Creative Writing
Overview
The holistic Joint Area of Concentration (AOC) in Creative Writing encourages students to cultivate imaginative literacy and cognitive flexibility by exploring aesthetics and methods across and between disciplines and multiple genres. It can be paired with any other AOC.
In addition to instruction in the craft of writing and the history of literary art, coursework in Creative Writing develops core skills—like empathy, respect for other points of view, and critical thought—necessary to sustain creative livelihoods after graduation. That may involve teaching, professional writing, using writing to inform or enrich a corresponding career, or—like Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ted Kooser, and Michael Cunningham—writing and publishing books alongside a “day job.”
In keeping with this goal, students in Creative Writing practice engaging with the politics and issues of the larger world; building community via the literary arts; and responding to tense cultural issues and challenging situations precisely, directly, and creatively.
Faculty in Creative Writing
Tom Bailey, Professor of Creative Writing
Avni Vyas, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Requirements for the Joint AOC in Creative Writing
A minimum of six (6) academic units.
| Code | Title |
|---|---|
| Writing Workshops | |
| Select two from the following examples, one beginning-level and one intermediate/advanced-level: | |
| Beginnings and Endings: A Beginning Creative Writing Workshop* | |
| Introduction to Creative Writing | |
| Not Your Typical Coming-of-Age Story: Beginning Creative Writing Workshop | |
| Stories & Scripts Workshop | |
| Dancing Between Genres: Poetry for Prose Writers Workshop* | |
| Poetry Recess: A Creative Writing Workshop* | |
| Reading as a Writer Seminar | |
| The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Reading As A Writer Seminar | |
| Craft Seminars | |
| Select two from the following examples: | |
| Writing Environments | |
| Strange Matings, Invisible Hands, and Monster Births: Creative Writing Craft Seminar | |
| Creative Writing, Courage, and the Unknown: An Intermediate/Advanced Craft Seminar | |
| How a Woman Becomes a Lake and Other Unheroic Acts: A Craft Seminar in Gender and Genre Bending | |
| Additional Requirements | |
| Fourth-Year Creative Writing Tutorial | |
| Senior Capstone Project or Senior Thesis that incorporates a sustained piece of imaginative writing of literary merit, and a Baccalaureate Exam 1 | |
- 1
A Creative Writing professor must serve on the baccalaureate exam committee.
Representative Senior Theses in Creative Writing
- Angled Toward Hell, Accompanied by Artist Statement Haunting the Space of Erasure
- Some of These People Are Criminals: An Audio-Only Musical
- The Face of a Skull Shifting: A Poetry Comic
- Divine Inspiration and the Author’s Voice
- For Justice I Would [Will] Not Cry, accompanied by critical introduction Mother I Told Them the Story: The Craft of Bringing A Ghost To Life