and we will examine the readings and workshop submissions from a critical perspective, looking carefully at issues of style, content, and relevance. In doing so, we hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of creative nonfiction as a whole, as well our particular positions within the genre. Readings will include: James Baldwin, Eula Biss, Derga Chew-Bose, John D'Agata, Jenny Zhang, and others.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Anecdotes and Reflections

In the same way that water is composed of two elements—hydrogen and oxygen—the personal essay essentially consists of anecdotes and reflections, i.e., facts and thoughts, or the objective and the subjective. What happened, and what what happened *means*. The artistry of the essay consists of not only balancing these two elements but combining them so that they complement but also contradict one another. In this workshop you’ll write multiple drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates’ attempts. At the same time we’ll read (and write about) foundational essays that are in overt dialogue with one another, starting with “Why I Write,” by George Orwell, and “Why I Write,” by Joan Didion. We’ll read James Baldwin in conjunction with the seminal essay he inspired Adrienne Rich to write, then look at infusions of poetry into the form via Natalia Ginzburg and Margaret Atwood. We'll end by reading Didion’s essay, “Goodbye to All That,” paired with Eula Biss' cover version, also titled "Goodbye to All That." You'll leave knowing the recent history, basic theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Short Story

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or woodworking, or gardening. The metaphors abound, but the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialog, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialog-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

CRWR 10206 Section 1/30206 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Love & Loss

From “The Little Mermaid” to The Giving Tree, many of us are first introduced to storytelling through tales of love, loss, and self-sacrifice. In this class, we will hone our craft as writers via stories of love and loss, exploring the models of Silvina Ocampo, Christine Schutt, Carmen Maria Machado, Izumi Suzuki, Kelly Link, Camille Roy, and other writers. This course will use “the love story” as a foundation for character development, communication on the page, descriptive language, and the cultivation of unique emotional atmospheres. The class will feature in-class generative writing and a formal workshop (wherein students will share original work and receive critical feedback).

CRWR 21505/41505 Advanced Translation Workshop: Prose Style

Purple, lean, evocative, muscular, literary, exuberant, lucid, stilted, elliptical. These are all labels that critics and reviewers have used to characterize prose styles that call attention to themselves in distinct ways. Of course, what constitutes style not only changes over time, but also means different things in different literary traditions. How, then, do translators carry style over from one language and cultural milieu to another? And to what extent does style structure storytelling? We will explore these questions by reading a variety of modern and contemporary stylists who either write in English or translate into English, paying special attention to what stylistic devices are at work and what their implications are for narration, characterization, and world building. Further, we’ll examine the range of choices that each writer and translator makes when constituting and reconstituting style, on a lexical, tonal, and syntactic scale. By pairing readings with generative exercises in stylistics and constrained writing, we will build toward the translation of a short work of contemporary fiction into English. To participate in this workshop, students should be able to comfortably read a literary text in a foreign language.

CRWR 23136/43136 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry as Parasite

Might there be a kind of poem that acts like a parasite latched on to a host body? A poem whose very life is the fusion of various sources, voices, discourses? This poetry workshop invites students to read and write poetry that, either overtly or subtly, engages with other texts. We’ll examine ways that poems create intertextual relationships (e.g. quoting, voicing, alluding, echoing, stealing, sampling, imitating, translating…) and test out these methods in our own writing. Students should expect to engage with the basic question of how their work relates to other poets and poems. Expect to read a substantial amount of work by modern and contemporary poets, submit new original poems for workshop, complete intertextual writing exercises, participate in discussion forums with both initial response papers and follow-up comments, critique peers’ work, and submit a final portfolio. A substantial amount of class time will be spent workshopping student work.

CRWR 23140/43140 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Poetry and Crisis

Since Homer’s narratives of war and exile, and Hesiod’s accounts of cyclical degeneration and the uncertain future of humankind, poetry has dealt with crisis and liminality. Our own present moment is defined by a convergence of climate and ecological crises, refugee crisis, food crisis, war, and epidemic. In this workshop, we will examine poetic writing arising out of crises, whether political, artistic, or existential, and craft poems that attempt to deal with crisis – both in the form of a concrete Event, and as a literary trope – through critical creative engagement, experimentation, and intertextual dialogue. Readings may include work by Peter Balakian, Jericho Brown, Don Mee Choi, Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Valzhyna Mort, Claudia Rankine, Ocean Vuong, as well as classical sources. Students can expect to workshop their poems in class; to engage, critically and supportively, with peers’ work; and to develop a final portfolio.

Pre-requisite: must have taken Fundamentals + a Beginning Workshop in the same genre prior to registering for an Advanced Workshop

CRWR 24029/44029 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Sports

As live performance, public ritual, and sheer melodrama, sports give lavish expression to some of our most deeply held cultural attitudes. As sports-related industries have grown exponentially in the past decades, and as the material and political fortunes at stake in these games has also grown, so too has the need for serious writing about sports. The world’s stadiums and arenas have become theaters of very real battles over race and gender, class and religion, colonialism and social justice. At the same time, the games themselves have also changed in fascinating and telling ways. This workshop invites writers who are curious about sports as a subject for literary exploration. We examine the subject through various genres of nonfiction, from longform journalism to personal essay to audio storytelling. Our readings will include both canonical and contemporary voices in sports writing. Workshop writers can choose to build a portfolio of three pieces of original nonfiction, or one long piece in three parts. No previous knowledge of sports is required.

CRWR 24028/44028 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: World-Building in Longform Nonfiction

A writer setting out to write a long piece of nonfiction prose may assume that the world of the piece is given, but in fact the nonfiction writer has significant work to do to create a space where a reader can live. In writing creative biography, history, memoir, literary criticism, art writing, and narrative journalism, there are wonderful possibilities for archival research, visiting places and spaces, making first hand observations, interviewing, finding settings and characters, and atmospheric research, whether reading old magazines, listening to radio shows, or studying weather patterns. In this course, advanced writers will immerse themselves in one longer project, developing it in notebooks and weekly postings and exercises. The first half of the course will focus more on practicing and reading (writers including Elizabeth Rush, Zbigniew Herbert, Valeria Luiselli, and James Baldwin), the second half will focus on workshopping as the longer pieces develop. Students will finish the course with a sustained piece of prose.

CRWR 22135/42135 Advanced Fiction Workshop: The Long and Short of It: Narrative Time

A story's end point determines its meaning. The history of a life can be covered in a sentence, a few pages or seven volumes. How do writers decide? In this advanced workshop, we'll look at different ways to handle narrative time, paying special attention to building blocks like direct and summary scene, flashback, compression, slowed time and fabulist time. We'll examine work by writers whose long stories feel like novels, like Alice Munro and Edward P. Jones, alongside those who say everything in a short single scene of a page or two, like Grace Paley and Justin Torres. Students will be encouraged to experiment with time in both writing exercises and their own drafts as they work toward a polished final story. Strong emphasis on focused and productive peer critique and in-class commentary.

CRWR 22149/42149 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Long Stories

"The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist," writes Henry James, "is that there is no limit to what he may attempt." Writers interested in these torments and luxuries can begin to experiment with long form in this workshop. Each student will compose a single long story of about forty pages. We'll attend to the freshness of beginnings, the satisfactions (and compromises) of endings and, most acutely, to the crises of middles. A scaffolding of workshops, outlines, and conferences will support and structure your efforts. Along the way we'll explore the opportunities of long-form structure with examples from the likes of David Foster Wallace, Alice Munro, Ted Chiang, and Toni Morrison.  Most of our class time will be devoted to workshopping long stories by students.

CRWR 22146/42146 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Disruption & Disorder

This workshop-based course proceeds from the premise that disorder and disruption are fruitful aesthetics that might be applied to numerous elements of fiction to unlock new possibilities in our work. Students will seek to identify typical narrative conventions and lyrical patterns and then write away from them—or write over them, toward subversion, surprise, and perhaps even a productive anarchy. Students will search for hidden structures in work by Taeko Kono, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Diane Williams, Garielle Lutz, and others, examining the methods these writers use to lead readers to unexpected, original, and transgressive places. Students will complete several short creative exercises in which they practice disruption and disorder in plot, pace, dialogue, and syntax. In the second half of the course, students will workshop one story or excerpt and write thoughtful, constructive critiques of peer work. Revision is also a crucial component of this class, as it is an opportunity to radically warp and deviate from our prior visions. Throughout the quarter, we will attempt to interrupt and shake up our own inclinations as artists.

CRWR 20309/40309 Technical Seminar in Poetry: Generative Genres

Why does it feel so good to write a curse? What is an ode and how is it different from an aubade? From ancient Sumerian temple hymns to 7th-century Japanese death poems to avant-garde ekphrasis in the 21st century, the history of poetry is as rich in genres as it is in forms. In this technical seminar we will study the origins, transcultural functions, and evolving conventions of some of the oldest-living genres of lyric poetry – the ode, the elegy, the love poem, the curse, to name a few. We will read living writers such as Alice Oswald, Danez Smith, Kim Hyesoon, and Natalie Diaz alongside historical forerunners including Sei Shonagon, John Keats, Federico Garcia Lorca, Sylvia Plath, and Paul Celan. Students will write weekly experiments of their own in response to our readings, and for a final project they will edit a mini- anthology of a lyric sub-genre of their choice, including a short critical introduction.

CRWR 20404/40404 Technical Seminar in Nonfiction: Forms of the Essay

The essay, derived from the French term essayer meaning "to try" or "to attempt," is not only a beloved sub-genre of creative nonfiction, but a form that yields many kinds of stories, thus many kinds of structures. Araceli Arroyo writes that the essay can “reach its height in the form of a lyric, expand in digression, coil into a list, delve into memoir, or spring into the spire of the question itself all with grace and unexhausted energy.” In this course, we will analyze the essay’s continuum, marked by traditional, linear narratives on one end, and at the other, everything else. In our class, we will investigate the relationship between content and form. What does it mean to be scene-driven? What happens when a narrative abandons chronology and event, propelled instead by language and image? What is gained through gaps and white space? You will leave this class with a strong grasp of content’s relationship to form, prepared to participate effectively in creative writing workshops. You will also create a portfolio of short writings that can be expanded into longer pieces.  Readings will include: Nox by Anne Carson; A Bestiary by Lily Hoang; Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli; Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine; Essayists on the Essay edited by Ned Stuckey-French

CRWR 20209/40209 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Scenes & Seeing

At the core of literary storytelling is dramatization, which enables a reader to "see" the world, characters, and incidents at play and to vicariously experience their emotional and psychological consequences in the story. The primary vehicle for dramatization in a story is the scene, which consists of many crucial parts: characterization, setting and imagery, dialogue and action, tone and atmosphere, subtext and thematic development. In this course we’ll break down all these parts and examine how they can function on their own as well as interact to bring a moment or event to life. Where and how should a particular scene begin and end? How should information be organized? How might we determine a scene’s goals in isolation and in support of the larger narrative of a short story, novella, or novel? And ultimately, beyond characters talking, acting, and reacting, how might we expand our traditional notions of what a scene is and what it can do? We’ll consider such questions as we discuss exceptionally crafted scenes from short stories, novels, plays, and even film, TV, and podcasts, with an eye also on the differences in scene craft from genre to genre and what that can teach us specifically as fiction writers. Course assignments will include reading responses, writing exercises, short essays, and student presentations. 

CRWR 20232/40232 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Narrative Influence

T. S. Eliot once said that “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” In this class we will look at modeling as a springboard for original creativity. What makes a piece of writing original? Is it possible to borrow a famous writer’s story structure, theme, or even attempt their voice, yet produce something wholly original? How specifically are writers influenced and then inspired? Readings will pair writers with the influences they’ve talked or written about, such as Yiyun Li and Anton Chekhov; Edward P. Jones and Alice Walker; Sigrid Nunez and Elizabeth Hardwick, and George Saunders and Nikolai Gogol. Writing exercises will experiment with aspects of voice, narrative structure, point of view, tone, and use of dialog. While this is not a workshop course, come prepared to write and share work in class. Students will pursue both creative work and critical papers.

CRWR 20236/40236 Technical Seminar in Fiction: Alternative Points of View

Point of view is one of our most powerful narrative tools, controlling voice, perspective, and level of access to every bit of information a reader receives. When writers are first finding their way into new fiction projects, however, it is easy to default to the two points of view we are most commonly exposed to: a traditional first person or third person that behaves predictably. In this Technical Seminar, we will mine the work of Julie Otsuka, Carmen Maria Machado, Robert Coover, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and other writers for strategic usage of alternative points of view, including second person, first person plural, free indirect discourse, and deliberate shifts from one point of view into another. Assignments will include short critical and creative responses, a final fiction assignment, and a final presentation.

CRWR CRWR 12163 Reading as a Writer: Obscenities

“Obscenity” is a term for what is repulsive, abhorrent, excessive, or taboo in a society; and yet many artworks once considered to be obscene are now celebrated as landmarks of world literature, from the ancient poetry of Sappho to modern novels like Ulysses. In this course, we will study literary works that have been banned or censored as “obscene” to examine our own perspectives, attitudes, and assumptions as literary artists. How does obscenity shape our understanding of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, or public and private speech? What are the uses of obscenity in constructing new possibilities for literary expression? Authors studied will include Toni Morrison, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Vladimir Nabokov, Hilda Hilst, and Allen Ginsburg; and we will supplement these readings with works of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and case law. Students will produce their own original poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to reimagine what is permissible—and possible—in language and society for contemporary literary artists.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins; contact the instructor for a spot in the class or on the waiting list. Satisfies the College Arts Core requirement.

CRWR 12164 Reading as a Writer: Good Translation

The past few years have seen a proliferation of major awards for works of contemporary world literature that have been translated into English (among them the International Booker Prize, the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle Book in Translation Prize). While such awards certainly elevate translation as a mode of writing comparable to that of other literary arts, they also raise important questions about the production, circulation, and reception of translated literature in the Anglosphere. In this course, we will read a number of recent award-winning books in English translation (both poetry and prose), considering how these books traveled from origin to translation, and how we as readers engage with them – as translations and as literary texts. How are translations made? How do we evaluate books that have two writers: author and translator? What larger forces (social, aesthetic, commercial, political) are at work when deciding which translated books will hold value for Anglophone readers? We’ll explore these questions through weekly readings and discussions, student presentations, critical analyses and creative responses. As a final project, students will develop their own evaluative rubrics from which to award a prize to one of the translations we’ve read.

This course will consider brevity as an artistic mode curiously capable of articulating the unspeakable, the abyssal, the endless. Reading very brief works from a long list of writers, we will ask: when is less more? When is less less? What is minimalism? What is the impact of the fragment? Can a sentence be a narrative? Can a word comprise a poem? Our readings will include short poems, short essays, and short short stories by Yannis Ritsos, francine j. harris, Aram Saroyan, Richard Wright, Cecilia Vicuña, Kobayashi Issa, Renee Gladman, Robert Creeley, Alejandra Pizarnik, Lucille Clifton, Lydia Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Yi Sang, Anne Carson, Franz Kafka, Prageeta Sharma, Venita Blackburn, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, and others. Students will be asked to lead one presentation and to write critical and creative responses for group discussion.

CRWR 12141 Intro to Genres: Drawing on Graphic Novels

Like film, comics are a language, and there's much to be learned from studying them, even if we have no intention of 'writing' them. Comics tell two or more stories simultaneously, one via image, the other via text, and these parallel stories can not only complement but also contradict one another, creating subtexts and effects that words alone can’t. Or can they? Our goal will be to draw, both literally and metaphorically, on the structures and techniques of the form. While it’s aimed at the aspiring graphic novelist (or graphic essayist, or poet), it’s equally appropriate for those of us who work strictly with words (or with images.) What comics techniques can any artist emulate, approximate, or otherwise aspire to, and how can these lead us to a deeper understanding of the possibilities of point of view, tone, structure and style? We’ll learn the basics of the medium via Ivan Brunetti’s book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, as well as Syllabus, by Lynda Barry. Readings include the scholar David Kunzle on the origins of the form, the first avant-garde of George Herriman, Frank King, and Lyonel Feininger, finishing with contemporaries like Chris Ware, Emil Ferris, and Alison Bechdel. Assignments include weekly creative and critical assignments, culminating in a final portfolio and paper.

CRWR 17007 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: The Grammar of Narrative

Storytelling goes nearly as far back as human consciousness, while the ways in which we tell stories has been expanding ever since. This class will look at several different forms of narrative—fiction, creative non-fiction, narrative poetry, and film—and explore the “grammar” of these different genres, what they share and where they differ and how their particular strengths influence the ways in which they most effectively communicate. How does film (a visual medium) tell a story differently than does fiction (which asks us to project our own imagined version of the story), differently than creative non-fiction, (which must always rely on facts), differently than poetry (which condenses the story to its essences)? How do these different genres and mediums influence the stories they tell and the effects they achieve? Readings will include primary texts as well as critical and fundamentals texts in each genre. Students will complete weekly reading responses, as well as creative exercises. A paper focusing on a specific element derived from the class will be due at the end of the course.

CRWR 17017 Fundamentals in Creative Writing: Haunted Craft, the Art of the Spectral Metaphor

This course will be a close examination of the use of spectral imagery as a craft element in narratives across genre and time. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to Emily Carrol’s  A Guest in the House,  to Shirley Jackson’s  The Haunting of Hill House  and Octavia Butler’s  Fledgling , the supernatural metaphor presents a unique stage upon which to play out questions of gender autonomy, mental health, repressed sexuality, racism and more. Students in this course will be expected to put the fantastical metaphor under a microscope and explore its potential through both creative and critical work of their own.

During pre-registration, this course is open only to declared Creative Writing Majors and declared Minors in English and Creative Writing

CRWR 10606/30606 Beginning Translation Workshop (1)

Beginning Translation Workshop: It’s been said that in an ideal world, all writers would be translators, and all translators would be writers. In addition to the joy of enlarging the conversation of literature by bringing new voices into another language, the practice of literary translation forces us as writers to examine the materials and tools of our craft. In this workshop, we will critique each other’s translations of prose, poetry, or drama into English, as well as explore various creative strategies and approaches to translation by a variety of practitioners that touch on various aspects of the "radical recontextualization" that constitute the decision-making work of literary translation. Through these processes, you will formulate your own strategies to both literary translation and creative writing. We will also have the opportunity to have conversations via Zoom with some of the translators we’ll be reading. Students should have at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language to take this workshop.

Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. To participate in this class, students should have intermediate proficiency in a foreign language.

CRWR 10306 Section 2/30306 Section 2 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Imaginary Music

The poet Aimé Césaire once wrote that “The only acceptable music comes from somewhere deeper than sound. The search for music is a crime against the music of poetry which can only be the beating of the mind’s wave against the rock of the world.” What is this music “deeper than sound”? How is it related to the more obvious “audible” sounds of poetry? This course invites students to experiment with both the audible and inaudible elements of poetry. We’ll practice traditional music-making devices, such as rhythm and rhyme, at the same time that we explore the musical movements of mind and the moods that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, our discussions will focus primarily on readings. As we move forward, we will spend the majority of time workshopping student work.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Disproving the Pastoral

In Disproving the Pastoral, we’ll explore our own ties to rural landscapes as a means of interrogating and updating the pastoral tradition, just as we’ll investigate and write toward a more holistic landscape—one that integrates the literal and the political, the critical, and the sociocultural. Throughout the quarter, we will read, write, and discuss contemporary poems that are dedicated to the careful observation of—and commentary on—rural spaces. As we study works by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Nikky Finney, Joy Priest, Nikki Wallschlaeger, Matthew Wimberly, C.D. Wright and others, we will develop a keen eye for the multi- faceted utility of the landscape in our own work. We will learn through practice, writing drafts that engage with craft elements like imagery, form, rhythm, and voice. We will workshop these drafts as a class, building a collective vocabulary for creative and critical feedback. And, in the end, we will craft work that seeks to subvert the expected narratives of these far-off, rural places we take up as subjects.

CRWR 10406 Section 1/30406 Section 1 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Ecotone

This course explores creative nonfiction that responds to the places where boundaries blur, culture encounters nature, the self meets the collective. Scottish writer Ali Smith once said, “The place where the natural world meets the arts is a fruitful, fertile place for both.” Robert Macfarlane suggests that we consider such places as an “ecotone” – a biological term for the liminal space between biomes “where two communities met and integrate.” Our exploration of writing about ecotones will take us outside of the classroom on tours, urban hikes, and neighborhood explorations that engage with Chicago's history, ecology, and architecture*. Writing creative nonfiction, we shall see, requires all of the sense; as we explore the city, students will the learn fundamentals of recording their observations and shaping them into story. Students will develop foundational creative nonfiction tenets, including scene-building, character development, point of view, voice, artful word choice, and structure. Inside the classroom, our workshop will foment a supportive, knowledgeable, and critical community in which to exchange and discuss original work. Course readings will include the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Elizabeth Kolbert, Brian Macfarlane and Lauret Savoy.

CRWR 10406 Section 2/30406 Section 2 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Flash Essay

If you’ve ever been sucked inside a rabbit-hole of threaded replies to your own objectively perfect Tweet or winced under the pressure of a scribble in So-and-So’s yearbook, you’ll know the art of extreme brevity is not for everyone. The kaleidoscopic nature of the human mind resists compression. Like a reflex away from an odor, your sentences want to run. I’ll try to keep this brief: some stories can only carry so much, and well, our breath is short. Containment is a source of drama, so let’s study the art of concision together. Students in this workshop will churn out 750-word essays each week, exchanging feedback on what sticks, and revising toward distillation. We’ll spend most of class honing what Bernard Cooper has called “an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens... until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

CRWR 10206 Section 3/30206 Section 3 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Understanding Narrative Points of View

Writers at all levels learn through the careful reading of works they admire. We will spend more than a third of our time in this class reading stories worth learning from, both classic and contemporary, by writers like James Baldwin, Sherman Alexie, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Discussion will be lively—passionate opinions and enthusiasm are welcome—but most of our focus will be on the choices that writers make, the nuts and bolts of craft, with special emphasis on point of view (who speaks and why?) while also covering tone, direct and summary dialog, setting, conflict, causality, and use of time. In-class exercises will further hone your understanding of specific techniques, fire your creativity and get you writing. In writing workshop, which will occupy a significant part of class most weeks, each of you will have the opportunity to present your work to the group. Critique will be respectful and productive, with emphasis on clarity and precision. By the end of the course, you will have generated significant raw material and completed at least one story, which will be revised and handed in as a final portfolio.

CRWR 10306 Section 1/30306 Section 1 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Scene

Scenes are often considered the building blocks of narrative story-telling. In this course, we’ll examine short fiction through the lens of scene, starting from the basics: What are scenes, how do they work, and what should they accomplish in a story? We’ll consider the scene’s relationship with context, tension, subtext, narrative arc, and other story elements. Together we’ll examine how authors like Bret Anthony Johnston, Rebecca Lee, and Jhumpa Lahiri use scenes to great effect, with a particular focus on setting, dialogue, action, and detail. In addition to readings, students will complete several short writing exercises and one longer story, which you will workshop and substantially revise. You will also engage with the work of your peers, delivering thoughtful, encouraging, constructive critiques.

CRWR 10206 Section 2/30206 Section 2 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Metamorphoses

If one account of a story is that it is, at heart, a transformation, then what is—or could be—transformed? In this beginning fiction workshop, we will consider change as an engine of fiction and explore metamorphoses that take place at the level of plot, character, narrative voice, planes of reality, memory, identity, language, and form, as well as transformations that perhaps fail to take place. Readings may include the work of authors such as Ovid, Jamaica Kincaid, Carmen Maria Machado, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Haruki Murakami, Steven Millhauser, Jenny Zhang, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Julio Cortázar, Jamil Jan Kochai, Gabriel García Márquez, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edwidge Danticat, among others. In creative exercises, we will experiment with transformations in our own fiction. Over the course of the quarter, students will collect and revise these experiments into a portfolio and transform one experiment into a complete short story, which we will workshop in class.

CRWR 10206 Section 5/30306 Section 5 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Exhaustion and Renewal: The Short Story in Contemporary Fiction

This workshop-centered course introduces writers to foundational concepts and tools in the craft of fiction writing, including character development, point of view, and plotting.  Regular assignments include the submission and editing of shared short/extended fictions, as well as critical reflection on the artistic contexts of the short story itself.  A focus within this course reflects on the short story’s “exhaustion” as a form. How has short fiction been reinvented or found new shapes in contemporary writing?  How has the line between fiction and nonfiction been renegotiated there? Writers for discussion include Jeffery Renard Allen, Elif Batuman, Jorge Luis Borges, Lydia Davis, Lauren Groff, Yu Hua, and writers visiting the UChicago campus.

CRWR 10206 Section 4/30206 Section 4 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Contemporary Practice

This beginning fiction workshop approaches long-standing issues of craft through engagement with stories that have been published by emerging writers in the last several years. We will find classic narrative techniques (like scenic method, plot reversal, and closure) operating in newly published work, but we’ll also look for promising experiments, novelties of form, and blurred boundaries. Authors read may include Vanessa Onwuemezi, Bora Chung, or Isabel Waidner. After several weeks devoted to reading and the trial of basic techniques, students will compose stories to be workshopped in class. A spirit of discovery and experiment will be encouraged.

CRWR 23135/43135 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Weird Science

This class invites students to explore various relationships between science and poetry, two domains that, perhaps counter-intuitively, often draw from each other to revitalize themselves. As poets, we’ll use, misuse, and borrow from science in our poems. We’ll approach poems like science experiments and aim to enter an “experimental attitude.” From a practical point of view, we’ll try to write poems that incorporate the language of science to freshen their own language or to expand the realm of poetic diction. Furthermore, we’ll work with tropes and procedural experiments that may result in revelation, discovery, and surprise. Readings may include work by Aimé Césaire, Kimiko Hahn, Ed Roberson, Dean Young, Joyelle Mcsweeney, and Will Alexander. Students can expect to write several poems, participate in discussion forums with both initial response papers and follow-up comments, critique peers’ work, and submit a final portfolio. A substantial amount of class time will be spent workshopping student work.

CRWR 23135/43135 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Ekphrastic Poetry

In this generative advanced poetry workshop we will find inspiration for our own poetry by engaging with the visual arts. We will read poems that respond to, reflect, and refract the arts, and exercises will be based on our own encounters in museums, at the movies, in the realms of fashion, architecture, landscape, and elsewhere. We will ask ourselves about artifice and making, the materiality of the written word, the relationship between observation and expression, the emotive qualities of the image, and the sonic qualities of words. Most of our course reading will be contemporary poetry, but we will also explore a range of exciting earlier examples. Each class meeting will include workshops of student poems, discussions of assigned literature, and conversations about art practice and art community. In addition to reading deeply, looking closely, and writing wildly, students are expected to be lively participants in the arts community on campus, and will attend exhibitions, concerts, readings, screenings, and other events and experiences that bring us into contact with various modes of expression. Texts may include poems by, Harryette Mullen, James Schuyler, Brenda Shaughnessy, David Trinidad, and Virgil.

CRWR 24030/44030 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Feature

Apart from it being nonfiction, a nonfiction feature is like a short story—in terms of length and scenes and characters and all the potential innovations of storytelling. In this writing workshop, students will go through each stage of composing a narrative nonfiction feature story. After generating a few ideas that seem original, surprising in their approach, and appropriate in scope, we will write pitches. After the class agrees to “assign” one of these features, each student will report, research and write a draft. The features will be workshopped in class, and students will go through an editorial process, polishing their stories and experimenting with style and form for a final assignment. Along the way, we will consider the mechanics, ethics and craft of this work as we read published nonfiction and talk to writers and reporters about their process. There will be an emphasis in the class on Chicago writers and their beats; in weekly writing assignments, students will also report on local stories.

CRWR 24002/44002 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing about the Arts

Thinking about practices is a way of focusing a conversation between creative writers, art historians, curators, and working visual artists, all of whom are encouraged to join this workshop. We ourselves will be practicing and studying a wide variety of approaches to visual art. We’ll read critics like John Yau and Lori Waxman, memoirists like Aisha Sabbatini Sloan, inventive historians like Zbigniew Herbert, and poets like Gwendolyn Brooks and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, as well as curatorial and museum writings, catalogue essays, artists' statements, and other experimental and practical forms.

The course hopes to support students both in developing useful practices and experimenting boldly. Classes will be shaped around current exhibitions and installations. Sessions will generally begin with student-led observation at the Smart Museum, and we will spend one session on close looking in the study room at the Smart. Students will also visit five collections, exhibitions and/or galleries and, importantly, keep a looking notebook. Students will write a number of exercises in different forms (immersive meditation, researched portrait, mosaic fragment), and will also write and revise a longer essay (on any subject and in any mode) to be workshopped in class.

Instructor consent required. Email the instructor to submit a writing sample and/or to be added to the waitlist. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 24026/44026 Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Feminist Biography

The personal is political – that slogan of Women’s Liberation – has long been understood, among other things, as a call for new forms of storytelling. One of those forms, feminist biography, has flourished in publishing since the 1970s, and it continues to evolve today, even as the terms of feminism and of biography are continually re-negotiated by writers and critics.  In this workshop, we read some of those writers and critics. And we read illustrative examples of contemporary feminist biography (and anti-biography) in various nonfiction genres, including magazine profile, trade book, Wiki article, audio performance, personal essay, cult pamphlet, avant-garde art piece. Mostly, we try out the form for ourselves, in our own writing. Each workshop writer will choose a biographical subject (single, collective, or otherwise), and work up a series of sketches around that subject. By the end of the quarter, workshop writers will build these sketches into a single piece of longform life-writing. The workshop will focus equally on story-craft and method (e.g. interview and research techniques, cultivating sources); indeed we consider the ways that method and story are inevitably connected. This workshop might also include a week with an invited guest, a practicing critic or biographer. 

CRWR 22133/42133 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing the Uncanny

Sigmund Freud defines "the uncanny" ("unheimlich") as something that unnerves us because it is both familiar and alien at the same time, the result of hidden anxieties and desires coming to the surface. In this advanced fiction workshop, we will explore how fiction writers use the uncanny to create suspense, lend their characters psychological depth, thrill and terrify their readers, and lay bare the darkest and most difficult human impulses. We will read and discuss fiction by writers like Shirley Jackson, Jamaica Kincaid, Octavia Butler, Kelly Link, Ben Okri, Haruki Murakami, and Victor Lavalle, drawing craft lessons from these writers to guide our own attempts at writing the uncanny. Much of our class time will be dedicated to evaluating student work and honing our skills of composition and critique. In addition to shorter writing exercises and "mini-workshops" throughout the quarter, every student will complete a full- length "uncanny" short story for workshop and compose critique letters for each of their peers. Students will be required to significantly revise their full-length short story by the end of the quarter.

CRWR 22157/42157 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Tiny Chapters

In this advanced fiction workshop, students will have the opportunity to assemble a long narrative out of short fragments. Composing with small units reframes the art of narrative. We’ll study the diverse affordances of working with fragments—collage, aporia, essayistic interpolation—always keeping an eye on the totality of our narratives. We’ll discuss the art of brevity—including related forms like the aphorism, the note, and the joke. We’ll begin in experiment and end with substantial compositions. Our readings will be drawn from the numerous contemporary novelists who use this method (Jenny Offill, Olga Ravn, Dorthe Nors) as well as the older generation of authors who, in their different ways, may be said to have pioneered the form (Marguerite Duras, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Gass, Renata Adler). But most of our class time will be devoted to workshopping original student work.

CRWR 22130/42130 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Inner Logic

In this advanced workshop, we will explore the range of strategies and techniques that fiction writers employ to make readers suspend their disbelief. We will consider how imagined worlds are made to feel real and how invented characters can seem so human. We will contemplate how themes, motifs, and symbols are deployed in such a way that a story can feel curated without seeming inorganic. We will consider how hints are dropped with subtlety, how the ‘rules’ for what is possible in a story are developed, and how writers can sometimes defy their own established expectations in ways that delight rather than frustrate. From character consistency to twist endings, we’ll investigate how published authors lend a sense of realism and plausibility to even the most far-fetched concepts. Through regular workshops, we will also interrogate all student fiction through this lens, discussing the ways in which your narratives-in-progress create their own inner logic. Students will submit two stories to workshop and will be asked to write critiques of all peer work.

CRWR 22158/42158 Advanced Fiction Workshop: From the Ground Up

In a craft talk, writer Stephen Dobyns once described an exercise he used for generating stories inspired by Raymond Carver, who said about his process, "I write the first sentence, and then I write the next sentence and then the next." Apparently, Dobyns was frustrated by that answer, but later challenged himself to write 50 first sentences of potential stories. Then, he picked half of them and wrote 25 first paragraphs. From those, he eventually completed about a half dozen stories. (I learned this from an article by the great short story writer Kelly Link.) In this generative workshop, we will proceed in this fashion. During the first week, we’ll study the first sentences of stories and each write our own 50 first sentences. During the second week, we’ll study the first paragraphs of stories and each write 25 first paragraphs, and so on until all students have a few complete drafts of stories, one of which will be submitted to our in-class workshop. Along the way, we’ll read and discuss well-made stories by writers such as Kelly Link, Denis Johnson, Joy Williams, Edward P. Jones, Justin Torres, Mary Gaitskill, and many others. To be successful, students will read and write actively and share their well-informed opinions with enthusiasm, especially in our workshop discussions.

CRWR 22159/42159 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Family Life, Family Strife

If, as the opening lines of Anna Karenina suggests, it is true that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” then the unique character of family is largely determined by its distinct manner and type of conflict. In this advanced fiction workshop, we’ll examine fiction about family friction with an eye for observing the strategies that authors have used to construct dramas that revolve around how families love, cope, or crumple in the midst of crisis. As we identify tropes of family dysfunction, we’ll also consider the ways authors use narrative devices like point-of-view, setting, plot, and scene to investigate how we define family (and how those definitions have evolved); its bonds and intergenerational inheritances; how families—like institutions— are bonded by their distinctive habits, manners, mores, and laws; and how kinship might magnify, subvert, or critique larger society. Above all, we’ll debate what family life and family strife teach us about storytelling. Over the course of the term, we will write and workshop your own fiction inspired by model texts.

Creative writing courses

Short and part-time courses with Oxford University

Need an extra push to finish your novel, poem or play? Want to explore new genres? Whether you're a beginner wondering where to start, or an experienced writer looking to extend your craft, we have a course for you.

Short courses

Our  short courses in creative writing  include in person and online live-time weekly classes, day and weekend schools and flexible online courses.

Courses cover all genres: fiction, poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction, drama, writing for young adults and critical reading. There are courses for beginners and options for those with experience. Class sizes are kept small to maximise interaction between you, your classmates and your tutor.

Credit earned from some of our short courses is transferable towards our  Certificate of Higher Education  – a part-time undergraduate course in which you study a main subject discipline, but also undertake study in other academic subjects.

• View all short courses in creative writing
• Ways to study: how our short courses work

Summer schools

Join us for one of our Oxford  creative writing summer courses , and spend a week or longer immersed in your craft. Accredited and non-accredited options are available; courses take place at Rewley House and at Oxford's historic colleges.

• Creative writing summer courses

Part-time Oxford University qualifications

From undergraduate level to advanced postgraduate study.

• The  Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing  is a two-year part-time course that helps you to strengthen your ability in four major areas of literary activity — prose, poetry, drama and analytical reading — while letting you specialise in the genre of your choice. Choose from two study options: regular in-person meetings in Oxford or mostly online, with a summer school in Oxford.
• The  Certificate of Higher Education  is a flexible, part-time programme which lets you study a main subject discipline (such as creative writing) while also undertaking study in other academic subjects. Ideal for lifelong learners, you can study what you want, when you want, how you want. The credits you obtain from taking short online courses, weekly classes and attendance at the Oxford University Summer School for Adults all count towards your final award.
• Delve deeper into creative writing with our MSt in Creative Writing – a two-year, part-time master's programme offering a unique combination of high contact hours, genre specialization, and critical and creative breadth, delivered in a clustered learning format of five residences, two guided retreats and one placement over two years.

Student spotlights

Charles bush.

Charles Bush published his debut young-adult novel thanks to the skills and experience gained from completing the Undergraduate Certificate of Higher Education.

Tahmina Maula

Tahmina worked as a senior manager in education before taking a career break to undertake the Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing.

Daisy Johnson

While studying the MSt in Creative Writing Daisy worked on a collection of short stories which would later become her debut book.

Upcoming courses

Trollope, eliot, dickens and hardy: reading victorian fiction (online).

• Wed 17 Apr 2024 – 28 Jun 2024

Reading and Writing Poetry

• Mon 22 Apr 2024 – Mon 08 Jul 2024
• 10 meetings
• 7:00 – 9:00pm

Logos: A Theory of Everything

• Tue 23 Apr 2024 – 28 May 2024
• 2:00 – 3:15pm

The Sleep of Reason: Popular Science Fiction Cinema since 'Blade Runner' (1982)

• Tue 23 Apr 2024 – Tue 25 Jun 2024

Thomas Hardy

• 2:00 – 4:00pm

Part-time award programmes

Part-time creative writing award-bearing courses for those looking to gain an Oxford qualification.

Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing

Mst in creative writing, undergraduate certificate of higher education.

• Academics /

Creative Writing and Literature Master’s Degree Program

Unlock your creative potential and hone your unique voice.

Online Courses

11 out of 12 total courses

On-Campus Experience

One 1- or 3-week residency in summer

$3,220 per course

Program Overview

Through the master’s degree in creative writing and literature, you’ll hone your skills as a storyteller — crafting publishable original scripts, novels, and stories.

In small, workshop-style classes, you’ll master key elements of narrative craft, including characterization, story and plot structure, point of view, dialogue, and description. And you’ll learn to approach literary works as both a writer and scholar by developing skills in critical analysis.

Program Benefits

Instructors who are published authors of drama, fiction, and nonfiction

A community of writers who support your growth in live online classes

Writer's residency with agent & editor networking opportunities

Personalized academic and career advising

Thesis or capstone options that lead to publishable creative work

Harvard Alumni Association membership upon graduation

Customizable Course Curriculum

As you work through the program’s courses, you’ll enhance your creative writing skills and knowledge of literary concepts and strategies. You’ll practice the art of revision to hone your voice as a writer in courses like Writing the Short Personal Essay and Writing Flash Fiction.

Within the creative writing and literature program, you will choose between a thesis or capstone track. You’ll also experience the convenience of online learning and the immersive benefits of learning in person.

11 Online Courses

• Primarily synchronous
• Fall, spring, January, and summer options

Writers’ Residency

A 1- or 3-week summer master class taught by a notable instructor, followed by an agents-and-editors weekend

Thesis or Capstone Track

• Thesis: features a 9-month independent creative project with a faculty advisor
• Capstone: includes crafting a fiction or nonfiction manuscript in a classroom community

The path to your degree begins before you apply to the program.

First, you’ll register for and complete 2 required courses, earning at least a B in each. These foundational courses are investments in your studies and count toward your degree, helping ensure success in the program.

Getting Started

We invite you to explore degree requirements, confirm your initial eligibility, and learn more about our unique “earn your way in” admissions process.

A Faculty of Creative Writing Experts

Studying at Harvard Extension School means learning from the world’s best. Our instructors are renowned academics in literary analysis, storytelling, manuscript writing, and more. They bring a genuine passion for teaching, with students giving our faculty an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.

Bryan Delaney

Playwright and Screenwriter

Talaya Adrienne Delaney

Lecturer in Extension, Harvard University

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Our community at a glance.

80% of our creative writing and literature students are enrolled in our master’s degree program for either personal enrichment or to make a career change. Most (74%) are employed full time while pursuing their degree and work across a variety of industries.

Download: Creative Writing & Literature Master's Degree Fact Sheet

Average Age

Course Taken Each Semester

Work Full Time

Would Recommend the Program

Professional Experience in the Field

Pursued for Personal Enrichment

Career Opportunities & Alumni Outcomes

Graduates of our Creative Writing and Literature Master’s Program have writing, research, and communication jobs in the fields of publishing, advertising/marketing, fundraising, secondary and higher education, and more.

Some alumni continue their educational journeys and pursue further studies in other nationally ranked degree programs, including those at Boston University, Brandeis University, University of Pennsylvania, and Cambridge University.

Our alumni hold titles as:

• Marketing Manager
• Director of Publishing
• Senior Research Writer

Our alumni work at a variety of leading organizations, including:

• Little, Brown & Company
• New York University (NYU)
• Bentley Publishers

Career Advising and Mentorship

Whatever your career goals, we’re here to support you. Harvard’s Mignone Center for Career Success offers career advising, employment opportunities, Harvard alumni mentor connections, and career fairs like the annual on-campus Harvard Humanities, Media, Marketing, and Creative Careers Expo.

Your Harvard University Degree

Upon successful completion of the required curriculum, you will earn the Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Extension Studies, Field: Creative Writing and Literature.

Expand Your Connections: the Harvard Alumni Network

As a graduate, you’ll become a member of the worldwide Harvard Alumni Association (400,000+ members) and Harvard Extension Alumni Association (29,000+ members).

Harvard is closer than one might think. You can be anywhere and still be part of this world.

Tuition & Financial Aid

Affordability is core to our mission. When compared to our continuing education peers, it’s a fraction of the cost.

After admission, you may qualify for financial aid . Typically, eligible students receive grant funds to cover a portion of tuition costs each term, in addition to federal financial aid options.

What can you do with a master’s degree in creative writing and literature?

A master’s degree in creative writing and literature prepares you for a variety of career paths in writing, literature, and communication — it’s up to you to decide where your interests will take you.

You could become a professional writer, editor, literary agent, marketing copywriter, or communications specialist.

You could also go the academic route and bring your knowledge to the classroom to teach creative writing or literature courses.

Is a degree in creative writing and literature worth it?

The value you find in our Creative Writing and Literature Master’s Degree Program will depend on your unique goals, interests, and circumstances.

The curriculum provides a range of courses that allow you to graduate with knowledge and skills transferable to various industries and careers.

How long does completing the creative writing and literature graduate program take?

Program length is ordinarily anywhere between 2 and 5 years. It depends on your preferred pace and the number of courses you want to take each semester.

For an accelerated journey, we offer year round study, where you can take courses in fall, January, spring, and summer.

While we don’t require you to register for a certain number of courses each semester, you cannot take longer than 5 years to complete the degree.

What skills do you need prior to applying for the creative writing and literature degree program?

Harvard Extension School does not require any specific skills prior to applying, but in general, it’s helpful to have solid reading, writing, communication, and critical thinking skills if you are considering a creative writing and literature master’s degree.

Initial eligibility requirements can be found on our creative writing and literature master’s degree requirements page .

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 12 best creative writing colleges and programs.

College Info

Finding a dedicated creative writing program at a school you're excited about can be a real challenge, and that's even before you start worrying about getting in. Nonetheless, there are some great options. In order to help you find the best school for you, this list rounds up some of the best colleges for creative writing in the United States .

The Best Creative Writing Programs: Ranking Criteria

You should never take college rankings as absolute truth —not even the very official-seeming US News ones. Instead, use these kinds of lists as a jumping-off place for your own exploration of colleges. Pay attention not just to what the rankings are but to how the rankings are determined.

To help with that, I'll explain how I came up with this highly unscientific list of great creative writing colleges. I started by narrowing my search down to schools that offered a specific creative writing major. (If you don't see a school you were expecting, it's likely because they only have a minor.)

In ranking the schools, I considered five major criteria:

• #1: MFA Ranking —If a school has a great graduate creative writing program, it means you'll be taught by those same professors and the excellent graduate students they attract. Schools with strong MFA programs are also more likely to have solid alumni networks and internship opportunities. However, many schools with great undergrad programs do not offer MFAs, in which case I simply focused on the other four options.
• #2: General School Reputation —The vast majority of your classes won't be in creative writing, so it's important that other parts of the school, especially the English department, are great as well.
• #3: Extracurricular Opportunities —One of the key advantages of majoring in creative writing is that it can provide access to writing opportunities outside the classroom, so I took what kind of internship programs, author readings, and literary magazines the school offers into consideration.
• #4: Diversity of Class Options —I gave extra points to schools with a variety of genre options and specific, interesting classes.
• #5: Alumni/Prestige —This last criterion is a bit more subjective: is the school known for turning out good writers? Certainly it's less important than what kind of education you'll actually get, but having a brand-name degree (so to speak) can be helpful.

The Best Creative Writing Schools

Now, let's get to the good stuff: the list of schools! The exact numbering is always arguable, so look at it as a general trend from absolutely amazing to still super great, rather than fixating on why one school is ranked #3 and another is ranked #4.

#1: Northwestern University

Northwestern's undergrad creative writing program boasts acclaimed professors and an unparalleled track record of turning out successful writers (including Divergent author Veronica Roth and short-story writer Karen Russell).

Outside the classroom, you can work on the student-run literary journal, intern at a publication in nearby Chicago, or submit to the Department of English's yearly writing competition . The university is also home to a top journalism program , so if you want to try your hand at nonfiction as well, you'll have plenty of opportunities to do so.

#2: Columbia University

Like Northwestern, Columbia is home to both a world-class creative writing program and a top journalism school (plus one of the best English departments in the country), so you have a wide range of writing-related course options. Columbia also benefits from its location in New York City, which is bursting at the seams with publishing houses, literary journals, and talented authors.

#3: University of Iowa

The University of Iowa's big draw is the infrastructure of its graduate Writers' Workshop, which is often considered the best MFA program in the country.

As an English and Creative Writing major here, you'll take classes from great young writers and established professors alike, and get to choose from a wide range of topics. This major provides transferable skills important for a liberal arts major with a creative focus. You'll also have access to the university's impressive literary community, including frequent readings, writing prizes and scholarships, and the acclaimed literary journal The Iowa Review .

#4: Emory University

Emory is renowned for its dedicated undergrad creative writing program , which draws the very best visiting scholars and writers. Students here have the chance to attend intimate question-and-answer sessions with award-winning authors, study a range of genres, compete for writing awards and scholarships, and work closely with an adviser to complete an honors project.

#5: Oberlin College

A small liberal arts school in Ohio, Oberlin offers very different advantages than the schools above do. You'll have fewer opportunities to pursue writing in the surrounding city, but the quality of the teachers and the range of courses might make up for that. Moreover, it boasts just as impressive alumni, including actress and writer Lena Dunham.

#6: Hamilton College

Hamilton is another small college, located in upstate New York. It's known for giving students the freedom to pursue their interests and the support to help them explore topics in real depth, both inside and outside the classroom. Hamilton's creative writing program takes full advantage with small classes and lots of opportunities to intern and publish; it also has one of the best writing centers in the country.

#7: Brown University

Brown's Literary Arts program offers one of the top MFAs in the US as well as an undergraduate major . For the major, you must take four creative writing workshops and six reading-intensive courses, which span an array of departments and topics, from music and literature to Middle East studies and Egyptology.

#8: Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University has an excellent creative writing MFA program, lots of super specific class options, and a number of scholarships specifically earmarked for creative writing students. This school’s undergraduate English program also offers a concentration in creative writing that allows students to specialize in a specific genre: poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. If you’re interested in exploring your potential in a specific writing genre, Washington University could be a great pick for you.

#9: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT might not be a school you generally associate with writing, but it actually has an excellent program that offers courses in digital media and science writing, as well as creative writing, and provides plenty of guidance on how graduates can navigate the tricky job market.

Not to mention the school is located in Cambridge, a haven for book lovers and writers of all kinds. Though it probably isn’t a good fit for students who hate science, MIT is a great place for aspiring writers who want to build writing skills that are marketable in a wide range of industries.

#10: University of Michigan

University of Michigan is one of the best state universities in the country and has a top-notch MFA program. This school’s undergrad creative writing sub-concentration requires students to submit applications for admittance to advanced creative writing courses. These applications give students crucial practice in both building a writing portfolio and articulating their interest in creative writing to an audience who will evaluate their work. If you're looking to attend a big school with a great creative writing major, this is a fantastic choice.

#11: Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins is another school that's known more for engineering than it is for writing, but, like MIT, it has a dedicated writing program. As a major here, you must take not only courses in prose, poetry, and literature, but also classes on topics such as philosophy and history.

#12: Colorado College

Colorado College is a small liberal arts school known for its block plan , which allows students to focus on one class per three-and-a-half-week block. The creative writing track of the English major includes a sequence of four writing workshops and also requires students to attend every reading of the Visiting Writers Series.

Bonus School: New York University

I didn't include NYU in the main list because it doesn't have a dedicated creative writing major, but it's a great school for aspiring writers nonetheless, offering one of the most impressive creative writing faculties in the country and all the benefits of a Manhattan location.

How To Pick the Best Creative Writing School for You

Just because Northwestern is a great school for creative writing doesn't mean you should set your heart on going there. (The football fans are completely terrifying, for one thing.) So where should you go then?

Here are some questions to ask yourself when looking at creative writing programs to help you determine the best school for you:

Does It Have Courses You're Interested In?

Look at the course offerings and see whether they interest you. While you can't predict exactly what classes you'll love, you want to avoid a mismatch where what you want to study and what the program offers are completely different. For example, if you want to write sonnets but the school focuses more on teaching fiction, it probably won't be a great fit for you.

Also, don't forget to look at the English courses and creative writing workshops! In most programs, you'll be taking a lot of these, too.

What Opportunities Are There To Pursue Writing Outside of Class?

I touched on this idea in the criteria section, but it's important enough that I want to reiterate it here. Some of the best writing experience you can get is found outside the classroom, so see what kind of writing-related extracurriculars a school has before committing to it.

Great options include getting involved with the campus newspaper, working on the school's literary journal, or interning at the university press.

Who Will Be Teaching You?

Who are the professors? What kind of work have they published? Check teacher ratings on Rate My Professors (but make sure to read the actual reviews—and always take them with a grain of salt).

If you're looking at a big school, there's a good chance that a lot of your teachers will be graduate students. But that's not necessarily a bad thing: a lot of the best teachers I had in college were graduate students. Just take into consideration what kind of graduate program the school has. If there's a great creative writing MFA program, then the graduate students are likely to be better writers and more engaged teachers.

What Are the Alumni Doing Now?

If you have a sense of what you want to do after you graduate, see if any alumni of the program are pursuing that type of career. The stronger the alumni network is, the more connections you'll have when it comes time to get a job.

What About the Rest of the School?

Don't pick a school for which you like the creative writing program but dread everything else about it. Most of your time will be spent doing other things, whether hanging out in the dorms, exploring off campus, or fulfilling general education requirements.

Many schools require you to apply to the creative writing major, so make doubly sure you'll be happy with your choice even if you aren't accepted to the program.

What's Next?

Are you sure a creative writing major is the right fit for you? Read our post on the pros and cons of the major to help you decide what path to take in college.

For more general advice about choosing a college, check out our complete guide to finding the right school for you. Some major factors to consider include deciding whether you're interested in a small college or a big university , an in-state or out-of-state institution , and a public or private school .

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• Creative Writing

The vital presence of creative writing in the English Department is reflected by our many distinguished authors who teach our workshops. We offer courses each term in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, and television writing. Our workshops are small, usually no more than twelve students, and offer writers an opportunity to focus intensively on one genre. 

Apply to Creative Writing Workshops

Workshops are open by application to Harvard College undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and students from other institutions eligible for cross registration. Submission guidelines for workshops can be found under individual course listings; please do not query instructors.  Review all departmental rules and application instructions before applying.  

Fall 2024 Application Deadline: 11:59 pm ET on Sunday, April 7, 2024. Spring 2025 Application Deadline: TBD

Please visit our course listings for all the Fall 2024 workshops.

Our online submission manager (link below) will open for Fall 2024 applications on Friday, March 22 , 2024.

Students who have questions about the creative writing workshop application process should contact Case Q. Kerns at [email protected] .

Featured Faculty

Teju Cole  is a novelist, critic, and essayist, and is the first Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice. "Among other works, the boundary-crossing author is known for his debut novel “Open City” (2011), whose early admirers included Harvard professor and New Yorker critic James Wood." 

Faculty Bookshelf

Fast by jorie graham (2017).

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (2018)

The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg (2018)

A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (2010)

Creative Writing Workshops

• Spring 2024

English CACD. The Art of Criticism

Instructor: Maggie Doherty Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

This course will consider critical writing about art–literary, visual, cinematic, musical, etc.—as an art in its own right. We will read and discuss criticism from a wide variety of publications, paying attention to the ways outlets and audience shape critical work. The majority of our readings will be from the last few years and will include pieces by Joan Acocella, Andrea Long Chu, Jason Farago, and Carina del Valle Schorske. Students will write several short writing assignments (500-1000 words), including a straight review, during the first half of the semester and share them with peers. During the second half of the semester, each student will write and workshop a longer piece of criticism about a work of art or an artist of their choosing. Students will be expected to read and provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. Students will revise their longer pieces based on workshop feedback and submit them for the final assignment of the class. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. Please also describe your relationship to the art forms and/or genres you're interested in engaging in the course. You may also list any writers or publications whose criticism you enjoy reading. Please also include a 3-5-page writing sample of any kind of prose writing. This could be an academic paper or it could be creative fiction or nonfiction.

English CACW. Advanced Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Paul Yoon TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Advanced fiction workshop for students who have already taken a workshop at Harvard or elsewhere. The goal of the class is to continue your journey as a writer. You will be responsible for participating in discussions on the assigned texts, the workshop, engaging with the work of your colleagues, and revising your work. Supplemental Application Information:   * Please note: previous creative writing workshop experience required. * Please submit ONLY a cover letter telling me your previous creative writing workshop experience, either at Harvard or elsewhere; then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Again, please no writing samples.

English CBBR. Intermediate Poetry: Workshop

Instructor:  Josh Bell   Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.

English CCEP. Ekphrastic Poetry: Workshop

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site What can a poem achieve when it contemplates or even emulates a work of art in another medium? In this workshop, we'll read and write poems that engage with other art forms--and we'll test out what a foray into another artistic practice allows us to carry back over into the formal methods and behaviors of poetry. With poems by Keats, Rilke, Auden, Hughes, and Brooks, as well as Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, Ama Codjoe and other contemporary voices. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a writing sample of 5-10 poems and an application letter explaining your interest in this course.

English CCFC. Poetry Workshop: Form & Content

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Sever 112 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this workshop, we’ll look closely at the craft-based choices poets make, and track the effects they have upon what we as readers are made to think and feel. How can implementing similar strategies better prepare us to engage the questions making up our own poetic material? We’ll also talk about content. What can poetry reveal about the ways our interior selves are shaped by public realities like race, class, sexuality, injustice and more? Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26)   

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a writing sample of 5-10 poems and an application letter explaining your interest in this course.

English CCIJ. Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 269 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This is an intermediate course in the art of writing literary fiction. Previous experience with workshopping writing is encouraged but not required. The emphasis of the course will be learning how to read literature as a writer, with special attention given to the short story, novella, or short novel. We will read these works from the perspective of the writer as craftsperson and of the critic seeking in good faith to understand and describe a new aesthetic experience. We will be concerned foremost with how literary language works, with describing the effects of different kinds of sentences, different uses of genre, tone, and other rhetorical strategies. Together, we will explore our responses to examples of literature from around the world and from all periods, as well as to the writing you will produce and share with the class. As a member of a writing community, you should be prepared to respectfully read and respond to the work of others—both the work of your peers and that of the published writers that we will explore together. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  This course is by application only but there are no prerequisites for this course and previous experience in a writing workshop is not required . In your application please submit a short letter explaining why you are interested in this class. You might tell me a bit about your relationship to literature, your encounter with a specific author, book, or even a scene or character from a story or novel. Please also include a writing sample of 2-5 pages (5 pages max!) of narrative prose fiction.

English CCFS. Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Teju Cole Spring 2024: Tuesday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD This reading and writing intensive workshop is for students who want to learn to write literary fiction. The goal of the course would be for each student to produce two polished short stories. Authors on the syllabus will probably include James Joyce, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Diane Williams.

Supplemental Application Information:   Please submit a cover letter saying what you hope to get out of the workshop. In the cover letter, mention three works of fiction that matter to you and why. In addition, submit a 400–500 word sample of your fiction; the sample can be self-contained or a section of a longer work.

English CLPG. Art of Sportswriting

Instructor: Louisa Thomas Spring 2024: Tuesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

In newsrooms, the sports section is sometimes referred to as the “toy department” -- frivolous and unserious, unlike the stuff of politics, business, and war. In this course, we will take the toys seriously. After all, for millions of people, sports and other so-called trivial pursuits (video games, chess, children’s games, and so on) are a source of endless fascination. For us, they will be a source of stories about human achievements and frustrations. These stories can involve economic, social, and political issues. They can draw upon history, statistics, psychology, and philosophy. They can be reported or ruminative, formally experimental or straightforward, richly descriptive or tense and spare. They can be fun. Over the course of the semester, students will read and discuss exemplary profiles, essays, articles, and blog posts, while also writing and discussing their own. While much (but not all) of the reading will come from the world of sports, no interest in or knowledge about sports is required; our focus will be on writing for a broad audience.  Supplemental Application Information:  To apply, please write a letter describing why you want to take the course and what you hope to get out of it. Include a few examples of websites or magazines you like to read, and tell me briefly about one pursuit -- football, chess, basketball, ballet, Othello, crosswords, soccer, whatever -- that interests you and why.

English CALR. Advanced Screenwriting: Workshop

Instructor: Musa Syeed Spring 2024: Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBA Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

The feature-length script is an opportunity to tell a story on a larger scale, and, therefore, requires additional preparation. In this class, we will move from writing a pitch, to a synopsis, to a treatment/outline, to the first 10 pages, to the first act of a feature screenplay. We will analyze produced scripts and discuss various elements of craft, including research, writing layered dialogue, world-building, creating an engaging cast of characters. As an advanced class, we will also look at ways both mainstream and independent films attempt to subvert genre and structure. Students will end the semester with a first act (20-30 pages) of their feature, an outline, and strategy to complete the full script.

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a 3-5 page writing sample. Screenplays are preferred, but fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and plays are acceptable as well. Also, please write a short note to introduce yourself. Include a couple films/filmmakers that have inspired you, your goals for the class, as well as any themes/subject matter/ideas you might be interested in exploring in your writing for film.

English CNFR. Creative Nonfiction: Workshop

Instructor: Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

Whether it takes the form of literary journalism, essay, memoir, or environmental writing, creative nonfiction is a powerful genre that allows writers to break free from the constraints commonly associated with nonfiction prose and reach for the breadth of thought and feeling usually accomplished only in fiction: the narration of a vivid story, the probing of a complex character, the argument of an idea, or the evocation of a place. Students will work on several short assignments to hone their mastery of the craft, then write a longer piece that will be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from published authors such as Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, and Virginia Woolf. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:   Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with creative/literary nonfiction; what excites you about nonfiction in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of creative/literary nonfiction (essay, memoir, narrative journalism, etc, but NOT academic writing) or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

English CKR. Introduction to Playwriting: Workshop

Instructor: Sam Marks TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students This workshop is an introduction to writing for the stage through intensive reading and in-depth written exercises. Each student will explore the fundamentals and possibilities of playwriting by generating short scripts and completing a one act play with an eye towards both experimental and traditional narrative styles. Readings will examine various ways of creating dramatic art and include work from contemporary playwrights such as Ayad Aktar, Clare Barron, Aleshea Harris, Young Jean Lee, and Taylor Mac, as well established work from Edward Albbe, Caryl Churchill, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Harold Pinter. Supplemental Application Information:  No experience in writing the dramatic form is necessary. Please submit a 5-10 page writing sample (preferably a play or screenplay, but all genres are acceptable and encouraged). Also, please write a few sentences about a significant theatrical experience (a play read or seen) and how it affected you.

English CACF. Get Real: The Art of Community-Based Film

Instructor: Musa Syeed Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 student Course Site

“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us,” the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami said, “unless it’s inside a frame.” For our communities confronting invisibility and erasure, there’s an urgent need for new frames. In this workshop, we’ll explore a community-engaged approach to documentary and fiction filmmaking, as we seek to see our world more deeply. We’ll begin with screenings, craft exercises, and discussions around authorship and social impact. Then we each will write, develop, and shoot a short film over the rest of the semester, building off of intentional community engagement. Students will end the class with written and recorded materials for a rough cut. Basic equipment and technical training will be provided.

Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. Please also discuss what participants/communities you might be interested in engaging with for your filmmaking projects. For your writing sample, please submit 3-5 pages of your creative work from any genre (screenwriting, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc.)

English CAFR. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing this Present Life

Instructor: Claire Messud Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Intended for students with prior fiction-writing and workshop experience, this course will concentrate on structure, execution and revision. Exploring various strands of contemporary and recent literary fiction – writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Chimamanda Adichie, Douglas Stuart, Ocean Vuong, etc – we will consider how fiction works in our present moment, with emphasis on a craft perspective. Each student will present to the class a published fiction that has influenced them. The course is primarily focused on the discussion of original student work, with the aim of improving both writerly skills and critical analysis. Revision is an important component of this class: students will workshop two stories and a revision of one of these. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit 3-5 pages of prose fiction, along with a substantive letter of introduction. I’d like to know why you’re interested in the course; what experience you’ve had writing, both in previous workshops and independently; what your literary goals and ambitions are. Please tell me about some of your favorite narratives – fiction, non-fiction, film, etc: why they move you, and what you learn from them.

English CAKV. Fiction Workshop: Writing from the First-Person Point of View

Instructor:  Andrew Krivak Tuesday, 9:00-11:45 1m | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This course is a workshop intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any novel poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable. We will read from roughly twelve novels written in the first-person, from Marilynne Robinson and W.G. Sebald, to Valeria Luiselli and Teju Cole, and ask questions (among others) of why this form, why this style? And, as a result, what is lost and what is realized in the telling? Primarily, however, students will write. Our goal will be to have a student’s work read and discussed twice in class during the semester. I am hoping to see at least 35-40 pages of a project —at any level of completion—at the end of term.  Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a substantive letter telling me why you’re interested in taking this class, what writers (classical and contemporary) you admire and why, and if there’s a book you have read more than once, a movie you have seen more than once, a piece of music you listen to over and over, not because you have to but because you want to. Students of creative nonfiction are also welcome to apply.

English CCSS. Fiction Workshop: The Art of the Short Story

Instructor: Laura van den Berg Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This course will serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of writing fiction, with an emphasis on the contemporary short story. How can we set about creating “big” worlds in compact spaces? What unique doors can the form of the short story open? The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Ted Chiang, Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and Octavia Butler. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. Please also include a very brief writing sample (2-3 pages). The sample can be in any genre (it does not have to be from a work of fiction). 

Write an Honors Creative Thesis

Students may apply to write a senior thesis or senior project in creative writing, although only English concentrators can be considered. Students submit applications in early March of their junior year, including first-term juniors who are out of phase. The creative writing faculty considers the proposal, along with the student's overall performance in creative writing and other English courses, and notifies students about its decision in early mid-late March. Those applications are due, this coming year, on TBA . 

Students applying for a creative writing thesis or project must have completed at least one course in creative writing at Harvard before they apply. No student is guaranteed acceptance. It is strongly suggested that students acquaint themselves with the requirements and guidelines well before the thesis application is due. The creative writing director must approve any exceptions to the requirements, which must be made in writing by Monday, February 7, 2022. Since the creative writing thesis and project are part of the English honors program, acceptance to write a creative thesis is conditional upon the student continuing to maintain a 3.40 concentration GPA. If a student’s concentration GPA drops below 3.40 after the spring of the junior year, the student may not be permitted to continue in the honors program.

Joint concentrators may apply to write creative theses, but we suggest students discuss the feasibility of the project well before applications are due. Not all departments are open to joint creative theses.

Students who have questions about the creative writing thesis should contact the program’s Director, Sam Marks .

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• Guide for Concentrators
• Declare English
• Secondary Field
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• Prizes and Fellowships
• Research, Resources, and Forms

Rice English integrates creative and critical practice through training in close reading, analytical writing, cultural history, and craft/form. Our faculty research and pedagogy cover the breadth of the study of British and American literatures and cultures ranging from the medieval era to the present.

Welcome (Start Here)

Creative writing @ rice.

Creative Writing has always played an influential role in the intellectual development of our undergraduates’ curiosity, imagination, and desire for collaboration. The discipline will enhance your skills for inquiry and independent research, enlarge your capacities for imaginative thinking and idea generation, and expand your knowledge of genre, literary history, poetics, and narrative form. As a member of our artistic and intellectual community, you will have the opportunity to work alongside other emerging writers to understand, investigate, and influence the most pressing social, political, environmental, and spiritual issues of contemporary life.

The Department of English offers two credentials in Creative Writing: the Minor in Creative Writing (6 courses) and t he Major Concentration in Creative Writing (11 courses). As Creative Writing faculty, we are committed to expanding and deepening your investigations through a dynamic curriculum that goes beyond introductory courses in Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry to include offerings in literary translation, screenwriting, cultural criticism, food writing, the graphic novel, podcasting, nature writing, narrative medicine, literary journalism, book arts, as well as courses in literary editing and publishing. Our students are able to build upon their work in the classroom through collaborations within the Digital Humanities, the Medical Humanities, Environmental Studies, The School of Architecture, The Shepherd School of Music, The Moody Center for the Arts, The Visual and Performing Arts, and other academic units across campus, Houston, and beyond. At the upper level, topics courses in the poetry chapbook, the novel and the novella, and screenwriting allow interested students to steer longer-form projects toward publication and to use their final products as part of applications to a variety of graduate programs and professions. Regardless of career path, Creative Writing graduates leave Rice equipped with the formal writing, editing, and communication skills that are increasingly valuable in today’s idea-driven fields.

Legacy & Mission

Rice University has a long tradition of producing and supporting award-winning authors including Larry McMurtry (Class of 1960), the only author to have won a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award; Joyce Carol Oates, who first began work on her National Book Award-winning novel, Them , while a Ph.D. student at Rice University; William Broyles Jr. (Class of 1966) founding editor of Texas Monthly , editor of Newsweek and co-author of the Academy Award-nominated best-adapted screenplay, Apollo 13 , as well as the creator of the television series, China Beach , and the original screenplay, Castaway . Faculty past and present include a MacArthur Fellow, New York Times Best-Selling authors, a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, recipients of fellowship grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Whiting Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Mellon Foundation and PEN America. Our recent graduates have gone on to study at top-ranked MFA programs such as USC, UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television, The New School, Ohio State, and the University of Houston, among others. As stewards of this important tradition, we seek to honor, uphold and expand the influence and presence of Creative Writing on campus, and to elevate the voices of others - at Rice, across Houston, and throughout the wider world.

35 Best Colleges for Creative Writing – 2024

April 12, 2024

Bookworms and aspiring writers can pursue an undergraduate degree in creative writing where they will tackle coursework covering the reading and writing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry as well as the theory and history of the craft. While becoming the next J.K Rowling, Stephen King, or Margaret Atwood may be the goal, holders of creative writing degrees end up on a variety of career paths. This can include: publishing, editing, journalism, web content management, advertising, or for those who “make it” as writers—the next generation of literary superstars. Our list of Best Colleges for Creative Writing goes beyond the most famous writer factories like the University of Iowa and Columbia University, providing you with 35 institutions known for their stellar programs in this field.

Finally, note that although some of the colleges featured below do not offer a formal major in creative writing, their undergraduate offerings in this subject area are so strong that they warrant inclusion on our list.

Methodology 

Click here to read our methodology for the Best Colleges for creative writing.

Best Creative Writing Colleges

Here’s a quick preview of the first ten creative writing institutions that made our list. Detailed profiles and stats can be found when you scroll below.

1) Columbia University

2) Brown University

3) Johns Hopkins University

4) University of Chicago

5) Washington University in St Louis

6) Emory University

7) Stanford University

8) Northwestern University

9) Duke University

10) Yale University

All of the schools profiled below have stellar reputations in the field of creative writing and commit substantial resources to undergraduate education. For each of the best colleges for creative writing, College Transitions will provide you with—when available—each school’s:

• Cost of Attendance
• Acceptance Rate
• Median  SAT
• Median  ACT
• Retention Rate
• Graduation Rate

We will also include a longer write-up of each college’s:

• Academic Highlights – Includes facts like student-to-faculty ratio, average class size, number of majors offered, and most popular majors.
• Professional Outcomes – Includes info on the rate of positive outcomes, companies employing alumni, and graduate school acceptances.

Columbia University

• New York, NY

Academic Highlights: Columbia offers 100+ unique areas of undergraduate study as well as a number of pre-professional and accelerated graduate programs.  Class sizes at Columbia are reasonably small and the student-to-faculty ratio is favorable; however, in 2022, it was revealed that the university had been submitting faulty data in this area. It is presently believed that 58% of undergraduate courses enroll 19 or fewer students. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (22%), computer science (15%), engineering (14%), and biology (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Examining the most recent graduates from Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science, 73% had found employment within six months, and 20% had entered graduate school. The median starting salary for graduates of Columbia College/Columbia Engineering is above $80,000. Many graduates get hired by the likes of Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Google, Citi, McKinsey, and Microsoft.

• Enrollment: 8,832
• Cost of Attendance: $89,587
• Median SAT: 1540
• Median ACT: 35
• Acceptance Rate: 4%
• Retention Rate: 98%
• Graduation Rate: 95%

Brown University

• Providence, RI

Academic Highlights: Students must choose one of 80+ “concentration programs,” but there are no required courses. Class sizes tend to be small—68% have fewer than twenty students—and 35% are comprised of nine or fewer students. Biology, economics, computer science, mathematics, and engineering are among the most popular areas of concentration at Brown; however, it is hard to distinguish any one program, because Brown possesses outstanding offerings across so many disciplines.

Professional Outcomes: Soon after receiving their Brown diplomas, 69% of graduates enter the world of employment. Companies employing the greatest number of Brown alums include Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Apple, McKinsey & Company, and Bain & Company. The Class of 2022 saw 27% of graduates go directly into graduate/professional school. Right out of undergrad, Brown students boasted an exceptional 81% admission rate to med school and an 81% admission rate to law school.

• Enrollment: 7,639
• Cost of Attendance: $84,828
• Median SAT: 1530
• Acceptance Rate: 5%
• Retention Rate: 99%
• Graduation Rate: 96%

Johns Hopkins University

• Baltimore, MD

Academic Highlights: With 53 majors as well as 51 minors, JHU excels in everything from its bread-and-butter medical-related majors to international relations and dance. Boasting an enviable 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio and with 78% of course sections possessing an enrollment under 20, face time with professors is a reality. Many departments carry a high level of clout, including biomedical engineering, chemistry, English, and international studies. Biology, neuroscience, and computer science, which happen to be the three most popular majors, can also be found at the top of the national rankings.

Professional Outcomes: The Class of 2022 saw 94% of graduates successfully land at their next destination within six months of exiting the university; 66% of graduates entered the world of employment and a robust 19% went directly to graduate/professional school. The median starting salary across all majors was $80,000 for the Class of 2022. JHU itself is the most popular choice for graduate school. The next most frequently attended institutions included Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and MIT.

• Enrollment: 6,044
• Cost of Attendance: $86,065
• Acceptance Rate: 7%
• Retention Rate: 97%

University of Chicago

• Chicago, IL

Academic Highlights: There are 53 majors at UChicago, but close to half of all degrees conferred are in four majors: economics, biology, mathematics, and political science, all of which have particularly sterling reputations. Economics alone is the selection of roughly one-fifth of the undergraduate population. Over 75% of undergrad sections have an enrollment of nineteen or fewer students, and undergraduate research opportunities are ubiquitous as 80% of students end up working in a research capacity alongside a faculty member.

Professional Outcomes: On commencement day, 99% of the Class of 2023 were employed or continuing their education. Business and financial services (30%) and STEM (12%) were the two sectors that scooped up the most graduates, but public policy and consulting were also well-represented. The most popular employers of recent grads include Google, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Citi, and Accenture. For those heading to grad school, the top seven destinations are Yale, Columbia, Penn, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins.

• Enrollment: 7,653 (undergraduate); 10,870 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,040

Washington University in St. Louis

• St. Louis, MO

Academic Highlights : WashU admits students into five schools, many of which offer nationally recognized programs: Arts & Sciences, the Olin School of Business, the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and the Art of Architecture programs housed within the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. The most commonly conferred degrees are in engineering (13%), social sciences (13%), business (13%), biology (11%), and psychology (10%). 66% of classes have fewer than 20 students, and over one-quarter have single-digit enrollments. 65% double major or pursue a minor.

Professional Outcomes: The Class of 2022 sent 52% of grads into the workforce and 28% into graduate and professional schools. Companies employing the highest number of WashU grads feature sought-after employers such as Amazon, Bain, Boeing, Deloitte, Google, IBM, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft. Of the employed members of the Class of 2022 who reported their starting salaries, 79% made more than $60k. The universities welcoming the largest number of Bears included the prestigious institutions of Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Stanford.

• Enrollment: 8,132 (undergraduate); 8,880 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $83,760
• Median ACT: 34
• Acceptance Rate: 11%
• Retention Rate: 96%
• Graduation Rate: 93%

Emory University

• Atlanta, GA

Academic Highlights: This midsize university offers a diverse array of majors (80+) and minors (60+), and 30% of Emory students pursue more than one area of study. Over half of Emory’s student body works directly with a faculty member on academic research and 58% of courses have class sizes of under twenty students. Ultimately, the greatest number of students go on to earn degrees in the social sciences (15%), biology (14%), business (14%), health professions (12%), and mathematics (9%).

Professional Outcomes: Shortly after graduation, 66% of 2022 grads were already employed, and 96% had arrived at their next destination. The top employers of recent Emory grads include Deloitte, Epic, ScribeAmerica, Meta, Morgan Stanley, and Cloudmed. Graduates of the Goizueta Business School found strong starting salaries with an average of $81k.  In the last few years, multiple Emory grads/alums received acceptance letters from the following top law schools like Columbia, Berkeley, and Georgetown. Med school acceptances included Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Vanderbilt.

• Enrollment: 7,101
• Cost of Attendance: $83,702
• Median SAT: 1500
• Median ACT: 33
• Retention Rate: 95%
• Graduation Rate: 90%

Stanford University

• Palo Alto, CA

Academic Highlights: Stanford has three undergraduate schools: the School of Humanities & Sciences, the School of Engineering, and the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. 69% of classes have fewer than twenty students, and 34% have a single-digit enrollment. Programs in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, international relations, and economics are arguably the best anywhere. In terms of sheer volume, the greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (17%), computer science (16%), engineering (15%), and interdisciplinary studies (13%).

Professional Outcomes: Stanford grads entering the working world flock to three major industries in equal distribution: business/finance/consulting/retail (19%); computer, IT (19%); and public policy and service, international affairs (19%). Among the companies employing the largest number of recent grads are Accenture, Apple, Bain, Cisco, Meta, Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey, Microsoft, and SpaceX. Other companies that employ hundreds of Cardinal alums include LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Airbnb. Starting salaries for Stanford grads are among the highest in the country.

• Enrollment: 8,049 (undergraduate); 10,236 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,833

Northwestern University

• Evanston, IL

Academic Highlights : Northwestern is home to six undergraduate schools, including Medill, which is widely regarded as one of the country’s best journalism schools. The McCormick School of Engineering also achieves top rankings, along with programs in economics, social policy, and theatre. The social sciences account for the greatest number of degrees conferred (19%), followed by communications/journalism (13%), and engineering (11%). 45% of classes have nine or fewer students enrolled; 78% have fewer than twenty enrollees. 57% of recent grads had the chance to conduct undergraduate research.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduating, 69% of the Class of 2022 had found employment and 27% were in graduate school. The four most popular professional fields were consulting (18%), engineering (18%), business/finance (16%), and communications/marketing/media (13%). Employers included the BBC, NBC News, The Washington Post , NPR, Boeing, Google, IBM, Deloitte, PepsiCo, Northrop Grumman, and Goldman Sachs. Across all majors, the average starting salary was $73k. Of those headed straight to graduate school, engineering, medicine, and business were the three most popular areas of concentration.

• Enrollment: 8,659 (undergraduate); 14,073 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $91,290
• Graduation Rate: 97%

Duke University

Academic Highlights: The academic offerings at Duke include 53 majors, 52 minors, and 23 interdisciplinary certificates. Class sizes are on the small side—71% are nineteen or fewer, and almost one-quarter are less than ten. A stellar 5:1 student-to-faculty ratio helps keep classes so reasonable even while catering to five figures worth of graduate students. Computer Science is the most popular area of concentration (11%), followed by economics (10%), public policy (9%), biology (8%), and computer engineering (7%).

Professional Outcomes: At graduation, approximately 70% of Duke diploma-earners enter the world of work, 20% continue into graduate schools, and 2% start their own businesses. The industries that attract the largest percentage of Blue Devils are tech (21%), finance (15%), business (15%), healthcare (9%), and science/research (6%). Of the 20% headed into graduate school, a hefty 22% are attending medical school, 18% are in PhD programs, and 12% are entering law school. The med school acceptance rate is 85%, more than twice the national average.

• Enrollment: 6,640
• Cost of Attendance: $85,238
• SAT Range: 1490-1570
• ACT Range: 34-35
• Acceptance Rate: 6%

Yale University

• New Haven, CT

Academic Highlights: Yale offers 80 majors, most of which require a one- to two-semester senior capstone experience. Undergraduate research is a staple, and over 70% of classes—of which there are over 2,000 to choose from—have an enrollment of fewer than 20 students, making Yale a perfect environment for teaching and learning. Among the top departments are biology, economics, global affairs, engineering, history, and computer science. The social sciences (26%), biology (11%), mathematics (8%), and computer science (8%) are the most popular areas of concentration.

Professional Outcomes: Shortly after graduating, 73% of the Yale Class of 2022 had entered the world of employment and 18% matriculated into graduate programs. Hundreds of Yale alums can be found at each of the world’s top companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, and Microsoft. The most common industries entered by the newly hired were finance (20%), research/education (16%), technology (14%), and consulting (12%). The mean starting salary for last year’s grads was $81,769 ($120k for CS majors). Nearly one-fifth of students immediately pursue graduate school.

• Enrollment: 6,590 (undergraduate); 5,344 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,705
• Graduation Rate: 98%

Hamilton College

• Clinton, NY

Academic Highlights: The student-to-faculty ratio is 9:1, and without any pesky graduate students to get in the way, face time with professors is a regular occurrence. In fact, 28% of all classes have nine or fewer students; 72% have nineteen or fewer. Economics, government, and biology are among the strongest and most popular majors; other standout programs include public policy, mathematics, and environmental studies. Thirty percent of students earn social science degrees, with biology (13%), visual and performing arts (9%), physical science (7%), and foreign languages (7%) next in line.

Professional Outcomes: Examining the 491 graduates in Hamilton’s Class of 2022, an enviable 97% wasted no time landing jobs, graduate school acceptances, or fellowships. The most commonly entered industries were finance (17%), education (13%), business (12%), and science/tech (11%). Only 17% of 2022 graduates went directly into an advanced degree program. In one recent year, 33% of Hamilton grads were studying a STEM field, 22% were in the social sciences, 17% pursued a health care degree, and 5% went to law school.

• Enrollment: 2,075
• Cost of Attendance: $82,430
• Median SAT: 1490
• Acceptance Rate: 12%
• Graduation Rate: 92%

Princeton University

• Princeton, NJ

Academic Highlights: 39 majors are available at Princeton. Just under three-quarters of class sections have an enrollment of 19 or fewer students, and 31% have fewer than ten students. Princeton is known for its commitment to undergraduate teaching, and students consistently rate professors as accessible and helpful. The Engineering Department is widely recognized as one of the country’s best, as is the School of Public and International Affairs.

Professional Highlights: Over 95% of a typical Tiger class finds their next destination within six months of graduating. Large numbers of recent grads flock to the fields of business and engineering, health/science, & tech. Companies presently employing hundreds of Tiger alumni include Google, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and Meta. The average salary ranges from $40k (education, health care, or social services) to $100k (computer/mathematical positions). Between 15-20% of graduating Tigers head directly to graduate/professional school.

• Enrollment: 5,604 (undergraduate); 3,238 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $86,700

Carnegie Mellon University

• Pittsburgh, PA

Academic Highlights: There are a combined 80+ undergraduate majors and 90 minors available across the six schools. Impressively, particularly for a school with more graduate students than undergrads, CMU boasts a 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio and small class sizes, with 36% containing single digits. In a given school year, 800+ undergraduates conduct research through the University Research Office. The most commonly conferred degrees are in engineering (21%), computer science (16%), mathematics (12%), business (10%), and visual and performing arts (9%).

Professional Outcomes: By the end of the calendar year in which they received their diplomas, 66% of 2022 grads were employed, and 28% were continuing to graduate school. The companies that have routinely scooped up CMU grads include Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Accenture, McKinsey, and Deloitte. With an average starting salary of $105,194, CMU grads outpace the average starting salary for a college grad nationally. Of those pursuing graduate education, around 20% typically enroll immediately in PhD programs.

• Enrollment: 7,509
• Cost of Attendance: $84,412

University of Iowa

• Iowa City, IA

Academic Highlights: 200+ undergraduate majors, minors, and certificate programs are available across eight colleges, including the Tippie College of Business, which has a very strong reputation. The most commonly conferred degree is business (24%), with parks and recreation (10%), social sciences (8%), health professions (8%), engineering (7%), and communication & journalism (5%) next in popularity. Over half of its undergraduate sections enroll 19 or fewer students, and 30% of undergrads conduct or assist research.

Professional Outcomes: 96% of Class of 2022 grads found their first job or advanced degree program within six months of receiving their diploma. The most commonly entered industries were healthcare (23%), entertainment/the arts (14%), finance and insurance (11%), and marketing/PR (10%). Companies that employ hundreds of alumni include Wells Fargo, Collins Aerospace, Principal Financial Group, Amazon, Accenture, and Microsoft. The median salary for 2022 grads was $50,000. 28% of recent graduates went directly into graduate school; 76% remained at the University of Iowa.

• Enrollment: 22,130 (undergraduate); 7,912 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $28,846-$32,259 (in-state); $50,809-$54,822 (out-of-state)
• Median SAT: 1240
• Median ACT: 25
• Acceptance Rate: 85%
• Retention Rate: 89%
• Graduation Rate: 73%

Emerson College

Academic Highlights: All 26 majors offered by the school have some element of performance or artistry and include highly unique academic concentrations such as comedic arts, sports communication, and musical theater. Emerson has a 15:1 student-to-faculty ratio and 69% of courses seat fewer than 20 students. The Journalism and Communications Studies programs rank among the top in the country. By sheer popularity, the top majors are film/video production, journalism, marketing, theater arts, and creative writing.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of leaving Emerson, 61% of recent grads were employed, 4% were enrolled in graduate school, and 35% were still seeking their next landing spot. Top employers include the Walt Disney Company, Warner Media, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and CNN. The average full-time salary for employed grads is $40,255. Of those entering a master’s program, the bulk stay put, pursuing a master’s at Emerson in an area like writing for film and television, creative writing, or journalism.

• Enrollment: 4,149
• Cost of Attendance: $73,000
• Median SAT: 1360
• Median ACT: 31
• Acceptance Rate: 43%
• Retention Rate: 86%
• Graduation Rate: 77%

University of Southern California

• Los Angeles, CA

Academic Highlights : There are 140 undergraduate majors and minors within the Dornsife College of Arts & Sciences alone, the university’s oldest and largest school. The Marshall School of Business, Viterbi School of Engineering, and programs in communication, the cinematic arts, and the performing arts are highly acclaimed. Popular areas of study are business (22%), social sciences (11%), visual and performing arts (11%), communications/journalism (9%), and engineering (8%). Most courses enroll 10-19 students, and USC does an excellent job facilitating undergraduate research opportunities.

Professional Outcomes: 96% of undergrads experience positive postgraduation outcomes within six months of earning their degree. The top five industries entered were finance, consulting, advertising, software development, and engineering; the median salary across all majors is an astounding $79k. Presently, between 300 and 1,500 alumni are employed at each of Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, KPMG, Goldman Sachs, and Meta. Graduate/professional schools enrolling the greatest number of 2022 USC grads include NYU, Georgetown, Harvard, Stanford, Pepperdine, and UCLA.

• Enrollment: 20,699 (undergraduate); 28,246 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $90,921
• Median SAT: 1510

Cornell University

Academic Highlights: A diverse array of academic programs includes 80 majors and 120 minors spread across the university’s seven schools/colleges. Classes are a bit larger at Cornell than at many other elite institutions. Still, 55% of sections have fewer than 20 students. Most degrees conferred in 2022 were in computer science (17%), engineering (13%), business (13%), and biology (13%). The SC Johnson College of Business houses two undergraduate schools, both of which have phenomenal reputations.

Professional Outcomes: Breaking down the graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest school at Cornell, 68% entered the workforce, 28% entered graduate school, 1% pursued other endeavors such as travel or volunteer work, and the remaining 3% were still seeking employment six months after receiving their diplomas. The top sectors attracting campus-wide graduateswere financial services (18%), technology (17%), consulting (15%), and education (10%). Of the students from A&S going on to graduate school, 15% were pursuing JDs, 5% MDs, and 22% PhDs.

• Enrollment: 15,735
• Cost of Attendance: $88,150
• Median SAT: 1520

Oberlin College

• Oberlin, OH

Academic Highlights: Over 40 majors are available at Oberlin, which is an extremely strong provider of a liberal arts education. 79% of classes had 19 or fewer students enrolled. The greatest number of degrees conferred are typically in music, political science, biology, psychology, and history. The Conservatory of Music has a worldwide reputation, and programs in the natural sciences are similarly strong, leading to remarkable medical school acceptance rates and a high number of future PhD scientists and researchers.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months, 74% of recent grads found employment, 17% enrolled in graduate school, and just 5% were still seeking employment. Multiple recent grads were hired by Google, Netflix, and Sony Pictures. Over the last few years, multiple students have gone on to pursue advanced degrees at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Michigan. Oberlin also has a reputation for churning out future PhDs and, is among the top 20 schools (per capita) across all disciplines in producing graduates who go on to earn their doctoral degrees.

• Enrollment: 2,986
• Cost of Attendance: $85,496
• Median SAT: 1400-1540
• Median ACT: 32-34
• Acceptance Rate: 33%
• Retention Rate: 87%
• Graduation Rate: 83%

University of Pittsburgh

Academic Highlights: Pitt admits freshmen to the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, the College of Business Administration, the Swanson School of Engineering, and the School of Nursing. Pitt’s engineering and business schools are top-rated and among the most commonly chosen fields of study. Premed offerings are also top-notch, with majors in the health professions (12%), biology (11%), psychology (9%), and computer science (9%) rounding out the list of most popular majors. Pitt has a strong 13:1 student-to-faculty ratio; 42% of sections have an enrollment of under twenty students.

Professional Outcomes: Within a few months of graduating, 94% of 2022 grads entered full-time employment or full-time graduate or professional school. Engineering, nursing, business, and information sciences majors had 73-86% employment rates while other majors tended to flock to graduate school in large numbers. Employers scooping up the highest number of grads in one recent year included the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (170), PNC (57), BNY Mellon (36), and Deloitte (19). Median starting salaries fluctuated between $37k-65k depending on major.

• Enrollment: 20,220 (undergraduate); 9,268 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $38,034-$43,254 (in-state); $56,400-$66,840 (out-of-state)
• Acceptance Rate: 50%
• Retention Rate: 92%
• Graduation Rate: 84%

Swarthmore College

• Swarthmore, PA

Academic Highlights: Swarthmore offers forty undergraduate programs and runs 600+ courses each academic year. Small, seminar-style courses are the norm—an outstanding 33% of sections enroll fewer than ten students, and 70% contain a maximum of nineteen students. Social science degrees are the most commonly conferred, accounting for 24% of all 2022 graduates. Future businessmen/women, engineers, and techies are also well-positioned, given Swat’s incredibly strong offerings in economics, engineering, and computer science.

Professional Outcomes: 68% of Class of 2022 grads entered the workforce shortly after graduation. Popular industries included education (17%), consulting (16%), and financial services (13%); the median starting salary was $60,000. Google is a leading employer of Swarthmore grads followed by Amazon, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and a number of the top universities.  18% of 2022 grads pursued advanced degrees, with 35% pursuing a PhD, 35% entering master’s programs, 10% heading to law school, and 7% matriculating into medical school.

• Enrollment: 1,625
• Cost of Attendance: $81,376
• Graduation Rate: 94%

Bryn Mawr College

• Bryn Mawr, PA

Academic Highlights: On the home campus, undergraduates can choose from 35 majors and 50 minors. Roughly 35% of the student body earns degrees in the natural sciences or mathematics, a figure four times the national average for women. By volume, the most popular majors are mathematics, psychology, biology, English, and computer science. An 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio leads to small class sizes with 74% of sections having fewer than twenty students, and 24% of sections enrolling nine students or fewer.

Professional Outcomes: One year after receiving their diplomas, 57% of Bryn Mawr graduates had found employment and a robust 28% had already entered graduate school. Most of the organizations employing the greatest number of alumni are universities and hospital systems, although Google, Accenture, JPMorgan Chase, and Vanguard do employ a fair number of Bryn Mawr graduates. Among recent grads pursuing further education, 63% were in master’s programs, 13% were already working on their PhD, and 10% were in medical school.

• Enrollment: 1,409
• Cost of Attendance: $79,880
• Median SAT: 1400
• Acceptance Rate: 31%
• Retention Rate: 90%

Wellesley College

• Wellesley, MA

Academic Highlights: There are 50+ departmental and interdisciplinary majors. Thirty-six percent of course sections have single-digit enrollments while 77% have 19 or fewer students. In addition, opportunities for participation in research with faculty members abound. Most programs possess sterling reputations, including chemistry, computer science, neuroscience, and political science, but the Department of Economics shines most brightly, leading many into PhD programs and high-profile careers. Economics, biology, and computer science are the most frequently conferred degrees.

Professional Outcomes : Six months after graduating, 97% of the Class of 2022 had achieved positive outcomes. Of the 76% of grads who were employed, 24% were working in the finance/consulting/business fields, 17% in education, 17% in internet and technology & engineering, and 15% in healthcare/life sciences. Top employers included JPMorgan Chase, Google, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Goldman Sachs. The average starting salary for one recent cohort was a solid $63k. Of the 20% of 2022 grads who directly entered an advanced degree program, common schools attended included Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Stanford, MIT, and Emory.

• Enrollment: 2,447
• Cost of Attendance: $84,240
• Acceptance Rate: 14%

Colby College

• Waterville, ME

Academic Highlights: Offering 56 majors and 35 minors, Colby provides a classic liberal arts education with a high degree of flexibility and room for independent intellectual pursuits. A 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio is put to good instructional use as roughly two-thirds of courses have fewer than 19 students. Being a true liberal arts school, Colby has strengths across many disciplines, but biology, economics, and global studies draw especially high praise. These programs along with government and environmental science attract the highest number of students.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 93% of the Class of 2022 had either obtained jobs or were enrolled full-time in a graduate program. Eighteen percent of graduates enter the financial industry and large numbers also start careers in education, with government/nonprofit, STEM, and healthcare next in popularity. The Medical school acceptance rate over the past five years is 68%, nearly double the national average.

• Enrollment: 2,299
• Cost of Attendance: $86,720
• Average SAT: 1485
• Average ACT: 33
• Acceptance Rate: 8%
• Retention Rate: 93%
• Graduation Rate: 87%

University of Michigan

• Ann Arbor, MI

Academic Highlights: There are 280+ undergraduate degree programs across fourteen schools and colleges, and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) enrolls the majority of students. The Ross School of Business offers highly rated programs in entrepreneurship, management, accounting, and finance. The College of Engineering is also one of the best in the country. By degrees conferred, engineering (15%), computer science (14%), and the social sciences (11%) are most popular. A solid 56% of classes have fewer than 20 students.

Professional Outcomes: Within three months of graduating, 89% of LSA grads are employed full-time or in graduate school, with healthcare, education, law, banking, research, nonprofit work, and consulting being the most popular sectors. Within three months, 99% of Ross grads are employed with a median salary of $90k. Top employers include Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, EY, Morgan Stanley, PwC, Deloitte, and Amazon.  Within six months, 96% of engineering grads are employed (average salary of $84k) or in grad school. General Motors, Ford, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta employ the greatest number of alumni.

• Enrollment: 32,695 (undergraduate); 18,530 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $35,450 (in-state); $76,294 (out-of-state)
• Median SAT: 1470
• Acceptance Rate: 18%

Bucknell University

• Lewisburg, PA

Academic Highlights: Over 60 majors and 70 minors are on tap across three undergraduate schools: the College of Arts & Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering. Getting well-acquainted with your professors is easy with a 9:1 student-faculty ratio, and class sizes are reasonably small. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the areas of the social sciences (26%), engineering (14%), business (14%), biology (11%), and psychology (9%).

Professional Outcomes: Nine months after graduation, 94% of the Class of 2022 had launched their careers or entered graduate school. Financial services is the most common sector for Bucknell grads to enter, attracting 24% of alumni. Across all disciplines, the average salary for a Class of 2022 grad was $69,540. Bucknell saw 18% of 2022 grads go directly into an advanced degree program. Bison alumni heading to graduate school predominantly pursue degrees in the medical field, social sciences, business, or engineering.

• Enrollment: 3,747
• Cost of Attendance: $80,890
• Median SAT: 1380
• Median ACT: 32
• Retention Rate: 91%

Haverford College

• Haverford, PA

Academic Highlights: Haverford offers 31 majors, 32 minors, 12 concentrations, and eleven consortium programs—areas of study that can be pursued at partner campuses. The school’s 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio and exclusive emphasis on undergraduate education lead to exceptionally intimate classes, 33% of which have fewer than 10 students, and 72% have fewer than 20. The most popular areas of study at Haverford include the social sciences (24%), biology (14%), psychology (11%), physical sciences (10%), computer science (9%), and mathematics (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Six months after leaving Haverford, 63% of the Class of 2022 had found employment, 19% had enrolled in graduate school, and 9% were still job hunting. Employers hiring multiple recent Haverford grads include Epic, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, the National Institutes of Health, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Of the 19% of 2022 grads who elected to continue their education, the most commonly entered fields of study were STEM (51%) and medicine/health (15%).

• Enrollment: 1,421
• Cost of Attendance: $87,180
• Graduation Rate: 91%

Colorado College

• Colorado Springs, CO

Academic Highlights: Rather than the typical semester schedule, Colorado College operates on the “block plan,” a series of eight three-and-half-week periods during which students take only one course. You won’t find a more intimate liberal arts college than CC. Classes have a cap of 25 students, and no more than a handful of courses exceed that figure. The average class consists of 16 students. In terms of sheer volume, most degrees are conferred in the social sciences (28%), biology (17%), natural resources and conservation (8%), and physical science (6%).

Professional Outcomes: Among the Class of 2022, an impressive 99% arrived successfully at their next destination within six months of earning their diploma. The largest number of graduates who pursue employment end up in the fields of education, technology, health care, the arts, and government.  The bachelor’s degree earned at Colorado College is unlikely to be the last degree a graduate will earn. Five years after graduation, the typical cohort sees 70-90% of its members having either completed or finishing an advanced degree.

• Enrollment: 2,180
• Cost of Attendance: $87,128
• Acceptance Rate: 16%
• Graduation Rate: 86%

Brandeis University

• Waltham, MA

Academic Highlights: Brandeis offers 43 majors, the most popular of which are in the social sciences (18%), biology (17%), business (10%), psychology (8%), public administration (8%), and computer science (7%). The student-faculty ratio is 11:1, and 60% of courses contain nineteen or fewer students. Departments with a particularly strong national reputation include economics, international studies, and sociology as well as all of the traditional premed pathways including biology, and chemistry.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 98% of the Class of 2022 had found their way to employment (59%), graduate school (35%), or another full-time activity like travel or volunteer work (4%). Members of the Class of 2022 were hired by Red Hat, Deloitte, Nasdaq, NPR, and McKinsey & Company. The average starting salary for recent grads is $61k. A large contingent of grads elects to continue at Brandeis for graduate school. Many others go to BU, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, and Yale.

• Enrollment: 3,687
• Cost of Attendance: $86,242
• Median SAT: 1440
• Acceptance Rate: 39%

Macalester College

• St. Paul, MN

Academic Highlights: Students can choose from roughly 40 majors and over 800 courses that are offered each academic year . Being an undergraduate-only institution, Macalester students enjoy the full benefits of the school’s 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio. The average class size is only 17 students, and 14% of class sections have single-digit enrollments. Macalester possesses strong offerings across many different disciplines. Programs in economics, international studies, and mathematics are among the best anywhere.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduating, 95% of the Macalester Class of 2022 had found employment, graduate school, or a fellowship. Employers of recent grads include ABC News, Google, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical Company, McKinsey & Company, the ACLU, the National Cancer Institute, and National Geographic . Across all sectors, the average starting salary for recent grads was above $62k. Sixty percent of Mac grads pursue an advanced degree within six years of earning their bachelor’s.

• Enrollment: 2,175
• Cost of Attendance: $79,890
• Median SAT: 1430
• Acceptance Rate: 28%
• Retention Rate: 88%

Barnard College

Academic Highlights: Barnard has a 10:1 student-faculty ratio, and a sensational 71% of courses are capped at nineteen or fewer students; 18% have fewer than ten. Many get the chance to engage in research alongside a professor as 240+ undergraduates are granted such an opportunity through the Summer Research Institute each year. Barnard’s most popular majors, by number of degrees conferred, include economics, English, political science, history, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and art history.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduation, 91% of 2022 Barnard grads had found employment or were enrolled in a graduate program. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley all appear on the list of the top fifteen employers of Barnard alumni. Within ten years of graduation, over 80% of Barnard alums eventually enroll in graduate school. Those entering graduate school flock in large numbers to Columbia, with 112 heading there over the last three years.

• Enrollment: 3,442
• Cost of Attendance: $90,928
• Acceptance Rate: 9%

Georgetown University

• Washington, D.C.

Academic Highlights: The student-faculty ratio is 11:1, and 60% of classes enroll fewer than 20 students. While some classes are a bit larger, only 7% cross the 50-student threshold. Those desiring to join the world of politics or diplomacy are in the right place. The Government and International Affairs programs are among the best in the country. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (38%) followed by business (20%), interdisciplinary studies (8%), and biology (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduating, 75% of members of the Class of 2022 entered the workforce, 19% went directly into a graduate or professional program of study, and 3% were still seeking employment. The Class of 2022 sent massive numbers of graduates to a number of major corporations including JPMorgan Chase (22), Citi (21), BOA (18), Morgan Stanley (16), and EY (10). Those attending grad school stay at Georgetown or flock to other elite schools like Columbia and Harvard.

• Enrollment: 7,900
• Cost of Attendance: $85,000

Elon University

Academic Highlights: Students choose from 70 majors and can add a number of interesting minors like adventure-based learning, coaching, and multimedia authoring. Elon’s 11:1 student-to-faculty ratio leads to an average class size of 20 students; 51% of sections contain fewer than 20 students. The areas in which the greatest number of degrees are conferred are business (29%), journalism/communication (20%), social sciences (8%), the visual and performing arts (6%), and psychology (6%).

Professional Outcomes: Results of a survey administered nine months after graduation found that 96% of the Class of 2022 had found employment, a graduate school, or an internship. Top employers of recent Elon graduates include Bloomberg, Deloitte, EY, Google, Goldman Sachs, Red Ventures, and Wells Fargo. Recent business grads enjoyed a median salary of $61k while communications majors earned $47k. Just under one-quarter of recent grads gained acceptance into graduate/professional school and many remain at Elon.

• Enrollment: 6,337
• Cost of Attendance: $66,657
• Median SAT: 1260
• Median ACT: 28
• Acceptance Rate: 78%

DePauw University

• Greencastle, IN

Academic Highlights: No matter which of the 40+ majors you pursue at DePauw, you will enjoy the benefits of small class sizes and face time with faculty. A 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio and the fact that only four class sections in the whole university enroll more than 29 students assures that. The greatest number of DePauw undergrads earn degrees in the social sciences (17%), biology (10%), the visual/performing arts (9%), communication/journalism (8%), and computer science (6%).

Professional Outcomes: The university’s “Gold Commitment” guarantees that all grads will land at their next destination within six months, or they will be provided with an entry-level professional opportunity or an additional tuition-free semester. Top employers of DePauw grads include Eli Lilly and Company, IBM, Northern Trust Corporation, AT&T, and Procter & Gamble. Tigers applying to graduate and professional schools experience high levels of success. Of medical school applicants who earned a 3.6 GPA and scored in the 80th percentile on the MCAT, 90% are accepted to at least one institution.

• Enrollment: 1,752
• Cost of Attendance: $74,400
• Acceptance Rate: 66%
• Graduation Rate: 79%

University of Washington – Seattle

• Seattle, WA

Academic Highlights: 180+ undergraduate majors are offered across thirteen colleges/schools. Personal connections with professors abound as 55% of grads complete a faculty-mentored research project. The College of Engineering, which includes the College of Computer Science & Engineering, is one of the best in the nation; UW also boasts strong programs in everything from business to social work to environmental science. The most popular degrees are the social sciences (13%), biology (12%), computer science (11%), and business (8%).

Professional Outcomes: Within months of graduation, 73% of Class of 2022 grads were employed and 17% were continuing their education. The most popular employers of the Class of 2022 included Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and KPMG. Across all living alumni, 6,000+ work for Microsoft, and 4000+ work for each of Boeing and Amazon. Of those headed to graduate/professional school, just over half remain in state, mostly at UW itself. Large numbers of 2022 grads also headed to Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and USC.

• Enrollment: 36,872 (undergraduate); 16,211 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $34,554 (in-state); $63,906 (out-of-state)
• Median SAT: 1420
• Acceptance Rate: 48%
• Retention Rate: 94%

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Applications for 2024 Columbia Summer Session programs are now open!

Creative writing.

The Creative Writing Department offers writing workshops in fiction writing, poetry, and nonfiction writing. Courses are also offered in film writing, structure and style, translation, and the short story.

For questions about specific courses, contact the department.

Registration Procedures and Course Approval

All creative writing classes have limited enrollments and require instructor or departmental approval prior to registration.

Students should visit the Writing Department's website for details and instructions.

Registration Procedures

INTERMEDIATE FICTION WORKSHOP WRIT2100W001 3 pts

Intermediate workshops are for students with some experience with creative writing, and whose prior work merits admission to the class (as judged by the professor). Intermediate workshops present a higher creative standard than beginning workshops, and increased expectations to produce finished work. By the end of the semester, each student will have produced at least seventy pages of original fiction. Students are additionally expected to write extensive critiques of the work of their peers. Please visit  https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate  for information about registration procedures.

Course Number

Times/location, section/call number, intermediate fiction workshop writ2100w002 3 pts, intermediate nonfiction wrkshp writ2200w001 3 pts.

The intermediate workshop in nonfiction is designed for students with some experience in writing literary nonfiction. Intermediate workshops present a higher creative standard than beginning workshops and an expectation that students will produce finished work. Outside readings supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects. By the end of the semester, students will have produced thirty to forty pages of original work in at least two traditions of literary nonfiction. Please visit https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate  for information about registration procedures.

INTERMEDIATE POETRY WORKSHOP WRIT2300W001 3 pts

Intermediate poetry workshops are for students with some prior instruction in the rudiments of poetry writing and prior poetry workshop experience. Intermediate poetry workshops pose greater challenges to students and maintain higher critical standards than beginning workshops. Students will be instructed in more complex aspects of the craft, including the poetic persona, the prose poem, the collage, open-field composition, and others. They will also be assigned more challenging verse forms such as the villanelle and also non-European verse forms such as the pantoum. They will read extensively, submit brief critical analyses, and put their instruction into regular practice by composing original work that will be critiqued by their peers. By the end of the semester each student will have assembled a substantial portfolio of finished work. Please visit https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate  for information about registration procedures.

BODY & WORD WRIT3037W001 3 pts

Our writing often appears primarily as a product of cognitive faculties, and we easily overlook the profound influence our bodies exert on our thoughts and, consequently, our writing. Our perception of language itself is tied to how we perceive our physical selves. We can understand our bodies materially, as intricate structures of bone, muscle, and cells, or kinesthetically, through movement, force, and tone, intertwined with a spectrum of sensations like pain and pleasure, which intersect with our psychological and emotional landscapes. Through a series of movement exercises, readings, and writing assignments, this seminar delves into the profound impact a deeper understanding of our bodies and their movement can have on our writing, and conversely, how writing can influence our bodily experiences. Using various artistic mediums such as dance, film, literature, and fine arts, we aim to enhance our ability to articulate and write the body's presence and movement through space and time. Students from all concentrations are encouraged to join.

ADVANCED FICTION WORKSHOP WRIT3100Q001 3 pts

Building on the work of the Intermediate Workshop, Advanced Workshops are reserved for the most accomplished creative writing students. A significant body of writing must be produced and revised. Particular attention will be paid to the components of fiction: voice, perspective, characterization, and form. Students will be expected to finish several short stories, executing a total artistic vision on a piece of writing. The critical focus of the class will include an examination of endings and formal wholeness, sustaining narrative arcs, compelling a reader's interest for the duration of the text, and generating a sense of urgency and drama in the work. Please visit https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate for information about registration procedures.

ADVANCED FICTION WORKSHOP WRIT3100Q002 3 pts

Senior fiction workshop writ3101q001 4 pts.

Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student. Please visit https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate for information about registration procedures.

HOW TO BUILD A PERSON WRIT3121W001 3 pts

Apocalypses now writ3125w001 3 pts, the ecstasy of influence writ3132w001 3 pts.

What does it mean to be original? How do we differentiate plagiarism from pastiche, appropriation from homage? And how do we build on pre-existing traditions while simultaneously creating work that reflects our own unique experiences of the world?

In a 2007 essay for Harper ’ s magazine, Jonathan Lethem countered critic Harold Bloom’s theory of “the anxiety of influence” by proposing, instead, an “ecstasy of influence”; Lethem suggested that writers embrace rather than reject the unavoidable imprints of their literary forbearers. Beginning with Lethem’s essay—which, itself, is composed entirely of borrowed (or “sampled”) text—this class will consider the nature of literary influence, and its role in the development of voice.

Each week, students will read from pairings of older stories and novel excerpts with contemporary work that falls within the same artistic lineage. In doing so, we’ll track the movement of stylistic, structural, and thematic approaches to fiction across time, and think about the different ways that stories and novels can converse with one another. We will also consider the influence of other artistic mediums—music, visual art, film and television—on various texts. Students will then write their own original short pieces modeled after the readings. Just as musicians cover songs, we will “cover” texts,  adding our own interpretive imprints.

SENIOR NONFICTION WORKSHOP WRIT3201W001 4 pts

Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student. Please visit  https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate  for information about registration procedures.

HYBRID NONFICTION FORMS WRIT3214W001 3 pts

Writing about art writ3215w001 3 pts.

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. 

This course will introduce students to writing about visual art. We will take our models from art history and contemporary art discourse, and students will be prompted to write with and about current art exhibitions and events throughout the city. The modes of art writing we will encounter include: the practice of ekphrasis (poems which describe or derive their inspiration from a work of art); writers such as John Ashbery, Gary Indiana, Eileen Myles, and others who for periods of their life held positions as art critics while composing poetry and works of fiction; writers such as Etel Adnan, Susan Howe, and Renee Gladman who have produced literature and works of art in equal measure. We will also look at artists who have written essays and poetry throughout their careers such as Robert Smithson, Glenn Ligon, Gregg Bordowitz, Moyra Davey, and Hannah Black, and consider both the visual qualities of writing and the ways that visual artists have used writing in their work. Lastly, we will consider what it means to write through a “milieu” of visual artists, such as those associated with the New York School and Moscow Conceptualism. Throughout the course students will produce original works and complete a final writing project that enriches, complicates, and departs from their own interests and preoccupations.

SCIENCE AND SENSIBILITY WRIT3217W001 3 pts

Life stories writ3225w001 3 pts.

In this seminar, we will target nonfiction that tells stories about lives: profiles, memoirs, and biographies. We will examine how the practice of this kind of nonfiction, and ideas about it, have evolved over the past 150 years. Along the way, we will ask questions about these nonfiction forms: How do reporters, memoirists, biographers, and critics make sense of their subjects? How do they create work as rich as the best novels and short stories? Can criticism explicate the inner life of a human subject? What roles do voice, point-of-view, character, dialogue, and plot—the traditional elements of fiction—play? Along the way, we’ll engage in issues of identity and race, memory and self, real persons and invented characters and we’ll get glimpses of such key publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. Some writers we will consider: Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, James Agee, John Hersey, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, Gay Talese, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Janet Malcolm, Robert Caro, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The course regularly welcomes guest speakers.

ADVANCED POETRY WORKSHOP WRIT3300W001 3 pts

This poetry workshop is reserved for accomplished poetry writers and maintains the highest level of creative and critical expectations. Students will be encouraged to develop their strengths and to cultivate a distinctive poetic vision and voice but must also demonstrate a willingness to broaden their range and experiment with new forms and notions of the poem. A portfolio of poetry will be written and revised with the critical input of the instructor and the workshop. Please visit https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate  for information about registration procedures.

Ecopoetics WRIT3321W001 3 pts

“There are things / We live among ‘and to see them / Is to know ourselves.’”

George Oppen, “Of Being Numerous”

In this class we will read poetry like writers that inhabit an imperiled planet, understanding our poems as being in direct conversation both with the environment as well as writers past and present with similar concerns and techniques. Given the imminent ecological crises we are facing, the poems we read will center themes of place, ecology, interspecies dependence, the role of humans in the destruction of the planet, and the “necropastoral” (to borrow a term from Joyelle McSweeney), among others. We will read works by poets and writers such as (but not limited to) John Ashbery, Harryette Mullen, Asiya Wadud, Wendy Xu, Ross Gay, Simone Kearney, Kim Hyesoon, Marcella Durand, Arthur Rimbaud, Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Muriel Rukeyser, George Oppen, Terrance Hayes, Juliana Spahr, and W.S. Merwin—reading several full collections as well as individual poems and essays by scholars in the field.

Through close readings, in-class exercises, discussions, and creative/critical writings, we will invest in and investigate facets of the dynamic lyric that is aware of its environs (sound, image, line), while also exploring traditional poetic forms like the Haibun, ode, prose poem, and elegy. Additionally, we will seek inspiration in outside mediums such as film, visual art, and music, as well as, of course, the natural world. As a class, we will explore the highly individual nature of writing processes and talk about building writing practices that are generative as well as sustainable.

STORIES WITHIN STORIES WRIT3404W001 3 pts

The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, in her sly, radical manifesto of sorts “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” proposes an idea of the “bottle as hero”: instead of conflict serving as our central organizing theory for narrative, she suggests that “the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag.” In other words: a container. These containers needn’t only apply to novels, I contend, but many types of literary narratives, whether they are classified as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or some hybrid of forms.

With this in mind, the generative cross-genre craft seminar Stories within Stories aims to uncover beautiful and practical approaches to gathering small narratives into a larger, cohesive whole. Readings will include Svetlana Alexievich’s devastating novels in voices, Percival Everett’s incendiary novel-within-a-novel Erasure , Ted Chiang’s mesmerizing historical fantasy, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s braided essays of restoration, Nâzım Hikmet’s epic in verse Human Landscapes from My Country , Renee Gladman’s cross-disciplinary approaches to writing and drawing, Yevgenia Belorusets’s dispatches from Ukraine, Edward Gauvin’s identity-memoir-in-contributors’ bios, Saidiya Hartman’s speculative histories, Gary Indiana’s gleefully acerbic roman à clef Do Everything in the Dark , Alejandro Zambra’s standardized test-inspired literature, W. G. Sebald’s saturnine essay-fiction, and Lisa Hsiao Chen’s meld of biography and autobiography, as well as fiction and nonfiction by Clarice Lispector, Vauhini Vara, Eileen Myles, Olga Tokarczuk, and Julie Hecht, among other texts. 

In addition, we will also read essays on craft and storytelling by Le Guin, Gladman, Zambra, Lydia Davis, Walter Benjamin, Garielle Lutz, Ben Mauk, and more. What we learn in this course we will apply to our own work, which will consist of regular creative writing responses drawn from the readings and a creative final project. Students will also learn to keep a daily journal of writing.

RESEARCH ARTS WRITING WRIT9000QRA1 0 pts

Research Arts for MFA Writing Program - Students Must Have Completed 60 Points to Register

WRIT RESEARCH ARTS INTERNSHIP WRIT9800RRI1 6 pts

Interenship for MFA Writing Research Arts Students

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Creative Writing courses

Whether you’re looking to develop your own writing skills and editorial practice for your profession or for purely personal interest, our creative writing courses have much to offer you. Choose below from our range of qualifications.

Creative Writing Degrees  Degrees Also known as an undergraduate or bachelors degree. Internationally respected, universally understood. An essential requirement for many high-level jobs. Gain a thorough understanding of your subject – and the tools to investigate, think critically, form reasoned arguments, solve problems and communicate effectively in new contexts. Progress to higher level study, such as a postgraduate diploma or masters degree.

• Credits measure the student workload required for the successful completion of a module or qualification.
• One credit represents about 10 hours of study over the duration of the course.
• You are awarded credits after you have successfully completed a module.
• For example, if you study a 60-credit module and successfully pass it, you will be awarded 60 credits.

How long will it take?

Creative Writing Diplomas  Diplomas Widely recognised qualification. Equivalent to the first two thirds of an honours degree. Enhance your professional and technical skills or extend your knowledge and understanding of a subject. Study for interest or career development. Top up to a full honours degree in just two years.

Creative writing certificates  certificates widely recognised qualification. equivalent to the first third of an honours degree. study for interest or career development. shows that you can study successfully at university level. count it towards further qualifications such as a diphe or honours degree., why study creative writing with the open university.

Since 2003, over 50,000 students have completed one of our critically acclaimed creative writing modules. 

The benefits of studying creative writing with us are:

• Develops your writing skills in several genres including fiction, poetry, life writing and scriptwriting.
• Introduces you to the world of publishing and the requirements of professionally presenting manuscripts.
• Online tutor-group forums enable you to be part of an interactive writing community.
• Module workbooks are widely praised and used by other universities and have attracted worldwide sales.

Careers in Creative Writing

Studying creative writing will equip you with an adaptable set of skills that can give entry to a vast range of occupations. You’ll learn to evaluate and assimilate information in constructing an argument as well as acquiring the skills of creative and critical thinking that are much in demand in the workplace. 

Our range of courses in creative writing can help you start or progress your career as a:

Looking for something other than a qualification?

The majority of our modules can be studied by themselves, on a stand-alone basis. If you later choose to work towards a qualification, you may be able to count your study towards it.

See our full list of Creative Writing modules

All Creative Writing courses

Browse all the Creative Writing courses we offer – certificates, diplomas and degrees.

See our full list of Creative Writing courses

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Creative Writing

About this program.

Have you longed to explore your creative potential?

Embrace the unknown and start your journey here. As part of one of the largest Creative Writing programs in Canada, you can learn the essentials of excellent writing and put them into practice. Whether you aspire to write a novel or short story, explore poetry, pen a script or screenplay, or explore other writing styles, we have the courses you need to improve your skills.

Class sizes and writers workshops are kept small to ensure you receive the individual attention you need to help your writing thrive, whether you take your class in-class or online. 

Courses in the genres listed below can be applied to the Certificate in Creative Writing

• Creative Non-Fiction
• Escritura Creativa en Español
• Literary Fiction
• Multi-genre
• Poetry and Songwriting
• Popular Fiction
• Stage and Screenwriting
• U of T Summer Writing School
• Writing for Children

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Advent 2024 English and Creative Writing Classes

Other pages in this section:

English Courses

English 101 will set you to work planning, writing, and revising essays of various lengths, practicing a handful of essential skills that make for clear and persuasive writing.  Though every English 101 features a play by Shakespeare, the content of each courses differs widely, from medieval poetry to contemporary drama, from African-American memoir to speculative fiction.   

This iteration of Representative Masterpieces will include close study of Homer’s Iliad , Vergil’s Aeneid , Beowulf , and The Inferno of Dante. The course thus follows the development of the epic form from its origins in oral poetry through its refinement as literary art, and more importantly from its emergence from the heroic ethics of the ancient world and transformations at the hands of Christian writers.

This course focuses on several early works from different literary genres (but excluding the epic) manifestly part of “the cultural imaginary” of writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Shelley, Toni Morrison, and Wendell Berry. First-hand knowledge of such works both enhances one’s ability to identify and understand literary subtexts, and also trains students to be attentive to the productive ways that later writers responded to and repurposed these premodern literary touchstones. Using English translations, we will be reading and thinking critically about Plato’s “Parable of the Cave” from the Republic and “Ladder of Love” from the Symposium ; Euripides’s Alcestis , Medea , and Bacchae ; Cicero’s On Duties , On Friendship , and Scipio's Dream ; Virgil’s Georgics [Poem of the Land]; Apuleius’s The Golden Ass ; Ovid’s Metamorphoses ; and the courtly romances of Marie de France. This course involves student-centered constructivist and collaborative classroom exercises (“capers”), as well as individual presentations and formal “write-ups.” A good time will be had by all.

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” (Marcus Garvey)

Wait a minute: English languages? What does that mean?

From a basic perspective, we share one English: we can effectively transmit meaning from one to another. Yet variations in our own use of English reveal that what we might conceive of as one language is not so easily limited. In this course, we’ll study the English language(s) from a variety of perspectives: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. In doing so, we’ll come to understand how our English(es) have been used as a means not simply for communication but for expressing both power and empowerment.

ChatGPT, in its Gen-Z voice, offers this recommendation: “Yo, I'm totally vibing with this class! It's gonna be lit and give me some serious brain workout, you know? Can't wait to dive in and see what's up. Gonna be mad interesting, for real.”

This course explores our place in the world through three complementary activities: reading, writing, and meditation. We will read together a wide selection of poems offering diverse views of “nature” and our relationship to the earth, taking into account African-American and Indigenous views as well as the European perspective that has long been dominant. We will also undertake a range of contemplative practices, including walking and sitting meditation, outdoors when possible.  Through journal-keeping and poetic experiments as well as formal essays and presentations, students will articulate their discoveries and hone their skills as readers and observers, both of poetry and of the natural world.

There is no responsible way to approach the study of Chaucer’s works without attending to the intersection between language, bodies, gender, and desire within them. As “the father of English poetry,” Chaucer plants his poetic feet in the relationships between the genders, in how we view bodily pleasures (or their absence), in the way language circulates in the social space between bodies, and in how we approach questions of bodily subjectivity from the pagan past to his Christian present. This is true when Chaucer writes about romantic or sexual love, but it is also true when he writes about religion, politics, history, animal fables, and dream visions. In this class, we will consider how the study of (often deeply troubling pieces of) Chaucer’s work should energize our contemporary assumptions and questions about gender and sexuality even as we become familiar with Chaucer’s historical contexts, his language, and his engagement with the literary innovations of his day. Because this is an upper-level class, all of our reading will be in the original Middle English, and so we will begin with a series of lessons on the language. No previous experience with Middle English is expected or required. By the end of the class, however, we will all be comfortable with reading (and reading aloud) the language of Chaucer’s 14th century London.  

Advent 2024 our focus for “Shakespeare 1” will be six plays written and performed between 1594 and 1599, the years just after Shakespeare had published his two long narrative poems (when London’s theatres were closed due to the bubonic plague) and before his company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men (in which Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, and shareholder), moved to the newly constructed Globe Theatre. Although these six plays continue to have perennial appeal in their own right, we will also investigate the historical contexts associated with their composition and staging—especially Shakespeare’s aesthetic tendency toward lyricism, a term and theme we will need to explore and define before we can examine how it informs and animates his plays written between 1594-99. Although his great tragedies¬–other than Romeo and Juliet (1595) which we will read this term–come after his prolific lyrical period, he continued to experiment with several different dramatic forms including the insertion of high tragic elements within madcap comedies such as The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Midsummer Night’s Dream , and The Merchant Of Venice . Finally, we will study the historical tragedy Richard II, one of Shakespeare’s only plays written entirely in verse, which is deeply concerned with issues of royal succession at a time when childless Queen Elizabeth I was approaching the end of her life and a long, glorious reign.

This course involves student-centered constructivist and collaborative classroom exercises (“capers”) including team performances of select episodes and scenes, as well as individual presentations and formal “write-ups.” The one-night-a-week class structure is ideal for allowing us to dive deeply into each of these plays in a serious and sustained way, including playing out various possible stagings of the same episode or scene to discern what exactly the text is asking actors to emphasize and to highlight in their performance. No prior acting experience is required or assumed, for as the closing couplet of The Comedy of Errors puts it so well:

“We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.”

In English 359, we read the poetry of sixteenth-century England. Amidst dramatic shifts in religion and politics, a variety of notable poetic styles flourished in this era: the sonnets of Wyatt and Surrey, imitated from Italian models; the amatory sequences of Sidney, Shakespeare, and Spenser, telling the story of love through delicious languor and rapt immobility; and the mythological epyllia (brief epics) of Shakespeare and Marlowe. The course culminates in a complete reading of Book I of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, a chivalric romance that evokes an idealized vision of the middle ages even as it breaks new ground in the representation of contemporary history.

The eighteenth-century British novel was at heart experimental, riffing on but also departing from previous literary forms. This survey invites us to explore the early British novel in all its multifarious inventiveness as we read and discuss works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen. Particular attention will be paid to the way the early novel interrogates concepts of gender and sexuality. 

Spanning the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, this course explores the relationship between the British empire and literatures written in English. Through colonial and postcolonial novels, poems, imperial romances, travel narratives, and essays, the course analyzes how Britain's territorial and ideological expansion abroad shaped the form and content of English literary expression. Balancing historical context and close analysis of novels, films, and critical texts, the course will consider how empire has affected literature and literary study and how these fictions of empire continue to shape the contemporary world. Readings will include works from Chinua Achebe, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, E. M. Forster, H. Rider Haggard, Jean Rhys, Olive Schreiner, and Rabindranath Tagore. 

Coming of age during the American and French revolutions, William Blake was an original multimedia artist who saw the imagination as the key to liberation, both for the individual and for society.  In this seminar, we will dive deeply into his poetry and visual art, while at the same time looking at their political and cultural context. Engagement with literary criticism and theory will enable students to take their own place in the scholarly conversion surrounding this unique and challenging author. 

“Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.”--Blake

Victorian literature is famously preoccupied with the past: memory and personal experience, national history, nostalgia, and repressed trauma. At the same time, Victorian culture encouraged a robust faith in various visions of progress: the possibility of self-determination, advances in science and technology, and the growth of England as a nation. In this survey of Victorian poetry and non-fiction prose, we will read works of literary and intellectual significance by writers whose preoccupations ranged widely—from romantic desire to evolutionary science, from religious belief to the rise of capitalism. Yet they all grappled with the relationship between art, individuals, and the ever-changing society they inhabited. As we put these fascinating works in dialogue with one another, we will pay special attention to their representations of individual and collective pasts, presents, and futures.

This course, the first half of the two-semester survey of American literature before the twentieth century, begins with the earliest writings in English by European explorers and colonizers and follows the slow emergence of distinctive political, moral and literary traditions that were recognizably American. It thus features, along with poetry and fiction, a good deal of nonfiction writing in the form of essays, memoirs, and sermons. The course culminates with the period usually called “the American Renaissance,” a thirty-year span just before the Civil War in which internationally important works were created by such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.

This course will be a stone’s skip across British poetry, fiction, and drama from around 1900 to the present moment. Using and breaking a variety of familiar forms, tropes, and conventions, the writers of this period work to understand and represent the practice of modern warfare, the disintegration of the British Empire, the rise of the English welfare state, and the slippery concept of "Britishness" itself. The survey explores these historical and cultural contexts, observes the different kinds of critical attention these genres demand, and emphasizes the practice of close reading. Students will have some choice about the forms of work they undertake. 

In this course, we’ll explore literary and cultural representations of the US South from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. We’ll focus especially on the ways in which the South has long been conceived as “queer”—that is, deviant from national normativity and home to perversity of all kinds. Our syllabus will include works by William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Randall Kenan (among many others). We’ll discuss intersections among categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality and consider the relationship between literary canon formation and the mythology of the South. 

What precipitated Ralph Ellison penning The Invisible Man ? How did we get to moving, daring women’s fiction like Sula by Toni Morrison? African American Literature is a rich tradition, as artistic as it is political, as inward facing as it is socially responsible. Forces of antiblackness have long considered the act of writing a threshold of humanity—even and especially when writing was illegal for African Americans; however, writers like poet Phyllis Wheatley have eloquently exceeded that benchmark. Black letters, then, are conscious extensions of not only cultural identities but the fullness of Black humanity, which writers from Frederick Douglass to Toni Cade Bambara commit to representing through a diversity of stories. In this course, we trace the beginning of the African American Literary Tradition, reading classic novels and landmark essays that all center the same question: what is the point and potential of Black writing?

An advanced research methods and composition course required for students pursuing honors in the department. The class will introduce students to the process of conducting independent research in the field of English and will provide experience with the most common research tools and methods used by scholars of literary analysis. We will discuss argumentative structures, disciplinary conventions, and work together in a collegial and cooperative environment that gives students experience with scholarly collaboration. Class sessions will be devoted to giving students in-class writing time, offering peer critiques, reflecting on the nature of scholarly writing, and working through exercises to develop and discover students’ individual voices and analytic priorities. In addition, students will work closely with their thesis advisor throughout the term as part of the course requirements, meeting with their advisor regularly outside of class for individual guidance and feedback about their project. By the end of the semester, students will have produced an initial rough draft of their thesis project that will then be revised in a more leisurely manner, under the supervision of their thesis advisor, during the following term. 

Admission to the class is granted by the department. To be selected, students must submit an abstract of their intended project over the summer and the department will approve the abstracts they believe will produce successful honors theses. 

Creative Writing Courses

Discussions will center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style.

If you’re dreaming up ways to tell new stories, the Beginning Fiction Workshop provides a welcoming space to explore techniques to hone your skills as a writer of fiction. You will read a diverse array of stories while we create a common language to aid us in discussion of the stories we study and create. You will write through generative exercises and build toward your own stories. Each writer will uncover their writing voice while becoming a part of the larger writing community. Together, we will become studied observers and generous participants in the writing and reading of fiction. 

Are you a fan of The Flight Attendant or House of Cards ? Do you love Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto , or Turning Red ? What do they all have in common? They were all written by playwrights. Whether you are a fiction writer interested in improving your dialogue, a poet who wants to explore narrative, a theatre geek who wants to see their work come to life, or someone simply interested in trying something new, Beginning Playwriting Workshop is an excellent opportunity to explore dramatic writing in a safe and supportive environment. Emphasis is placed on promoting growth as a writer. A variety of foundational texts are read in order to develop an understanding of basic dramatic structure. Each play is chosen to address a corresponding skill, such as dramatic tension, subtext, dialogue, exposition, or character. Weekly writing exercises are assigned to work in concert with the plays we read. By reading plays and dissecting the form and content, students have an opportunity to develop their analytic skills, which can then be applied to their own work. In addition to short writing exercises, students will also complete either two 10-minute plays or a one-act play.

Craft-based instruction in specific formal issues in the tradition of poetry. Students will read poems through the lens of technique and craft, studying how writers utilize certain forms. The class will also focus on the generation of creative work, adhering to the forms discussed in class. Prerequisite: WRIT 205 or WRIT 206 or WRIT 207 or WRIT 208.

In this iteration of the forms course, we will focus on the novel. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of contemporary novels, looking at story structure, elements and expectations of genre conventions, character development, and explorations of conceits and themes. We will also focus on the generation of our own concept, working to create between 50 and 75 pages of the opening of the novel, while also building a comprehensive outline, character sheet, and researching our setting. We will also spend time on the professional aspects of pitching a novel to an agent. 

Building on the skills learned in Beginning Playwriting, students in Intermediate Playwriting will explore plays that utilize a non-linear story structure.  The semester will begin with readings from contemporary playwrights like Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Katori Hall, and Lauren Yee, as we continue to discuss craft. By reading plays and dissecting the form and content, student have an opportunity to develop their analytic skills which will serve them well as they begin examining their own work.  Students will apply the skills they have learned as they write their own original one-act play (30-60 pages).

In the advanced workshop, students focus on their capstone project, sharing that work with peers in a workshop setting. The course requires students to work with the professor to develop specific reading lists with the goal of shaping their own capstone project. The primary focus of the workshop is the creation and critique of their own work and the work of their peers. Prerequisite: WRIT 306.

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2024 creative writing award winners, april 11, 2024.

Quantá Holden | Duke English | Digital Communication Specialist

The English Department at Duke University is honored to announce the winners of the 2024 Creative Writing Contests and Creative Writing Scholarships. Annually, the department administers creative writing contests to recognize fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry works by English majors and non-major undergraduates. 

The English Department is honored to announce the winners of its 2024 writing contests. The department administers writing contests to recognize fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and critical writing by English majors and non-major undergraduates. 

Congratulations to all of this year's winners! 

Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Fiction Family members and friends of former English student Anne Flexner (1945) established the Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Creative Writing to recognize undergraduates for their work in fiction and poetry. 

Makee Gonzalez Anderson ’24  -  “Here, in the Past Tense” Second Prize: Emma Huang, ’25  -  "ABEL’S PLACE"

Reynolds Price Award for Fiction The Reynolds Price Fiction Award was established in memory of the distinguished novelist, essayist, poet, and public intellectual Reynolds Price, a graduate of Duke and professor in the English Department for over 50 years.  Tomas Esber, ’24  -  “Ridgewood” Second Prize: Matthew Chen, ’26  -  “ABC” & “Chair"

CREATIVE NONFICTION

George P. Lucaci Award for Creative NonFiction This award was created to encourage creative nonfiction writing and honor George P. Lucaci, a former Duke student who has actively supported undergraduate creative writing in the English Department for many years. 

Ruby Wang, ’24  -  “Blood Orison” Second Prize: Rowan Huang, ’24  -  “Arms Outstretched"

Academy of American Poets Prize Founded in 1934 in New York City, the Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization advocating for American poets and poetry.  Its mission is to support American poets at all stages of their careers and foster contemporary poetry appreciation.  Nima Babajani-Feremi, ’24  -  “Dreams to Persepolis” Honorable Mention: Tyler King, ’25  -  "NO QUARTER"

Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Poetry   Family members and friends of former English student Anne Flexner (1945) established the Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Creative Writing to recognize undergraduates for their work in fiction and poetry.   Jocelyn Chin, 24 -   “Endurance” Second Prize:   Arielle Stern, ’25  -  "The Poem as Event"

Terry Welby Tyler, Jr. Award for Poetry This award was established by the family of Terry Welby Tyler, Jr., who would have graduated with the class of 1997 to recognize and honor outstanding undergraduate poetry.  Arim Lim, ’26  -  "Archeopteryx"

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A list of all upcoming fourth-year seminars for 2024-25. Scheduling tbd. Texts and assignments may vary

SUMMER TERM, C SESSION (17 JUNE-26 JULY 2024)

Professor: Andrew Taylor

Love, Sex, and Death in the Medieval Borderlands

“A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.”    Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

Medieval romances often evoke journeys into mysterious lands whose languages and sexual norms break or surpass the rules of regular society. These journeys can move entirely outside natural geography, leaping over oceans or plunging into the otherworld, or they can move through specific regions, noting local customs and landmarks; they can be written in some elevated literary standardized language, such as Latin or Chaucer’s English, or in the language of a specific region. These journeys are often perilous and sexually charged and they open up new possibilities of identity.  In this course we will follow a number of journeys as they move through actual geographic regions, such as the Welsh Marches, the edge of the Pennines in Cheshire, the borders between Scotland and England, and the edge of the Pyrenees near the Basque country. Many of the stories we examine will be about King Arthur and his court, material which circulated widely in many languages. We will explore the association of medieval borders with linguistic instability, multilingual contact, gender fluidity, shape-shifting, disguise, and creative mendacity, and try to isolate some significant locations in medieval border writing, such as the wasteland, the contact zone, the listening post, and the portal. We will make significant use of maps and local histories.

Grading: Seminar presentation and class participation 40%; major paper 60%

Texts: The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Kathy Cawsey and Elizabeth Edwards (2023).  

Professor: Tom Allen

African American Literature: The Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago Black Renaissance

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed two great flowerings of African American literature, visual art, theatre, and music. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s marked the birth of a new urban culture in New York City. The cultural milieu placed the work of writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston in dialogue with the creative expressions of performing artists in jazz (Duke Ellington), theatre (Paul Robeson), dance (Josephine Baker), and painting (Aaron Douglas). Two decades later, the Chicago Black Renaissance gave voice to a new generation of writers such as novelist Richard Wright, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. This second Renaissance of the twentieth century was also defined by the mutual influences of different art forms, especially the Chicago blues scene. In this course we will study the literary achievements of these two movements in the context of the culture of their urban environments, especially music. We will also explore important themes such as Black identity in America, the role of Black writers and artists in fostering community, feminism, LGBTQ+ possibilities, and the role of a Black avant-garde in the struggle for social change. In order to reflect on the lasting legacy of this period of artistic flourishing, we will conclude the semester by reading Toni Morrison’s great historical novel of the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz.

The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis Home to Harlem, by Claude McKay Cane, by Jean Toomer Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston Native Son, by Richard Wright The Street, by Ann Petry Selected Poems, by Gwendolyn Brooks A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry Jazz, by Toni Morrison

Relevant critical readings will be available through the library or on Brightspace.

  Professor: Mary Arseneau

Victorian Women Poets: Gender, Poetics, and a Female Literary Tradition This seminar course will consider gender and poetics within the specific context of the nineteenth-century British woman poet’s tradition. We will consider how women poets self-consciously identified themselves as working in a female tradition, how that identification informs their poetics, and the critical implications of approaching this female canon as sequestered from a mainstream, predominantly male, canon. In the process of our literary study we will acknowledge the recuperative work undertaken by feminist scholars and consider what attitudes contributed to the last century’s erasure of the woman poet’s tradition.              Beginning with Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.) as originators of a discernible female poetic tradition in the nineteenth century, we will trace the tradition of the “poetess” through Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, paying particular attention to these poets’ deliberate self-representations as female artists. Finally, through a study of late Victorian poets Augusta Webster and Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), we will consider how the Victorian woman poet’s tradition extends to the later part of the century. We will trace the poets’ emulations of Sappho, Corinne, and the “improvisatrice”; their experiments with genres including the epic, dramatic monologue, and sonnet; and their engagement with larger social issues. Throughout the course, we will examine these poets’ compromises and confrontations with dominant gender ideology as they attempt to negotiate a transgression into the public arena while asserting and performing their “femininity.”               This poetic tradition is still in the process of being recovered and undergoing historical revision, and over the last decades various forgotten figures have gained a deserved scholarly profile. Our goal in the course is to continue this project of recuperating forgotten voices and discovering other neglected figures. As we shall see, the poetess tradition—which was thought of as conservatively and conventionally feminine—actually has extended into identities and poetry reaching well beyond the “Angel in the House” persona. Even when women poets are writing about emotions and domesticity, they often interrogate cultural issues. In her book The Political Poetess, critic Tricia Lootens asks and answers the important question, “Who made the Poetess white? No one; not ever.” In this course, we will pay particular attention to poets that articulate novel and ground-breaking views, and we will discover voices that are diverse in terms of sexual orientation, politics, subject matter, disability, race, and ethnicity. Through “Recuperating Women Poets” seminar presentations we will consider the poetry and critical reputations of figures whose poetry is less well known, with particular focus on identifying promising areas for future scholarship.   We will acknowledge and discuss the reality that the female poetic tradition is still in formation. Through brief seminar presentations we will also consider the poetry and critical reputations of other figures whose poetry is less well known, with particular focus on identifying promising areas for future scholarship. Other poets to be explored might include Dora Greenwell, Adelaide Procter, George Eliot, Matilde Blind, Bessie Rayner Parkes (Madame Belloc), Constance Naden, A. Mary F. Robinson (Madame James Darmesteter, Madame Mary Duclaux), Alice Meynell, Amy Levy, Mary E. Coleridge, and Graham R. Tomson (Rosamund Marriott Watson).  Method: Seminar and discussion  Grading:    30% major seminar presentation and handout  15% “recuperating women poets” seminar and handout  10% participation  45% final essay  Texts:    Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. Aurora Leigh. Ed. Margaret Reynolds. Norton critical edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.  ---.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Selected Poems. Ed. Marjorie Stone and Beverly Taylor. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2009.    Field, Michael (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper). Michael Field, The Poet: Published and Manuscript Materials. Ed. Marion Thain and Ana Parejo Vadillo. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2009.    Hemans, Felicia. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters. Ed. Gary Kelly. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2002.    Landon, Letitia Elizabeth. Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Selected Writings. Ed. Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1997.    Rossetti, Christina. Christina Rossetti: The Complete Poems. Text by R.W. Crump. Notes and introduction by Betty S. Flowers. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001.  Webster, Augusta. Augusta Webster: Portraits and Other Poems. Ed. Christine Sutphin. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2000.

  Professor: Emelia Quinn

Reading Animals: The Question of the Animal in Contemporary Literature

Literature is a traditionally human affair: reliant on language use for its production and reception, literary narratives tend to center around human agents and human concerns. However, the nonhuman animals with whom we share our world also have a significant, if overlooked, place in literary history. Animals have frequently figured as allegorical presences, from Aesop’s fables to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. They also figure as significant symbolic presences, as innocence and moral goodness in William Blake’s “The Lamb,” for instance, or as representative of the glory of imperial adventure in the big game hunts of H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. Animal characters are also pervasive as background presences in literary fictions, whether as modes of transport, domestic companions, or in the disembodied form of food and clothing. We should also not forget that animals have a significant spectral materiality in the history of the book itself: from the use of calfskin for vellum pages to the rabbit bones melted down to produce the glue for bookbinding.  

And yet, despite a vast bestiary of animal presences in literature, literary criticism has tended to either ignore animals, focusing solely on the human actors in narrative, or failed to think about the animal itself, beyond its symbolic or metaphorical value. This has changed in recent years, with the rise of animal studies in the humanities demonstrating the importance of paying close attention to animals in literary texts and to the ways in which animals can assert their textual agency in unexpected and powerful ways.  The primary focus of this seminar will be on contemporary texts that engage with key ideas and debates in the field of animal studies. Just as philosophical views on animals have transformed dramatically over the course of human history, from Descartes’ sense of animals as machines to Peter Singer’s treatise on animal suffering, the representation of animals in literary texts has shifted over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in ways that reflect contemporary values, such as the advancement of animal rights; anxieties, including the contribution of industrial animal agriculture to the climate crisis and the looming threat of a sixth mass extinction event; and the influence of posthumanist thought, destabilizing that which we define as “the human.”   

This seminar will consider a range of contemporary texts, including novels, short stories, and films, that engage with topics such as: pet-keeping and domestication, bestiality and zoophilia, animal language, anthropomorphism and empathy, extinction and conservation, the postcolonial animal, meat eating, animal satire, and animal revolution. In the process, we will encounter some of the major theoretical works in animal studies, from Carol J. Adams’s feminist-vegetarian theory of the “absent referent,” to Jacques Derrida’s concept of the “l’animot,” and from Donna Haraway’s vision of “multispecies entanglement” to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s sense of “becoming-animal.” We will also consider the ways in which animal studies scholars have engaged (not uncontroversially) with questions of race, gender, and disability, considering the intersections of animal studies with postcolonial studies, critical race studies, queer theory, ecocriticism, posthumanism, disability studies, and vegan studies.  

Assessment: Oral Presentation (15%), Close Reading Assignment (35%), Final Essay (50%) Sample texts: Possible texts may include: Patricia Highsmith, The Animal Lovers Book of Beastly Murder Marian Engel, Bear Octavia Butler, Dawn J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals Yann Martel, Life of Pi Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide Julia Leigh, The Hunter Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

Possible films: Simon Amstell, Carnage  Bong Joon-ho, Okja

  WINTER 2025

Professor Victoria Burke

War, Politics, and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century English Women’s Writing

In this course we will use the English Civil War and its aftermath (c.1640-1680) as the primary lens through which to examine a range of writing by women.  We will consider poetry (including laments for the execution of King Charles I), prose (radical religious tracts written by Quakers, letters—both personal and fictional, and autobiographical writing), and five plays.  These plays are Bell in Campo by Margaret Cavendish, The Concealed Fancies by her step-daughters, Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Egerton, and three plays by Aphra Behn: The Rover, The City-Heiress, and The Widow Ranter.  We will study some of the historical, political, and religious contexts relevant to these works, and we will put them in dialogue with scholarly criticism.  Two of our writers (Anne Halkett and Aphra Behn) were government spies, and so we will use the research of Nadine Akkerman and others to learn about the mechanics of espionage for women.  The final play, The Widow Ranter, treats a rebellion in colonial Virginia and has just been published in an edition that offers contextual materials that illuminate discourses of empire and colonization.  By studying writing from a range of genres (poetry, prose, and drama), political positions (from royalist to revolutionary), and religious affiliations (from radical to conformist), we will explore women writers’ insights into important events of this tumultuous century.    

COURSE OBJECTIVES:  This fourth-year course is designed to introduce students to canonical and lesser-known but extremely accomplished writers from the seventeenth century, and to some of the critical debates in this field.  It is also intended to foster an atmosphere of inquiry as we read, summarize, discuss, debate, and think through the implications of the primary and secondary texts we are reading.  The course will offer students the opportunity to hone their skills in research, critical thinking, argumentation, and writing.  It will also give them a chance to prepare and present a short seminar on a topic and to practice techniques of engaging their classmates in discussion.  

METHOD: Lecture, seminar presentations, and discussion.   

GRADING: Participation (15%), seminar presentation including written report (25%), term paper (30%), final in-person exam (30%).

TEXTS:     Behn, Aphra.  The Rover.  Edited by Anne Russell, Broadview Press, 1999. Behn, Aphra.  The Widow Ranter.  Edited by Adrienne L. Eastwood, Broadview Press, 2022. Early Modern Women’s Writing: An Anthology 1560-1700.  Edited by Paul Salzman, Oxford UP, 2000. Course reader plus additional materials that will be posted on the course web page.  

Professor Cynthia Sugars

Margaret Atwood: The Writings, The Controversies

Variously described as a “legend,” a “prophet,” a “literary superstar,” a “juggernaut,” a “badass feminist prognosticator,” and the “Queen of CanLit,” Margaret Atwood is hard to ignore. So let’s see what all this fuss is about! This course will delve into the literary oeuvre and changing reputations of Margaret Atwood (the author, the celebrity, the activist, and the industry). We will begin with her early career, two early collections of poems The Circle Game and Power Politics, and read a selection of her poetry, novels, short stories, nonfiction, and social media interventions up to the present. Our readings will be accompanied by weekly chapters from Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Atwood, and selected secondary works (by Atwood and other critics). Atwood has been a controversial figure from early on – from debates about her take on second-wave feminism in the 1970s, to her statements on Canadian cultural nationalism, to her representations of genetic engineering, to her opposition to censorship and book burning (in the past few years, The Handmaid’s Tale has been banned by a number of states and schoolboards in the US), to her challenges to the #MeToo movement in the early 2000s. Atwood’s work with PEN International on behalf of writers across the world had been widely applauded, yet for many of her fans, her 2018 controversial op-ed article in the Globe and Mail “Am I a Bad Feminist?” marked a betrayal. All this and more awaits us as we wade into the turbid waters of the Atwood universe. We will conclude the course with a discussion of Atwood’s conscious self-fashioning as a celebrity.

Grading: Seminar presentation (written and oral components) 30%: term paper 30%; final in-person exam 30%; class participation 10%.

Texts: The Circle Game (1964) and Power Politics (1971) -- selections Surfacing (1972) The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Cat’s Eye (1988) Bluebeard’s Egg (1983) -- selections Wilderness Tips (1991) – selections Stone Mattress (2014) -- selections Alias Grace (1996) Morning in the Burned House (1995) Oryx and Crake (2003) Burning Questions (2022) – selections

Professor Sara Landreth

Eighteenth-Century Black Voices

In 2022, the re-release of Gretchen Gerzina’s seminal Black England: A Forgotten Georgian Story marked a turning-point in how we view the history of Black lives in the eighteenth century. This 4th-year seminar will examine literature and culture of the antislavery movement throughout the Atlantic regions between 1760 to 1830. Our syllabus will focus on writings by eighteenth-century Black authors of the English-speaking world, including Briton Hammon, Phyllis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and anonymous authors. We will read the anonymously published novel The Woman of Colour (1808), which features a biracial Jamaican heiress as its protagonist and primary narrator. In the final weeks of the term, we will turn to historical fiction, and will delve into how 21st-century representations of 18th-century racialized writers both embrace and reject the historical record. We’ll watch Amma Asante’s 2007 film, Belle, which adapts elements of Woman of Colour for the screen.

Method: In-person Seminar & Discussion

Required Texts Gretchen Gerzina, Black England 139980488X Vincent Carretta, Ed. Unchained Voices Anthology 0813108845 Anonymous, The Woman of Colour 1551111764 Henry Louis Gates, The Trials of Phyllis Wheatley 0465018505 Francis Spufford, Golden Hill 1501163884

Marking:  Seminar = 30% (15% quality of written script; 15% oral presentation and discussion leadership) Participation = 30% (in-person spoken contributions, bringing printed texts to class, attendance)  Final Essay = 40% (appears as a take-home exam on the university schedule)

Course Objectives: To engage deeply and critically with a wide range of texts; to foster a generous intellectual environment where discussion and debate can thrive; and to hone our skills in oral presentation, in-person real-time conversation, and written communication.

  Professor Kimberly Quiogue Andrews

Creative Writing seminar (prerequisite of a 3000-level Creative Writing course is required)

The Rectangle

“Genre always fails.”  --Claudia Rankine

In this course, we will explore the possibilities inherent in one of the more generically-vexing forms of creative writing: the paragraph. Capable of containing entire stories and essays as well as experiments in the lyric, the paragraph-as-genre has both a rich history and an exciting present, and can offer creative writing students a wealth of new ways to explore and play with language. Over the course of our readings in this class, we will develop a kind of negative theory of the line—a theory, in other words, about what happens in the line’s absence, or in the line’s presence as delineated by the shape of the page. Students in this class will try their hand at various short prose forms with a focus on the “lyric” (a term we will complicate and unpack repeatedly), in the process gaining an enhanced understanding of both genre and lyric theories. The “rectangle,” as it were, has cropped up in nearly every major recent literary movement—be it Gertrude Stein’s modernism, Frank O’Hara’s New York-ism, Russell Edson’s neo-Surrealism, Christian Bök’s conceptualism, Harryette Mullen’s late-Oulipeanism, even Robert Hass’s careful formalism—and as such, students will also come away with a rich sense of the form’s applicability across traditions and time periods.

Method: Seminar

Texts: •    Ziegler, Alan. Short: An International Anthology. Persea Books, 2014. •    Cheng, Jennifer S. House/A. Omnidawn, 2016. •    Lundy Martin, Dawn. A Life in a Box is a Pretty Life. Nightboat Books, 2015. •    Lennon, Brian. City: An Essay. University of Georgia Press, 2002.

Assignment Overview & Grading: •    Workshop Participation and Attendance    20%     •    Weekly Poems                         40% •    Reading Responses                 10% •    Recitation                            5% •    Journal Presentation                5% •    Revision Portfolio w/ Cover Letters.     20%

2024 -“Juried Undergraduate Exhibition,” Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID -At Invitation, University of Idaho’s President’s House, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID -“In Medias Res,” Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID (Forthcoming)

2023 -At Invitation, “Painting Show,” Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID -“VAC is Back!”, Reflections Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID -“Pens, Pencils & Paint,” Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID -At Invitation, University of Idaho’s President’s House, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. 2023-2024 -“Palouse Plein Air,” Moscow City Council, Moscow, ID. (Winner: City Purchase Award) -“Mirage,” Reflections Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. -At Invitation, “Painting Show,” Moscow City Council, Moscow, ID. Fall 2023-Spring 24

2022 -“Figures”, Downtown Arts Center, Honolulu, HI -“Palouse Plein Air”, Moscow City Council, Moscow, ID. (Winner: Best Watercolor) -At Invitation, “Student Painters,” Moscow City Council, Moscow, ID. -At Invitation, “Student Printmakers,” Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. -“Clay?!”, Ridenbaugh Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.

2021 -At Invitation, “Student Show”, Iolan’i Gallery, Windward Community College, Kaneohe, HI.

2020 -“Foundations Juried Exhibition”, The Looking Glass Gallery, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.

2019 -“Student Show”, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC.

2024 Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Painting and Ceramics, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. (Forthcoming)

Extracurriculars and Honors

2022-2024 President of Visual Arts Community (VAC), University of Idaho President of Vandal Print Guild (VPG), University of Idaho Volunteer Artist, Vandaljacks, University of Idaho Dean’s List, University of Idaho Alumni Award for Excellence, University of Idaho

2019-2020 Resident Artist, Cannon Hall, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.

Work Experience/Training

2021-2022 Gallery Attendant, Iolan’i Gallery, Windward Community College, Kaneohe, HI.

Studied Under: Kelly Oakes, Durham, NC. 2019-2020. William Zwick, Honolulu, HI. 2020. Mark Brown, Honolulu, HI, 2020-2022. Daunna Yanoviak, Kailua, HI. 2021- 2022. Mark Norseth, Honolulu, HI. 2021-.

Art: “Introduction to Figure Drawing,” Stacey Leanza, Class, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2018. “Printmaking; Mono-prints,” Stacey Leanza, Class, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2018. “Mixed Media,” Stacey Leanza, Class, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2018. “Introduction to Portrait Drawing,” Kelly Oakes, Class, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2019. “Painting Portraits in Alla Prima,” Kelly Oakes, Workshop, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2019. “Demystifying the Modern Portrait,” Marie Rossettie, Class, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2019. “Intuitive Painting,” Heather Gerni, Workshop, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2019. “Oil Painting Crash Course,” Vanessa Murray, Workshop, The Arts Center, Carrboro, NC. 2019. “Live Portrait Sessions,” Alla Parsons, Downtown Arts Center, Honolulu, HI. 2023. “Introduction to Watercolor,” Dwayne Adams, Class, Downtown Arts Center, Honolulu, HI. 2023.

Creative Writing: “Writing the Killer Mystery,” C1121, Central Carolina Community College, 2019. “Flash Fiction Made Easy,” C1058, Central Carolina Community College, 2019. “Charting Your Path To Publication,” C1060, Central Carolina Community College, 2019.

Newspapers and Articles

Long, Maryanne, “Windward Artists Turn Impression Into Expression,” Windward O’ahu Voice, February 9th, 2022

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Then, There: January 2020

Here, now: april 2022, there, there: spring, 2020, writing the everyday breaking body.

Jonathan Wyatt is professor of qualitative inquiry and a co-director of the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry at The University of Edinburgh.

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Jonathan Wyatt; Writing the Everyday Breaking Body. Journal of Autoethnography 1 April 2024; 5 (2): 233–240. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2024.5.2.233

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As part of his working toward a new book, Writing, the Everyday, and Creative-Relational Inquiry , this article enquires into the everyday body, the body’s losses, joys, mess, beauty, and contradictions. It is an article about how a(n aging, White, male) body breaks, how it might (or might not) heal, what a body in its everyday movements remembers, knows, conveys, carries, mourns; what is lost but present. It begins to trouble and explore how we conceptualize “the body.” Bringing to the page the everyday poetics and prosaics of the struggling, soaring, body, and the legacies it holds, the article looks for creative-relational possibilities for writing the in/corporeal.

This writing enquires into and with the body: the everyday body. The everyday body in three senses: the everyday body as the each-day, all-day, ever-present body, the body we live with, the body we are, the body we can’t do without; the body’s ordinariness (we all have one); and, in particular, the body’s everydayness in a Deleuzian sense, as “a concurrent, reciprocating reality…a potential maelstrom of non-human becomings.” 1 A body like any other but also a body that is relational, processual, extraordinary, excessive, “as much outside itself as in itself—webbed in relations.” 2

This writing—this body of writing, this writing-body—moves through, in, across, inside, and outside particular places, particular times. There and then, here and now, there and now, here and then: the past, present, and future carried back and forth between each encounter, each event. 3

What follows concerns the body’s losses, joys, mess, beauty, pain, and contradictions. It is writing toward how a body breaks; how an aging, White, male body breaks (though I wonder why I choose those three categories amongst many; why I choose to categorize at all); how the body might (or might not) heal; what a body in its everyday movements and moments remembers, knows, conveys, carries, mourns; what is lost but present. It is writing about how difficult it is to write about the body, however much scholars make claims (as I do) for embodied scholarship. Bringing to the page the everyday poetics and prosaics of the struggling, soaring, body, and the legacies it holds, the writing looks for creative-relational possibilities for writing the in/corporeal.

I’m on a narrow sofa in my therapist’s consulting room, the front room of a first-floor Edinburgh flat. She sits in a chair opposite, the other side of the fireplace, the window onto the courtyards behind her right shoulder. I have my shoes off and my legs crossed. We’re half-way through the time we have together.

We’ve been talking about the pain I’m experiencing. This pain is persistent, present, a reminder each day, all day. This pain is localized, specific. It’s physical, topical. You could say, it’s “personal.” And this pain is affective, pervasive, charging each moment, each movement, touching everything, all of me and beyond me, my body’s gathering of “the impersonal forces that compose [it].” 4

I’m talking and gesticulating through tears. Despairing. “Like this,” I’m saying, “you see, like this…with my body being like this, I don’t know what the point of me is. I don’t know what my purpose is.” It’s an unexpected, even ridiculous, statement, even to me, catching me by surprise and despite or because of the tears, I laugh. My therapist doesn’t.

My body is quiet this morning. Sitting upright on the café’s dark wooden chair at a marble table by the glowing fire, I close my eyes, listening to the messages the body gives me. Except, at the table next to me, books between them alongside cups, saucers, and teapots, a man and a woman talk. I hear them, sense them. They seem close, familiar, intimate, an energy between them. Lovers, perhaps. She asks a question in French. They converse for a time—I gather their conversation is about the war in Ukraine, French politics, President Macron, something of his relationship with Vladimir Putin, but no more—then they speak in English, damning our Prime Minister for his ineptitude and follies. The conversation shifts into French again and I lose them. I am thankful for this. I return my attention to skin, muscle, breath, heartbeat—and to writing. How the body writes, eyes open at the page, head tilted to the right, pen held between the left hand’s thumb and middle finger and forefinger, right hand holding the notebook open, blue ink appearing in curls and lines, scratched onto the page. I forget to breathe—and then remember.

My body-in-process, I, walked this morning, as we often do, up the hill from home, onto the High Street, and across to the campus—if it can be called a campus: the city and its university buildings fold into and between each other. I felt cold air sharp against my cheeks. I wore a hat to cover my ears. I wore gloves over my hands and fingers. Two sets: cashmere mitts and ski gloves. My outbreaths appeared, like mist. A late spring burst of winter.

Once on campus I went to the gym. I do this three mornings a week.

                      * * *

Note I’m taking you toward a section, early in this article, where I speak about a body that can move, that can find its place in a gym. The text will tell of what this body can do alongside also what it can’t, today, but could perhaps in time: a body looking beyond its limits toward possibility. This is the body I bring you almost before anything else, although it’s true you have with you the shadow of the opening scene with my therapist. This body I will bring you now is one that functions, one that serves me. How smooth some movements feel; a body’s strength even as it falters. This, near the top of the article, is where I am avoiding, where I resist, except for that momentary opening glimpse, offering you a sense of a body breaking. What follows in a few lines below is not a body breaking, it would appear, not a body lost, not a life disrupted. I first choose to convey this body’s vitality, its energy, its strength.

I realize what I’m saying risks sounding arch, and I want you to see it for what it is. It’s a strategy for image management. I bring you in on this strategy so you can see it. I want you to see this avoidance coming. Which you would anyway. I know you will know; and now you know I know you will know. I know you will see through this, through me. You will see me. You will also understand, I sense, how I am doing this for me, not you. I am hoping the irony will make the strategy seem less artless, less defensive.

I want you to think of me as vital alongside knowing my body’s vulnerability. I want to think of myself as vital. I want to be vital.

However, this story about my early morning at the gym is also about relating, about encounter. Encounter with what’s possible. Encounter with what’s possible through and with another; with others, human, nonhuman, more-than-human others. Encounter with sound, touch, weight, breath. Encounter with teaching, learning, encouragement, hope, pleasure. Love, even. The permeable, porous “bodymind” 5 —movements and affect in continuous, looping relation—at work. The body itself as creative-relational inquiry, 6 “listening to unintelligible attempts to lure.” 7

So, to the gym early this morning.

The soundtrack in the gym changes but stays the same. There are, I would guess, no more than thirty songs that play through the loudspeakers, over and over, round and round, the same thirty songs throughout at least the past six months. One, as I warmed up, stretching my hips, back, and hamstrings by sitting low into my haunches, caught me. It always does. Therapist , by Mae Muller. The song is a complaint by the singer about how tiring she’s finding her lover’s neediness. She’s done with him; he doesn’t need a lover, she claims—he needs a therapist. He wants someone to look after him, and she’s not prepared to be that person. Off you go, she’s suggesting, go get help. 8

It is not a happy song, but it’s somehow heartening. There’s something about the strength in it. I admire her. The straight talking. The bluntness. The directness. This woman risks sounding cruel, almost, in telling in public the plain truth of this failing relationship, of this needy man, but there it is: she needs a lover, he needs a therapist. She’s getting out of there. It makes me smile.

Sebby found me as I stretched. Meet Sebby: Sebby is my coach. My teacher. He is teaching me how to do Olympic lifting. I am one of his “junior” team, as he calls us; on his junior team there’s me and there’s Jim, also in his sixties, just a few years older. Jim and I meet in the changing room most mornings, greeting each other with tales of our latest lifting achievements, his retirement life, my university life, and our current injuries. Mostly our injuries.

Sebby is teaching me how to lift. He is my teacher. He speaks of me as one of his “students,” not one of his clients. The first lift is the “clean,” the second the “push press,” and then how to link these lifts together, to allow them to flow one into the other. It’s early days, but I am beginning to find myself in the fluidity of lifting. This morning, as Sebby watched me, he called: “Don’t overthink it. Focus on the speed, Jonathan. Focus on the jump.” I crouch, my hands shoulder-width apart on the bar, which rests on the floor. I look up, breathe in, hold. “Back tight, core tight, glutes tight,” he demands. Keeping the back tight is a challenge. To enable me to feel it, he has asked me what I like to drink, and to imagine holding that favorite drink between my shoulder blades. So I picture a bottle of double espresso gripped between my traps, and the back is as tight as it can get. The bar travels slow up my shins, then as it reaches just above the knees, it accelerates, bouncing off the tops of my thighs as I jump, elbows hooking, body dropping underneath the bar into a squat. The knees and hips extend to standing, the bar resting across my collar bone, my quads, glutes, and core still tight. Standing upright, the feet move closer; legs bend, then a spring, heels lifted, elbows snapped, bar between my hands above the head. Lock. The trajectory of the horizontal bar must be straight up, my head withdrawn to avoid injury. Sometimes the bar clips my chin, affecting my confidence and the bar’s path in subsequent lifts, my fear sending the bar looping out in front of me. Once, after this happened, Sebby approached close and said quietly, “Jonathan, you’re closing your eyes. Keep them open. You’re closing them as you spring. Closing your eyes is adorable but ill-advised.”

This morning was a good session, the body smooth, eyes open, the bar shooting up fast and direct. Sebby, after one successful lift sequence, leapt from the nearby bench, excited, shouting, “Yesssss, make some noise!” I let the bar go from above my head to land on the platform and bounce. I clenched my fists and roared. Sebby cheered. Later, when we finished, when it was time for me to work and for him to see another student, we pumped fists, shook hands, and hugged. I told him I loved him.

This is one story I can tell. It’s a story of recovering, of healing, of fun, of joy. A story that’s with me now, my body enjoying the legacy of movement and effort in the dark wooden chair at the marble table beside the bilingual lovers, who are now silent and on their phones. A story where the body feels settled as I listen and write. My heartbeat steady, muscles tired, content. My body feels no pain. A body found. A body being found.

But the breaking body, the body lost, the body being lost, is closer even than my nearby companions. Closer still than the marble table and the dark wooden chair. It was there with me in the gym even as the bar sped from thigh to collar bone to sky. The breaking body is not only memory: it haunts, evoking fear and also teaching me, teaching me how to live. 9 The body is always breaking, always dying, 10 its life always letting death in; and the body breaks in order to live; its muscles tear to grow.

This breaking body is here now in the movement of fingers on keys, in the stillness, in the body’s happy rhythms. It was in the lifting bar, in the sweat, in the roar; and now, here in the writing quiet, there remains the fragility and vulnerability of the weeks, the months, of despair, the moments where skin raged and protested; and when, like that, I no longer knew what the point of me was. This is the body not as fixed and discrete but as Deleuzian event, constituted in its relations with other bodies and affects, always in process. 11

I’ve been writing in fits and starts for weeks through the long period of what’s been called the “lockdown.” I write as I walk, dictating into my phone, during that precious time of being outside once a day.

I’m walking along my street, heading north. It’s early morning. There is occasional traffic, an eerie quiet, like it’s been for many weeks. My phone is in my left hand, closed, my headphones in my ears. I’m feeling what this is like, to talk/write while walking. Writing to the rhythm of footsteps. Writing at walking pace.

I needed to be outside to write this morning. I needed to not write at my laptop in the living room in the flat that has been my unfamiliar home since March. (Another story for another time. A life being unmade; a life being made.) I needed to feel the ground under my feet. I needed to hear birds, their songs so clear, so vivid, so strong, as if you could reach up and touch the notes that pierce the city’s quiet. I needed to fill my lungs with the warm-chill air.

A bin lorry approaches, disturbing all. It pulls up beside me, and two men jump off the platform at the back. I stop writing-talking, self-conscious, as they busy around me. I stop also out of respect, for what I no longer take for granted. These men in their high-viz jackets, negotiating safe distance between them, are working for me, for us, keeping everything going. Where would we be without them?

I complete the circuit, a rectangle, around my flat.

I read back what I’ve written over the weeks and realize I can’t offer it to an audience or a reader. The stories of doctors and inspections, of lights and surgical gloves, latterly of COVID-19 masks, and sympathetic medical staff whose care makes me cry. It’s too much: too much for others, I speculate, but mostly too much for me. Too much information. Too personal. Too exposing. Too shaming. There will be listeners, readers, witnesses, whom I know; and there will be others I don’t. I don’t know which of these is more difficult for me to bring this to.

I know, I say to myself: how about I make this theoretical? How about I distract myself, and distract my audience, with theory? Invoke Deleuze, Guattari, Manning, Braidotti, Cixous, and my favorite others, the new materialists, the posthumanists, the poststructuralists, and explore the indigenous scholarship those discourses neglect. How about I write with them, find company with them, look to them for ways of understanding how to make sense of this experience?

Except theory is not a distraction. I know this. We can’t move without theory. We can’t live without theory. It was theory bell hooks turned to when she was in pain. “[She] came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend, to grasp what had happened around and with [her].” 12 Theory is in the body. We are bodies of theory. I often tell students (I think I tell them too often) how if we cut ourselves we bleed theory. Whatever I write here about the body, my body, these words are always already coursed through with theory, giving life to the words, giving life to the mortal body, giving life to my mortal body. Theory is traction, not distraction.

Or, I know: how about I tell a different story, not this one at all? Leave this one aside until it becomes a story of recovery, of restitution. 13 Wait ’til then, ignore it, pretend it’s not happening. How about instead I tell a story that casts me, casts my body, in a more powerful light, one that serves to offer a better impression? Not a body in pain, not skin that’s vulnerable, injured, smarting, not a fragile, aging body, but a (temporarily)abled, healthy body. A strong, unblemished body; a body that lifts and runs and stretches. How about I tell that story?

Except that story betrays itself in the telling. It shines a light on what it purports to obscure. It appears to offer the bounded organism of the humanist, medical body, whose “health” is judged by the stability of its internal self-governing systems. That body story is a cloak. As its words roll, it could not but tell how the body is always in flux, always disassembling and re-assembling in different ways, always being created in transient assemblages between the organic and inorganic. 14 A body that’s not interested in “being,” not interested in what it “is” (or should be) but one that’s pushing at what it can do , one that’s always “becoming,” however unwelcome and uneasy that is, however much pain ensues—and wherever that story may lead.

I know, I say to myself: how about I make this funny? So others can laugh, so I can laugh. So together we can mock the body’s failings. My body’s failings. Its skin fraying at the edges; wearing thin; its joke wearing thin. I could tell the story about going to see Joseph.

Joseph is a natural therapist. After months of seeing medical professionals without improvement, I make an appointment with him. I give him chapter and verse. He’s attentive. He listens. He’s easy to talk to. He asks if he can have a look. I’m used to this now. I show him. I drop my trousers. He crouches. He draws up close, stays there, viewing from different angles. From where he is, stooped, he remarks,

“That’s not a very impressive specimen, is it?”

“Well, thanks. You’re not the first to say that,” I say.

He backtracks. “I mean the condition. The condition is not very impressive, not…” And he trails off. He tries again.

“It’s not, you know, bad. The condition, I mean. Your condition.”

I laugh. He laughs. “You just about rescued that,” I say.

He prescribes two teas, one to drink, the other to soak, and suggests I take care not to confuse the two. Or at least not to use one brew for both purposes.

Yes, how about I tell stories that make us laugh? I need to laugh, even at this most intimate, this most personal, of my body’s failings. How about I do that? Tell this and other such stories—there are many more—that render pain and loss, render failure, wry. That would make this easier.

Except the narrative of failure, Arthur Frank’s chaos narrative , 15 where there is no hope, is only one story to tell. Another is how the body is not failing, not breaking. Not at all. The body is doing what it needs to do. It’s on a quest . 16 It’s responding, feeling, speaking. Its skin is charged with meaning. It has a message, a tattoo, and it is not only mine, and not only, not even, about me. “Skin is the literal and metaphorical borderland between the materiality of the autobiographical ‘I’ and the contextual surround of the world,” writes Sidonie Smith. 17 Skin that breathes in, breathes out—alive, sensitive, making living possible. Skin that’s affecting and affected. Skin that’s holding it together, holding me together. Deep, deep, skin deep.

The national restrictions on our everyday movements ease. I walk again, headphones on and phone in hand. It’s trying to be warm again today, and I find an empty bench by the river, and lie against the arm, my feet up. I close my eyes to listen. There’s birdsong, a song I don’t recognize. I open my eyes and look up and around at the trees. The one by me I recognize as an elm. (There are many I don’t recognize.) Its branch hangs above me, giving me shade. I notice the bark on the branch is marked. The tree’s skin is torn. I wonder whether the tree feels this tear, what this tear does, what it means. I catch myself. The elm will continue to do what it does, what it’s meant to do. It will carry on doing elm.

It’s time to leave my café spot. I have been here at this table by the window. I need to be at my office in fifteen minutes to meet a student. We will walk outside for supervision, which has been our pattern over recent months. We choose to do this out of caution but also because we notice that walking beside each other around the Meadows, the park behind my office, engages us, opens us up. The movement frees thinking, catches different affective dynamics. I look forward to it.

The table beside me is now empty—another reason to leave. I miss my unwitting companions’ energy. I shift my weight onto my feet and, using my left hand on the heavy marble for balance, ease up to standing. I say, “ease,” but the process of standing is slow, a struggle. Sitting for an hour after strenuous movement was unwise. The body loosens as joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons, blood, and breath renew action. The body is finding its way, finding another moment. “[T]he body, too, is…a phase,” 18 writes Alecia Jackson, the body’s shaping as I approach the café door, hand raised to push it open, being, like Olympic lifting, like pain, “the passage of the passing moment.” 19

On the pavement, I turn right. I cross the road toward my office and the Meadows and my student, following Middle Meadow Walk and its avenue of elms.

David R. Cole, Traffic Jams: Analysing Everyday Life through the Immanent Materialism of Deleuze & Guattari (New York: Punctum, 2013), 2.

Greg. J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers” in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Greg J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 3.

Brian Massum, “The Supernormal Animal,” in The Nonhuman Turn , ed. Richard Grusin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 1–17.

Melissa A. Orlie, “Impersonal Matter,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics , eds. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham, NC: Duke, 2010), 120.

Simone Fullagar, Wendy O’Brien, and Adele Pavlidis, Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recover (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Jonathan Wyatt, Therapy, Stand-up, and the Gesture of Writing: Toward Creative-Relational Inquiry (London: Routledge, 2019).

Fiona Murray, “The Emergencies of Creative-Relational Inquiry,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2020): 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2020.9.2.26

Caroline Ailin, Mae Muller, and David Pramik, “Therapist,” Capitol, 2020.

Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (London: Routledge, 1994).

Ronald J. Pelias, “Always Dying: Living Between Da and Fort ,” Qualitative Inquiry 6, no. 2 (2000): 229–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040000600204

Julia Coffey, “Bodies, Body Work and Gender: Exploring a Deleuzian Approach,” Journal of Gender Studies 22, no. 1 (2013): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2012.714076

hooks, Teaching to Transgress .

Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 2004); Annie Potts, “Deleuze on Viagra (Or, What Can a ‘Viagra-body’ Do?),” Body and Society 10, no. 1, (2004): 17–36.

Frank, Wounded Storyteller.

Sidonie Smith, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993), 127–128.

Alecia Y. Jackson, “An Ontology of a Backflip,” Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies 16, no. 2 (2016), 183–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616634735

Philippa Rothfield, “Dance and the Passing Moment: Deleuze’s Nietzsche” in Deleuze and the Body, eds. Laura Guillaume and Joe Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 215.

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