creative writing courses nyu

Creative Writing in Spanish (MFA)

Program description.

Due to its location in New York City, home to an important and diverse Latino and Latin American community, NYU is uniquely situated to offer a graduate Creative Writing Program in Spanish. New York has been a meeting point for Spanish and Latin American writers and journalists since the 19th century and a home to many of them. José Martí (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Federico García Lorca (Spain), Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico), Francisco Ayala (Spain), Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rico) Manuel Ramos Otero (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig (Argentina) and Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba), among many others, have in the past either settled in New York or spent extended periods of time there.

The end of the 20th century has seen this community of writers grow considerably both in visibility and cultural significance. Nowadays many Spanish and Latin American writers, such as Carmen Boullosa (Mexico), Cecilia Vicuña (Chile), Eduardo Lago (Spain), Mercedes Roffé (Argentina), Carmen Valle (Puerto Rico), and Roger Santiváñez (Peru) make of New York their temporary or permanent home.

Dada su ubicación privilegiada—la ciudad alberga a numerosas y diversas comunidades latinoamericanas—New York University es el lugar ideal para cursar un programa de escritura creativa en español. Desde el siglo XIX Nueva York viene atrayendo a escritores y periodistas españoles y latinoamericanos, y ha sido lugar de residencia de muchos de ellos. José Martí (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Federico García Lorca (España), Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico), Francisco Ayala (España), Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rico), Manuel Ramos Otero (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig (Argentina) y Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba), entre otros, vivieron en Nueva York o pasaron allí largas temporadas.

Esta comunidad de escritores ha aumentado considerablemente a lo largo del siglo veinte. Hoy son muchos los escritores hispanos que residen en esta ciudad o que alternan largas permanencias en ella con regresos a sus respectivos países, como Carmen Boullosa (México), Cecilia Vicuña (Chile), Eduardo Lago (España), Mercedes Roffé (Argentina), Carmen Valle (Puerto Rico) o Roger Santiváñez (Perú), para nombrar sólo algunos.

All applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) are required to submit the  general application requirements , which include:

• Academic Transcripts
• Test Scores  (if required)
• Applicant Statements
• Résumé or Curriculum Vitae
• Letters of Recommendation , and
• A non-refundable  application fee .

See Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures for admission requirements and instructions specific to this program.

Program Requirements

Master of fine arts thesis.

This program is a two-year program of 32 credits (i.e., eight courses, two per semester) and a creative writing thesis at the end. Workshops will be offered in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, theater, and translation. Additional workshops will be added to the program as needed.

At least two in the field in which the student plans to specialize.

May be in the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, or in another department, with an adviser’s approval.

Additional Program Requirements

Students will also write a thesis with the counsel of a faculty member and a second reader at the second year of their course of study. Students write this final independent project consisting of between 50-80 pages for prose, 40-50 pages for theater or translation (including source and target languages), 30 pages for poetry. This final project may include, or may be an expansion of work begun during previous courses, but it should represent a culminating effort to shape stories, prose pieces, a long narrative, a literary translation or a group of poems into a coherent, self-sufficient work.

Sample Plan of Study

Learning outcomes.

Upon successful completion of the program, graduates will:

• Learn to write, read, and revise creative pieces including the following genres and forms: Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Theater, Literary Translation, Film Script, Hybrid Writing, Digital Writing. They will become proficient in copy-editing and style editing.
• Gain expertise in selection and organization of materials, and virtually proofreading, copy editing and style editing of literary texts submitted by participating as Committee Members and/or Board Members in the layout and contents supervision of Temporales , our MFA online magazine.
• Be able to teach Language courses in Spanish, including elementary and intermediate levels.
• Be able to study and revise the literary traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as that of Spain, and the USA, including those written and performed in Spanish, English and Spanglish.

NYU Policies

Graduate school of arts and science policies.

University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages .

Academic Policies for the Graduate School of Arts and Science can be found on the Academic Policies page . 

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Creative Writing Courses and the Creative Writing Minor

Find out more about our  Spring 2022 courses and the Creative Writing Minor .

Creative Writing at NYU Shanghai: Worlds within worlds

Crafting a compelling narrative or poem is not only deeply satisfying in and of itself. We tell stories, memorize our favorite lyrics, and share lines from our favorite films because the right words in the right order create deep connections between and among us that resonate not only with our times, but with our pasts and our hoped-for futures. 

Sharpening and refining your skills as a writer and as a reader also makes enormous practical sense. Whatever your career path, the better you are at communication, persuasion and at reading people and situations, the greater your success will be. Careful, sustained practice in reading, writing and discussing fiction, poetry, drama, screenplays, games, films, creative nonfiction and today's emerging digital storytelling forms transfers directly to skills essential to success in business, marketing, journalism, game development, interactive media arts, the sciences — you name it. 

And at NYU Shanghai, we focus not only only writing in English, but on ways in which multilingual writing and literary translation can further enhance and deepen both your creativity and practical communication, analytic, and persuasion skills.

You can also gain valuable experience by working with fellow students and faculty on print and digital publication projects, whether it‘s our annual print journal,  The Poplar Review 杨高 , our student-run online journal Bright Lines 青 思 , or our BackLit video interviews with renowned visiting writers and translators who appear in our NYU Shanghai Literary Reading Series .

At NYU Shanghai, creative writing is not just about you and your words alone — it's also about community, events, connection, learning new skills, and growth.

Finally, if you're a Humanities or Interactive Media Arts major at NYU Shanghai, many of our courses can both fulfill elective credits and enrich and inform your studies in your major. 

Creative Writing Minor requirements 

You can complete the Creative Writing Minor with 16 credits:

• Introduction to Creative Writing (4 credits)
• 8 credits of intermediate or advanced level Creative Writing craft courses
• 4 credits of an additional Creative Writing craft course (of any level) or a designated elective (usually in literature, theater, or film).
• Note: There are 2-credit options both within the Creative Writing area as well as 2-credit electives in other areas that count towards the Creative Writing minor.

You can also take creative writing courses at a number of NYU’s global academic centers. Those looking for intensive summer course have opportunities to enroll in three engaging summer programs: Writers in Paris, Writers in Florence, and Writers in New York.

Humanities majors may take creative writing courses to fulfill some of the major requirements. Please see your academic advisor for more details, or contact the Creative Writing Coordinator .

2021-22 Creative Writing courses

CRWR-SHU 245 | 4 credits | Instructor: David Perry

In this new version of our introductory course, students will focus on writing their own stories, poems, and dramatic dialogues, as in any Intro to Creative Writing course. However, instead of working with a more conventional creative writing textbook, students will study craft through the lens of literary translation, getting “inside” exemplary works of literature by producing their own translations among and between Chinese, English and other languages. Translation will serve as a prompt for student’s own works, providing models and patterns for close study that students can then experiment with, take inspiration from, and adapt (or depart from) in creating their own work. This class recognizes and celebrates the global nature of reading and writing literature in the 21st century, and encourages students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds to draw on their native tongues, traditions, and techniques in creating compelling work in English — but not just in English (or in one variety of English).   This course fulfills the Introduction to Creative Writing requirement for Creative Writing minors or a Humanities Survey requirement, with approval.

CRWR-SHU 200A | 4 credits | Instructor: Claire Whitenack

Science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, alternative histories—all fall under the heading of speculative fiction. In this class, students will study and practice worldbuilding, combining imaginative writing with research to create compelling, believable worlds, characters and stories—whether they are situated on other planets, in other dimensions, in magical realms, in super-high-tech futures, or wherever else the imagination can take us.

This course satisfies IMA Seminar and Creative Writing Minor. It is cross-listed with INTM-SHU 295. This course counts for an elective in Creative Writing, IMA and the Humanities major. 

CRWR-SHU 209 | 4 credits | Instructor: Genevieve Leone

In this intermediate creative writing workshop, students will write with the “I.” They will explore narrative possibilities across genres and modes, working at times from direct observation: observation of the self, of the world, and of the shifting relationships between and among all of us and it in its and our countless points and moments. At times, students will draw upon memory, at other times they will pay close attention to that which presents itself to us (as we present ourselves) “in the moment,” and at yet others upon research and reading. Throughout, students will experiment using techniques associated with fiction and poetry to push the “personal essay” in the direction of inspired creative nonfiction, memoir, autofiction, lyric and experimental poetry, and cross- genre hybrids. Along the way, they will develop a richer and more nuanced critical vocabulary to help us talk and think about what they are reading and writing.

This course counts for an elective in Creative Writing, IMA and the Humanities major.   

CRWR-SHU 159 | 4 credits | Instructor: Frances Hwang  | Tue/Thu  1:45-03:00pm,

This workshop course offers a broad introduction to the art of capturing the world around you in your own original fiction and poetry. Through close readings of classic and contemporary examples, intensive in-class workshops, and vigorous revision, students will learn to make their stories and poems live on the page through attention to plot, character, dialogue, language, heartbreaking images and the mystery of the perfect line break.

Pre-requisites: None Equivalency: This course counts for CRWRI-UA 815 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction and Poetry Introduction to Creative Writing is a requirement for all intermediate/advanced workshop classes. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course.

CRWR-SHU 217 | 4 credits | Instructor: Frances Hwang | Mon 4:15-6:45 pm

This course explores the art of writing short fiction with a focus on linked stories. In discussing what compelled him to write two linked short story collections, Junot Díaz muses, “Maybe I could have written conventional novels from both sets of material but I’m not convinced I could have gotten the same jagged punch, the same longing and silences that rise up from the gaps in and between the linked stories. I guess I’m just hopelessly fascinated by the realities that you can assemble out of connected fragments.” In this course, geared toward intermediate and advanced fiction writers, we explore the jagged power of the linked story collection and what can be gained from the points of connection as well as the narrative gaps between stories. Students will read linked collections by such writers as Junot Díaz, Denis Johnson, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Jenny Zhang and will complete several linked stories of their own, gaining appreciation for a form Sonya Chung aptly characterizes as “compression and vast heterogeneity in one!”

Prerequisite: CRWR-SHU 159 Intro to Creative Writing or CRWR-SHU 161 Intro to Literary Translation or Junior/ Senior standing.

Fulfillment: This course will fulfill one of the two the Intermediate Workshop components for the creative writing minor. Humanities other Advanced course.

CRWR-SHU 221 | 4 credts | Instructor: Daniel Woody |  Wed 4:15-6:45 pm

In this intermediate creative writing workshop, students will explore the possibilities of poetry by writing and sharing their own work while also engaging with exemplary works by great poets from a range of traditions, background and times, with a practical emphasis on contemporary poetry and its many vibrant modes and methods. At times, students will experiment with age-old forms such as the sonnet, haiku and sestina; at other times students will pursue the possibilities of contemporary performance poetry and spoken word, Modernist collage and pastiche, postmodern hybrid poetries, and emergent digital poetics. The goal for each student will be to create a body of work that draws on knowledge of traditional forms while also speaking directly to the unique circumstances of our times -- and each individual poet's experience.

Prerequisites: Students must have either 1) completed an Introduction to Creative Writing Course (CRWR-SHU 159 or CRWR-SHU 161) or 2) be of junior or senior standing.

CRWR-SHU 260 | 4 credits | Instructor: Amy Goldman | Tue 3:15-5:45 pm

The premise of this course is that gifted writers highly conscious of their craft teach us more pointedly about creative writing when, juxtaposed to the creative work of each, we hear, see and experience what each identifies as fundamental to his or her writing practice — whether technique, discipline, recurrent battle, avenue of inspiration, self-imposed rule or other. This course looks to such writers as guides from whom we may learn by studying the steps they have taken over time to develop and hone their craft. The course typically (but not always) pairs, each week, one or two pieces of an author’s creative work with another that reflects critically on some aspects of their writing practice, and on the craft of writing. In essence, this is a hybrid course that blends study of creative work with that of writers' critical self-reflection. Students also pursue their own creative writing projects, reflecting critically on their own process along the way. The course readings draw from multiple cultures, literary traditions, and genres including the short story, flash fiction, the novella, the essay, memoir, diary, children’s literature and poetry.

Prerequisite: Writing as Inquiry WRIT-SHU 101/102 OR CRWR-SHU 159 Introduction to Creative Writing OR CRWR-SHU 161 Introduction to Creative Writing: Literary Translation Focus

Fulfillment: This course counts as one of the three intermediate/advanced creative writing workshops required for completion of the Creative Writing Minor. 

WRIT-SHU 245 | 4 credits | Instructor:  Don Belt  |  4:45-6:00pm Tue-Th u

In this seminar and workshop, students use digital storytelling techniques and technologies to capture and make sense of the world around them. Students will use the affordances of various technologies to enhance the impact of their stories. In addition to attending to traditional elements of storytelling, such as language, structure, and style, students will incorporate image, sound, haptics, and design of various media interfaces. Different semesters will focus on different themes or story topics

Prerequisite: A final grade of C or higher in Writing as Inquiry

Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective; designated elective for Creative Writing.

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Introduction to Creative and Expository Writing

A.M. Juster

Poet, Translator, Essayist

INTRODUCING MIKE JUSTER by Rhina Espaillat originally published in Light

When extraterrestrials land and begin their destruction--or enslavement, or culinary preparation--of the human race, they will find allies among us. I mean, of course, those writers who cheerfully describe how loathsome human beings are and what a blessing it will be when we disappear.

What a delight, after reading some of that, to read anything at all by Mike Juster, whose name is perfectly apt! But he could also go by the name of "Mike Saner" or "Mike Funnier," or "Mike Truer," because what his work invariably exhibits is the rationality, the balance, the sense of membership in the human species, that produces work, whether serious or humorous, of a very different and more enduring kind.

Juster says he began writing at the age of ten with "bad rhyme and meter" and then went on to "bad free verse as puberty hit." His early models included Eliot, Plath, Creeley and Medieval Latin epics in blank verse translations. The interest in translation has remained, producing prize-winning work, chiefly from Latin and Chinese.

A student of both F. D. Reeve and Robert Shaw, Juster composed his first sonnet as an assignment for Shaw, but soon, dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing. After a decade, sensing a void in his life, he began reading contemporary poets, and discovered Philip Larkin in 1991. Reinvigorated, he began writing, submitting work for publication and attending the West Chester Poetry Conference, where he was encouraged by Dana Gioia and stimulated by talking with others about poetry for the first time since college. His return to writing was sealed when he won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award for "Moscow Zoo," in 1995. He won the Nemerov Award again in 2000, and was a Finalist in 1996.

Juster's poems, seldom autobiographical, tend to begin with ideas rather than moods or emotions. He thinks of poetry not as a way into one's life, but as a way out of it, into external concerns and an examination of what surrounds us. He likes, he says, to "appropriate" external events into his life, "fuse" experiences--whether lived or heard about--into one experience that then becomes his in the poem, for the poem's purposes. He thinks of the poem as an artifact created out of what we think, know and live, but not necessarily a direct expression of it.

"Long Strange Trip," for instance, in which "The flower children gone to seed/Bake brownies for the PTA/And give to liberals in need," goes on to portray the compromises and losses ("nothing tie-dyed ever fits") that aging imposes, even on colorful rebels. The poem concludes with "What a bummer." The pose of detached, quasi-sympathetic "observer from the sidelines" works to poke good-natured fun at the absurdities of an era and those who lived it, but also at our own not-yet-perceived absurdities.

The pleasure of Juster's poems goes beyond their dead-pan humor; it hinges on his language, his use of every device, and his mastery of every form. Here is his "Round Trip," a rondeau that is also almost monorhyme, so that the repetitive form and the obsessive end-rhymes recreate the experience being conveyed:

I wait for luggage at the carousel

And count the ways this trip has not gone well.

The holding pattern did not end until

I started feeling violently ill

From wolfing nuts and swilling zinfandel.

The only thing that makes my nausea quell

Is badgering the airline personnel.

Eleven hours out of Evansville,

I wait for luggage.

Perhaps demons from airplane movie Hell

Have placed me under some hypnotic spell

Which keeps me staring like an imbecile

Until I have no brain cells left to kill.

I dream of sleeping in my cheap hotel,

And wait for luggage.

Juster also runs the gamut of emotional tones. A crisp, grisly sonnet bristling with unresolved fury, "On Remembering Your Funeral Was Today," begins, "When first I swore to tap-dance on your grave/My oath was neither wit nor metaphor." It ends, without a hint of mitigation or regret, "I see you basting in Satanic slime/Before deep-frying in your cockroach shell."

A stunning Stefanile sonnet explores the difficult territory of unacknowledged mixed ancestry:

CONFRONTING THE JEW

My mother never spoke a phrase as true.

Recalling their blind date, she said she thought

My father "was an Arab or a Jew."

Politely vicious aunts and uncles fought

Suggestions of this sort for generations,

But lost. There were no other explanations.

Spanish ancestors crossed the Pyrenees,

And found in France the safety that they sought.

Though they survived, the Torah was not taught

For long; in far and fractured colonies,

Their baptized children wear their butchered name.

I cannot guess the onslaughts they withstood,

Or things they loved. With nothing to reclaim,

I still would say a kaddish if I could.

Juster incorporates references to tattoos, the Loch Ness Monster, Elvis, Houdini, Roswell, rock stars, cartoon and movie characters, the silliness of supermarket magazines, and his reading of poets past and present. Here, for example, is his graceful tribute to Wendy Cope:

UNLIKELY AFFAIR

I was unsettled to discover

I am in love. With Wendy Cope

My nightly read, why take a lover?

How often I was thinking of her.

Knowing her poems discouraged hope,

I am in love with Wendy Cope.

Nothing rooted in the human seems too incongruous to find its way into a Juster poem: he includes sexual innuendo, murderous scenarios, epitaphs for the living, vignettes that work like mini-dramas, rueful lyrics, imaginary greeting cards for use in embarrassing situations, and snippets from the writing life:

HONEST REJECTION LETTER

Here at The Antiseptic Review

We are afraid we must eschew

The sonnets, odes and jejune haiku

Of such obscurities as you.

We know hope springs eternal,

So go annoy some other journal.

Sincerely yours,

The Predators

The range of Juster's interests and sympathies is revealed by his two latest works. One, Longing for Laura, is a translation of selections from Petrarch's Canzoniere that misses none of the anguished patience of unfulfilled love and renders it with persuasive freshness. The other, a riveting long narrative titled "The Secret Language of Women," tells the story of a language preserved by Chinese women to record their private lives. The latter, which won an award from the New England Poetry Club, is told from the point of view of the hypothetical woman who devised the language and preserved it at the cost of great difficulty during periods of persecution. What a double gift it is, this capacity to "become," without cant, any person on whom the creative imagination chooses to focus, however alien in every way to one's own background or identity, coupled with poetic skills that persuade the reader to do the same!

The one thing not to be found in Juster's work is what those long-expected extraterrestrials will need before they do us in: justification for the deed. He will be no help to them at all. He is fairly sunny about other people and the world, in fact, not because he is blind to flaws, but because reason and maturity keep his expectations modest. He doesn't use satire to settle scores with "Them," but to attack, with self-deprecating humor, the traits, customs and practices that need attacking in all of us. He doesn't use lyric poetry to bewail lost hopes, wallow in envy, or complain of having been cheated by life. His keenest dissatisfactions are reserved for those systems and forms of thought that fail to put the human first and give it due weight, like those bureaucrats in "Moscow Zoo" who condone the murder of millions because it fulfills an ideological need.

There's no better way to close than with Mike Juster's "Letter to Auden," in which he brings one of poetry's great "dead white males" up to date on how the life of the mind is proceeding these days on our home planet:

LETTER TO AUDEN

Uh, Wystan?

Please forgive my arrogance;

You know how most Americans impose.

Your chat with Byron gave me confidence

That your Platonic ghost would not oppose

Some verse disturbing you from your repose.

Besides, there's time to kill now that the Lord

Has silenced Merrill and his ouija board.

Or do you pine for peace in Paradise,

Besieged by every half-baked psychic hack

Intent on mining gems from your advice?

With me, please don't insist on writing back

Unless you can't resist some biting crack.

I also recognize that I had better

Keep my remarks far shorter than your Letter.

Indeed, I'll need some substantial guile and nerve

To try to emulate your bracing pace.

At twenty-nine, your lines had style and verve;

My work at thirty-nine seems commonplace

And foreordained to sink without a trace.

In any case, I do not hold out hope

Of sharing space with you or spiteful Pope.

A partial consolation on bad days

Is no contemporary can compete

With you at all. Downtrodden MFA's

Denounce the Audenesque as obsolete

Oppression by your dead-white-male elite,

But then they go on to become depressed

Because there's nothing left to be confessed.

Only a few eccentrics still support

Those poets who can scan lines properly.

However, I'm delighted to report

That you became a hot pop property

When Four Weddings exhumed your poetry.

You would have been amused to see its star

Arrested with a hooker in his car

But shocked that we remain so schizophrenic.

Our sordid scandals rarely stay concealed

Although we want things guiltless and hygienic.

Gay Studies has developed as a field

In which great writers' lovers are revealed;

You lose some points for marrying a Mann

And your diversity of goings-on.

As your long-suffering but faithful fan,

I must disclose you missed the NEA,

The disco era, Gump and daily bran.

In short, you would assess the present day

As drearily debased and déclassé.

Well, Wystan, this is all that I can muster.

Give my regards to Byron.

CREEES Professional Resources Forum

Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin

Grad Program: MA in Creative Writing in Russian (Moscow)

Application opens February 2019

For fiction/non-fiction writers in Russian.

MA “Creative Writing”  is:

• Practical and theoretical/historical courses, such as  Creative Writing Workshop ,  Storytelling in Different Media ,  Literary Editing , Poetics of Novel and Screenwriting ;
• Unique professors and teachers, among them famous Russian writers, screenwriters and critics –  Marina Stepnova ,  Lyudmila Ulitskaya ,  Lev Danilkin ,  Sergey Gandlevsky  and  Maya Kucherskaya  as well as prominent philologists, authors of academic and non-fiction books  Oleg Lekmanov ,  Ekaterina Lyamina  and  Alexey Vdovin ;
• Participation in open readings, discussions and  literary expeditions ,  publications in students’ projects ;
• International exchange  – lectures and workshops of the leading specialists in Creative Writing, students’ exchange in the best world universities;
•  Help and support in the process of  employment  in various publishing houses, editorials, Mass Media, high schools and universities and PR;
• Creation and participation in  cultural projects ;
• Flexible timetable  enabling students to work while studying.

Our graduates already work in the best publishing houses, universities and schools in Moscow. Their writing is published in the authoritative literary magazines. Their projects (such as prize  “_Litblog”  for the best literary blogger and first Creative Writing Internet resource in Russian  “Mnogobukv” and collections of prose) have gained much attention.

Language of instruction: Russian

You can apply to non-paid place as a foreign student in February. Looking forward to seeing you at Higher School of Economics!

More information about the programme:  https://www.hse.ru/en/ma/litmaster