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Recommended Resources

Writing about writing, recommended by you

Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder Screenwriting How-to Book (series) Recommended by: NerdyWordyOverlord Welcome to a fantastic crash course in story structure. Although this is technically a screenwriting book, the principle it deals with are applicable to any form, especially long forms like novels. Along with structure, it contains a great breakdown of all stories into twelve genres (and probably not the genres you’re expecting), as well as common tropes, pitfalls, and tips to make your story stronger. It’s a light, entertaining read that uses modern (at least for its published date in 2005) movie examples.

If you really like the movie break downs, there are sequels called Save the Cat! Strikes Back and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies. You can also find just about any popular movie broken down into a Beat Sheet on  savethecat.com

I’m a little biased since this was my first book on writing, but in my opinion it’s a must-read. (Plus the title is just the best).

Story Physics by Larry Brooks Novel-writing How-to Book Recommended by: NerdyWordyOverlord Please read this book. I picked it up on a spite-filled whim (he stole my thing that I say (3000 points to whoever recognized that quite)) and it’s pretty much turned my novel around. It’s possibly even eclipsed  Save the Cat ! as my favorite/most useful writing book.

First of all, if you’re at all skeptical about story structure’s usefulness/necessity/existence, Brooks hears you, and he makes a compelling argument. I already adore story structure, but  Story Physics   brought my understanding to the next level.

My favorite part of this book is that Brooks actually explains how to do things. Beyond just saying “the reader must have empathy for the hero,” he explores which underlying principles of storytelling (the “physics”) enable you as a writer to  create that empathy.

I really can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Story Trumps Structure by Steven James Novel-writing How-to Book Recommended by: Sarah I really recommend this book to anyone who is stuck and having a hard time writing. I’ve never had luck with the three-act structure, plot point planning, strict outlining approach, and I found most of this book really inspirational.

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BU Creative Writing

for writers at Boston University and beyond

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Category: Alumni

Laura marris to publish book with graywolf.

Boston University Creative Writing alum and former Favorite Poem Project Director Laura Marris’s (poetry ’13) book The Age of Loneliness has been picked up by Graywolf. The book is a series of essays that explore loneliness through both personal and ecological lenses. The book pays great attention to where these perspectives overlap, illuminating the losses experienced […]

Ying-Ju Lai Named Writer-in-Residence by Associates of the Boston Public Library

Boston University Creative Writing alum Ying-Ju Lai (Fiction ’13) has received one of two Writer-in-Residence fellowships awarded by the Associates of the Boston Public Library in 2021. She, as well as fellow winner Katy Doughty, will receive a stipend, editorial assistance, and office space in the Boston Public Library. Going to Disneyland, Ying-Ju’s proposed young adult […]

Boston Writers Involved in New Writers’ Coalition

Boston University Creative Writing alumni Tara Skurtu (Poetry ’13), Rachel Dewoskin (Poetry ’00), and AGNI founder Askold Melnyczuk (MA ’78) are involved in a new, international coalition of writers dedicated to protecting democratic values. As members of the steering committee of Writers for Democratic Action, they (and other members such as Peter Balakian, Carolyn Forché, Jericho Brown, […]

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura to publish book with Beacon Press

We’re excited to announce that Aaron Caycedo-Kimura’s (Poetry ’20) book, Common Grace: Poems, is forthcoming from Beacon Press! Aaron says the book grew out of his thesis, which he continued working on after graduating in fall 2020. Common Grace is a poetry collection in three parts. It explores Aaron’s life and art, the death of his parents, and […]

Danny Hardisty’s collection shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize

                              A bit belatedly, we are pleased excited to announce that Danny Hardisty’s (Poetry 2018) book Rose with Harm has been shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize! The collection was published by Salt Publishing last October, and is described by Gail Mazur as “really […]

Celebrate Pride Month with the Queer Poem-a-Day Podcast Series, featuring BU poets!

Happy Pride Month! We’re so excited to share Queer Poem-a-Day, a daily series from the Deerfield Public Library Podcast, featuring poems written and read by contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets. With Dylan Zavagno, Queer Poem-a-Day is co-directed by the BU MFA Program’s very own Lisa Hiton (Poetry ’11)! You can listen in, and read the poems and […]

Grant Quackenbush’s poetry debut forthcoming in October

We’re excited to announce that Grant Quackenbush’s poetry book Off Topic is forthcoming from Pinyon Publishing this October!  Below is the cover of the book, an oil portrait of the author by Bradford J. Salamon. Off Topic grew out of Grant’s BU thesis, which he continued to write  and revise during the spring and summer of 2020.  He says: I got […]

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura and Julia Pike receive St. Botolph grants

We’re so pleased to announce that Aaron Caycedo-Kimura (Poetry ’20) and current fiction MFA Julia Pike have received Emerging Artists Awards this spring! Given by the St. Botolph Club Foundation in Boston, the grant is one of New England’s most prestigious, and supports musicians and visual artists as well as writers. We’re very proud to have had several St. […]

Stacy Mattingly publishes essay in Off Assignment

Stacy Mattingly (Fiction ’11) published a moving essay about a bit of family history in Off Assignment.  The essay, called “To the Spy I’m Named For,” is part of the excellent “Letter to a Stranger” column.  Read it here! Off Assignment had this to say about the piece: R was a spy, a diplomat from Mississippi, a CIA man in […]

Jason Barry published in 32 Poems

Jason Barry (Poetry 2019) has published a poem called “Fishing” in the latest issue of 32 Poems! Jason says, “Fishing” was written in memory of Dr. Kim Bridgford – the poet and director of Poetry by the Sea, an annual writers conference held in Madison, Connecticut. I was awarded a scholarship to attend the inaugural conference in 2015, and it […]

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Department of English

M.f.a. creative writing.

English Department

Physical Address: 200 Brink Hall

Mailing Address: English Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 1102 Moscow, Idaho 83844-1102

Phone: 208-885-6156

Email: [email protected]

Web: English

Thank you for your interest in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Idaho: the premier fully funded, three-year MFA program in the Northwest. Situated in the panhandle of Northern Idaho in the foothills of Moscow Mountain, we offer the time and support to train in the traditions, techniques, and practice of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction. Each student graduates as the author of a manuscript of publishable quality after undertaking a rigorous process of thesis preparation and a public defense. Spring in Moscow has come to mean cherry blossoms, snowmelt in Paradise Creek, and the head-turning accomplishments of our thesis-year students. Ours is a faculty of active, working writers who relish teaching and mentorship. We invite you in the following pages to learn about us, our curriculum, our community, and the town of Moscow. If the prospect of giving yourself three years with us to develop as a writer, teacher, and editor is appealing, we look forward to reading your application.

Pure Poetry

A Decade Working in a Smelter Is Topic of Alumnus Zach Eddy’s Poems

Ancestral Recognition

The region surrounding the University of Idaho is the ancestral land of both the Coeur d’Alene and Nez Perce peoples, and its campus in Moscow sits on unceded lands guaranteed to the Nez Perce people in the 1855 Treaty with the Nez Perce. As a land grant university, the University of Idaho also benefits from endowment lands that are the ancestral homes to many of the West’s Native peoples. The Department of English and Creative Writing Program acknowledge this history and share in the communal effort to ensure that the complexities and atrocities of the past remain in our discourse and are never lost to time. We invite you to think of the traditional “land acknowledgment” statement through our MFA alum CMarie Fuhrman’s words .

Degree Requirements

Three years to write.

Regardless of where you are in your artistic career, there is nothing more precious than time. A three-year program gives you time to generate, refine, and edit a body of original work. Typically, students have a light third year, which allows for dedicated time to complete and revise the Creative Thesis. (48 manuscript pages for those working in poetry, 100 pages for those working in prose.)

Our degree requirements are designed to reflect the real-world interests of a writer. Students are encouraged to focus their studies in ways that best reflect their artistic obsessions as well as their lines of intellectual and critical inquiry. In effect, students may be as genre-focused or as multi-genre as they please. Students must remain in-residence during their degrees. Typically, one class earns you 3 credits. The MFA requires a total of 54 earned credits in the following categories.

12 Credits : Graduate-level Workshop courses in Fiction, Poetry, and/or Nonfiction. 9 Credits: Techniques and Traditions courses in Fiction, Poetry, and/or Nonfiction 3 Credits : Internships: Fugue, Confluence Lab, and/or Pedagogy 9 Credits: Literature courses 12 Credits: Elective courses 10 Credits: Thesis

Flexible Degree Path

Students are admitted to our program in one of three genres, Poetry, Fiction, or Nonfiction. By design, our degree path offers ample opportunity to take Workshop, Techniques, Traditions, and Literature courses in any genre. Our faculty work and publish in multiple genres and value the slipperiness of categorization. We encourage students to write in as broad or focused a manner as they see fit. We are not at all interested in making writers “stay in their lanes,” and we encourage students to shape their degree paths in accordance with their passions. 

What You Study

During your degree, you will take Workshop, Techniques, Traditions, and Literature courses.

Our workshop classes are small by design (typically twelve students or fewer) and taught by core and visiting MFA faculty. No two workshop experiences look alike, but what they share are faculty members committed to the artistic and intellectual passions of their workshop participants.

Techniques studios are developed and taught by core and visiting MFA faculty. These popular courses are dedicated to the granular aspects of writing, from deep study of the poetic image to the cultivation of independent inquiry in nonfiction to the raptures of research in fiction. Such courses are heavy on generative writing and experimentation, offering students a dedicated space to hone their craft in a way that is complementary to their primary work.

Traditions seminars are developed and taught by core and visiting MFA faculty. These generative writing courses bring student writing into conversation with a specific trajectory or “tradition” of literature, from life writing to outlaw literature to the history of the short story, from prosody to postwar surrealism to genre-fluidity and beyond. These seminars offer students a dynamic space to position their work within the vast and varied trajectories of literature.

Literature courses are taught by core Literature and MFA faculty. Our department boasts field-leading scholars, interdisciplinary writers and thinkers, and theory-driven practitioners who value the intersection of scholarly study, research, humanism, and creative writing.

Award-Winning Faculty

We teach our classes first and foremost as practitioners of the art. Full stop. Though our styles and interests lie at divergent points on the literary landscape, our common pursuit is to foster the artistic and intellectual growth of our students, regardless of how or why they write. We value individual talent and challenge all students to write deep into their unique passions, identities, histories, aesthetics, and intellects. We view writing not as a marketplace endeavor but as an act of human subjectivity. We’ve authored or edited several books across the genres.

Learn more about Our People .

Thesis Defense

The MFA experience culminates with each student writing and defending a creative thesis. For prose writers, theses are 100 pages of creative work; for poets, 48 pages. Though theses often take the form of an excerpt from a book-in-progress, students have flexibility when it comes to determining the shape, form, and content of their creative projects. In their final year, each student works on envisioning and revising their thesis with three committee members, a Major Professor (core MFA faculty) and two additional Readers (core UI faculty). All students offer a public thesis defense. These events are attended by MFA students, faculty, community members, and other invitees. During a thesis defense, a candidate reads from their work for thirty minutes, answers artistic and critical questions from their Major Professor and two Readers for forty-five minutes, and then answer audience questions for thirty minutes. Though formally structured and rigorous, the thesis defense is ultimately a celebration of each student’s individual talent.

The Symposium Reading Series is a longstanding student-run initiative that offers every second-year MFA candidate an opportunity to read their works-in-progress in front of peers, colleagues, and community members. This reading and Q & A event prepares students for the third-year public thesis defense. These off-campus events are fun and casual, exemplifying our community centered culture and what matters most: the work we’re all here to do.

Teaching Assistantships

All students admitted to the MFA program are fully funded through Teaching Assistantships. All Assistantships come with a full tuition waiver and a stipend, which for the current academic year is roughly $15,000. Over the course of three years, MFA students teach a mix of composition courses, sections of Introduction to Creative Writing (ENGL 290), and additional writing courses, as departmental needs arise. Students may also apply to work in the Writing Center as positions become available. When you join the MFA program at Idaho, you receive teacher training prior to the beginning of your first semester. We value the role MFA students serve within the department and consider each graduate student as a working artist and colleague. Current teaching loads for Teaching Assistants are two courses per semester. Some members of the Fugue editorial staff receive course reductions to offset the demands of editorial work. We also award a variety of competitive and need-based scholarships to help offset general living costs. In addition, we offer three outstanding graduate student fellowships: The Hemingway Fellowship, Centrum Fellowship, and Writing in the Wild Fellowship. Finally, our Graduate and Professional Student Association offers extra-departmental funding in the form of research and travel grants to qualifying students throughout the academic year.

Distinguished Visiting Writers Series

Each year, we bring a Distinguished Visiting Writer to campus. DVWs interface with our writing community through public readings, on-stage craft conversations hosted by core MFA faculty, and small seminars geared toward MFA candidates. Recent DVWs include Maggie Nelson, Roger Reeves, Luis Alberto Urrea, Brian Evenson, Kate Zambreno, Dorianne Laux, Teju Cole, Tyehimba Jess, Claire Vaye Watkins, Naomi Shihab Nye, David Shields, Rebecca Solnit, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Susan Orlean, Natasha Tretheway, Jo Ann Beard, William Logan, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Gabino Iglesias, and Marcus Jackson, among several others.

Fugue Journal

Established in 1990 at the University of Idaho, Fugue publishes poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid work, and visual art from established and emerging writers and artists. Fugue is managed and edited entirely by University of Idaho graduate students, with help from graduate and undergraduate readers. We take pride in the work we print, the writers we publish, and the presentation of both print and digital content. We hold an annual contest in both prose and poetry, judged by two nationally recognized writers. Past judges include Pam Houston, Dorianne Laux, Rodney Jones, Mark Doty, Rick Moody, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Jo Ann Beard, Rebecca McClanahan, Patricia Hampl, Traci Brimhall, Edan Lepucki, Tony Hoagland, Chen Chen, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, sam sax, and Leni Zumas. The journal boasts a remarkable list of past contributors, including Steve Almond, Charles Baxter, Stephen Dobyns, Denise Duhamel, Stephen Dunn, B.H. Fairchild, Nick Flynn, Terrance Hayes, Campbell McGrath, W.S. Merwin, Sharon Olds, Jim Shepard, RT Smith, Virgil Suarez, Melanie Rae Thon, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, Anthony Varallo, Robert Wrigley, and Dean Young, among many others.

Academy of American Poets University Prize

The Creative Writing Program is proud to partner with the Academy of American Poets to offer an annual Academy of American Poets University Prize to a student at the University of Idaho. The prize results in a small honorarium through the Academy as well as publication of the winning poem on the Academy website. The Prize was established in 2009 with a generous grant from Karen Trujillo and Don Burnett. Many of our nation’s most esteemed and celebrated poets won their first recognition through an Academy of American Poets Prize, including Diane Ackerman, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Tess Gallagher, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Li-Young Lee, Gregory Orr, Sylvia Plath, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright.

Fellowships

Centrum fellowships.

Those selected as Centrum Fellows attend the summer Port Townsend Writers’ Conference free of charge. Housed in Fort Worden (which is also home to Copper Canyon Press), Centrum is a nonprofit dedicated to fostering several artistic programs throughout the year. With a focus on rigorous attention to craft, the Writers’ Conference offers five full days of morning intensives, afternoon workshops, and craft lectures to eighty participants from across the nation. The cost of the conference, which includes tuition, lodging, and meals, is covered by the scholarship. These annual scholarship are open to all MFA candidates in all genres.

Hemingway Fellowships

This fellowship offers an MFA Fiction student full course releases in their final year. The selection of the Hemingway Fellow is based solely on the quality of an applicant’s writing. Each year, applicants have their work judged blind by a noted author who remains anonymous until the selection process has been completed. Through the process of blind selection, the Hemingway Fellowship Fund fulfills its mission of giving the Fellow the time they need to complete a substantial draft of a manuscript.

Writing in the Wild

This annual fellowship gives two MFA students the opportunity to work in Idaho’s iconic wilderness areas. The fellowship fully supports one week at either the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), which borders Payette Lake and Ponderosa State Park, or the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, which lies in the heart of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area. Both campuses offer year-round housing. These writing retreats allow students to concentrate solely on their writing. Because both locations often house researchers, writers will also have the opportunity to interface with foresters, geologists, biologists, and interdisciplinary scholars.

Program History

Idaho admitted its first class of seven MFA students in 1994 with a faculty of four: Mary Clearman Blew, Tina Foriyes, Ron McFarland (founder of Fugue), and Lance Olsen. From the beginning, the program was conceived as a three-year sequence of workshops and techniques classes. Along with offering concentrations in writing fiction and poetry, Idaho was one of the first in the nation to offer a full concentration in creative nonfiction. Also from its inception, Idaho not only allowed but encouraged its students to enroll in workshops outside their primary genres. Idaho has become one of the nation’s most respected three-year MFA programs, attracting both field-leading faculty and students. In addition to the founders of this program, notable distinguished faculty have included Kim Barnes, Robert Wrigley, Daniel Orozco, Joy Passanante, Tobias Wray, Brian Blanchfield, and Scott Slovic, whose collective vision, rigor, grit, and care have paved the way for future generations committed to the art of writing.

The Palouse

Situated in the foothills of Moscow Mountain amid the rolling terrain of the Palouse (the ancient silt beds unique to the region), our location in the vibrant community of Moscow, Idaho, boasts a lively and artistic local culture. Complete with independent bookstores, coffee shops, art galleries, restaurants and breweries, (not to mention a historic art house cinema, organic foods co-op, and renowned seasonal farmer’s market), Moscow is a friendly and affordable place to live. Outside of town, we’re lucky to have many opportunities for hiking, skiing, rafting, biking, camping, and general exploring—from nearby Idler’s Rest and Kamiak Butte to renowned destinations like Glacier National Park, the Snake River, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area, and Nelson, BC. As for more urban getaways, Spokane, Washington, is only a ninety-minute drive, and our regional airline, Alaska, makes daily flights to and from Seattle that run just under an hour.

For upcoming events and program news, please visit our calendar .

For more information about the MFA program, please contact us at:  [email protected]

Department of English University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 1102 Moscow, ID 83844-1102 208-885-6156

Major code BA5232

College of Arts and Sciences   English Department   Ellis 201 Athens, OH 45701 Fax: 740.593.2832 [email protected] www.ohio.edu/cas/english/

Dr. Carey Snyder , contact person [email protected]

Program Overview

In the English – Creative Writing major, you will engage with genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the inside out, by generating and revising your own work as well as exploring closely how published work uses the techniques of craft. All creative writing students participate in workshops led by nationally recognized writers which focus on understanding and constructing different literary forms; to achieve these goals, workshops emphasize the study of texts by established writers as well as students’ experimentation with their own creative process. The major is also flexible enough to match your own interests and goals: you can fulfill up to 12 of the required hours in the major with courses focusing on literature, rhetoric, or literary theory, or by combining these with apprenticeship or internship experiences. To ensure a solid foundation in the skills and knowledge that employers and graduate schools expect from any English graduate, the English – Creative Writing major includes the English Core in analysis, research, and literary history. 

Admissions Information

Freshman/first-year admission.

Enrollment in an English major entails no requirements beyond University admission requirements.

Change of Program Policy

For students currently enrolled at Ohio University, transferring into an English major requires a 2.0 GPA. Students choosing to transfer into the English  – Creative Writing major should contact the director of undergraduate studies in the English department for assistance. Students who wish to add an English major in addition to another major program should seek assistance from the director of undergraduate studies; students with a second major outside the College of Arts and Sciences will be responsible for meeting the degree requirements of both the English – Creative Writing major and the College of Arts and Sciences.

External Transfer Admission

For students currently enrolled at institutions other than Ohio University, transferring into an English major entails no requirements beyond University admission requirements. Students should contact the director of undergraduate studies in the English Department for assistance.

Opportunities Upon Graduation

After a curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking and analytical reading as well as multiple genres of writing, English – Creative Writing students enjoy the same wide variety of opportunity upon graduation that other English majors have. Many of our graduates go on to graduate programs, not only M.A. or M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing but also programs in Information Science or Education. Others work in publishing, web content development, grant-writing and community organizing, advertising, or other creative industries. Having invested in developing their own creativity as well as in the well-rounded education that this degree requires, English – Creative Writing students can face the unexpected challenges of the 21 st -century job market with confidence.

Potential employers for those who hold a degree in Creative Writing include, but are certainly not limited to, newspaper and magazine organizations, the entertainment industry, government agencies, institutions of higher education, public and private K-12 schools, publishing companies, marketing agencies, non-profit organizations, businesses, etc.

Browse through dozens of internship opportunities and full-time job postings for Ohio University students and alumni on Handshake , OHIO’s key resource for researching jobs, employers, workshops, and professional development events.

Requirements

Universitywide graduation requirements.

Ohio University requires the completion of a minimum of 120 semester hours for the conferral of a bachelor’s degree. This program can be completed within that 120-hour requirement. For more information on the minimum hours requirement and other universitywide requirements, please review the  Graduation Requirements – Universitywide    page.

Liberal Arts and Sciences Distribution Requirement

View the College and Liberal Arts and Sciences Distribution Requirements   .

English Hours Requirement

For a B.A. degree with a major in English - Creative Writing , a student must complete a total of 42 semester credit hours in ENG coursework.

Intercultural Foundations

Complete the following course:

• ENG 1100 - Crossing Cultures with Text Credit Hours: 3

Literary Reading

Complete one of the following courses:

• ENG 2010 - Introduction to Prose Fiction and Nonfiction Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 2020 - Introduction to Poetry and Drama Credit Hours: 3

British or American Literature I

• ENG 2510 - British Literature I Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 2530 - American Literature I Credit Hours: 3

British or American Literature II

• ENG 2520 - British Literature II Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 2540 - American Literature II Credit Hours: 3

Intercultural Breadth

Complete one course from the following:

• ENG 3240 - Jewish American Literature Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3250 - Women’s Literature Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3260 - Queer Literature Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3270 - Queer Rhetorics and Writing Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3370 - Black Literature to 1930 Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3380 - Ethnic American Literature Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3390 - Black Literature from 1930 to the Present Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3450 - Intercultural Adaptations: Answering the Anglo-American Literary Canon Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3550 - Global Literature Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3850 - Writing About Culture and Society Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4660 - International Authors Credit Hours: 3

Writing and Research

• ENG 3070J - Writing and Research in English Studies Credit Hours: 3

Senior Seminar

• ENG 4600 - Topics in English Studies Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4640 - British Authors Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4650 - American Authors Credit Hours: 3

Creative Writing Workshops

Complete three of the following workshops with at least one intermediate or advanced workshop:

• ENG 3610 - Creative Writing: Fiction Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3620 - Creative Writing: Poetry Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3630 - Creative Writing: Nonfiction Credit Hours: 3

Intermediate:

• ENG 3950 - Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction II Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3960 - Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction II Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 3970 - Intermediate Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4860 - Advanced Workshop in Fiction Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4870 - Advanced Workshop in Poetry Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4880 - Advanced Workshop in Nonfiction Credit Hours: 3

Creative Writing Form and Theory

• ENG 4810 - Form and Theory of Literary Genres: Fiction Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4820 - Form and Theory of Literary Genres: Poetry Credit Hours: 3
• ENG 4830 - Form and Theory of Literary Genres: Nonfiction Credit Hours: 3

Major Electives

Complete three additional ENG courses for at least nine hours excluding ENG 2800   , ENG 3***J, ENG 4510   , ENG 4520   , ENG 4911   , and ENG 4912   . Six hours may be at the 2000-level or higher; three hours must be at the 3000-level or higher.

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Introduction to Creative Writing Advanced Undergraduate Creative Writing Courses Concentration in Creative Writing Graduate Courses

Introduction to Creative Writing

The Creative Writing Program offers eight sections of Introduction to Creative Writing during the fall and spring semesters. Each section of EN 202 is limited to fifteen students. The course is a workshop-based creative writing course in which students will create original work, offer feedback to peers, and receive feedback from peers and their instructor.

Please note that EN 202 does not satisfy the College of Arts and Sciences writing requirement. EN 202 is not a prerequisite for any of the advanced writing classes, though we do recommend it to students who wish to pursue further creative work in the program.

Because admission to any of the advanced courses is not guaranteed, we recommend that you register for 202 prior to submitting a portfolio for one of the advanced writing classes. As seats in creative writing courses are limited, we recommend that students apply to the advanced courses as often as they wish. You will only increase your chances of being accepted by doing so.

In Fall ’24, the following sections will be offered:

A1 – TBD

A2 – TBD

B1 – TBD

B2 – TBD

C1 – TBD

C3 – TBD

Advanced Undergraduate Creative Writing Courses

Advanced creative writing courses in either poetry (EN 304 in the fall, EN 403 in the spring) or fiction (EN 305 in the fall, and EN 405 in the spring) are offered each semester. Seats in these courses are usually limited to ten per section, and are offered to students on a selective/competitive basis. These courses are workshop-based. Students must submit a sample of their creative work to the course instructor or the Creative Writing administrator before the start of classes.

In Fall ’24, one section each of the following courses will be offered:

EN 304 – John Shea

EN 305 – TBD

To apply for EN 304, please send a sample of five poems to [email protected] by 08/10/24. If you wish to apply for EN 305, please send a sample of 10-20 pages of original fiction to [email protected] by 08/10/24.

Concentration in Creative Writing

There is presently no major or minor in creative writing at the undergraduate level, however, for students majoring or minoring in English, or pursuing a creative writing concentration in COM, any advanced creative writing course (EN 304, 305, 306, or 405, including MET courses) will count for concentration credit. Within certain limitations, you may take any creative writing course (EN 202 – EN 405) up to two times; please consult your advisors. For course offerings in the English Department, please click here.

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Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

The author of “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway” guides us through his personal library.

Photographs by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post

The library in Amor Towles’s beautifully appointed home not far from Gramercy Park in Manhattan looks and feels like the Platonic ideal of the concept: tall windows, tasteful art on the walls, many comfortable seating options and well-ordered shelves filled with classic literature. Perfect for reading in, of course, but when I visited in March, Towles first wanted to talk about writing. This is the room where he composed, among other books, his acclaimed bestsellers “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway.” (His newest, “Table for Two,” a collection of stories and a novella, was published last month.)

Towles first brought out a few of what he calls the “design books” for his novels — notebooks that he fills with details for about four years before he starts officially writing. “I’m just trying to imagine: What happens? Who are the people?” he said. “Where are they from, what’s their personality? What are the settings? Who says what, and why? What are the tones?”

Some of the notes he scribbles are longer and more fully realized than others, but Towles estimates that he writes 80 percent of what ends up in his fiction on a computer, once the handwritten design books have done their duty.

Guides from the past

To conjure all those details and tones, Towles partly and very happily relies on documents dating from the eras he writes about. His shelves still include classic travel guides to Moscow, including one published by Intourist in 1932 and a Baedeker guide from 1914. “Intourist was the Politburo-owned tourist agency of Russia,” Towles said, “and at one time its offices were in the Metropol Hotel [the primary setting of ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’]. I had street maps from the ’30s that I could look at. Part of it was to see how they described for the Westerner something that they were trying to impress them with, et cetera.”

A framed picture of Ewan McGregor, in character, used in the production of the recently released adaptation of “A Gentleman in Moscow,” sits on a shelf nearby. Towles said it appeared as part of a secret police file in the show: “You don’t even notice it on screen, but it’s tucked under a paper clip on top of the file.”

A full encyclopedia set from 1931 is another treasure that combines pleasure and work for Towles. “I think it was 48 cents per book. My first novel, ‘Rules of Civility,’ happened to be set in 1938, and I thought: ‘This is great, I can check the population of New York City right there.’ I love old, weird reference.”

A treasured checklist

Towles majored in literature as an undergraduate at Yale and took the few creative-writing courses the school offered at the time. When he was a sophomore, the experimental-fiction writer Walter Abish was a visiting professor.

“At the end of the class,” Towles remembered, “he said to us: ‘All this has been great. I liked your work. I hope my comments have been helpful. But probably the most valuable thing I can do is give you a hundred books that I like.’ So he gave us this list. And because he was an avant-gardist, it was a lot of people who, at the age of 19, I had never heard of: Andre Breton, Barthelme, Beckett, Heinrich Böll … international writers, but all playing with form, that’s what he was interested in.”

Towles immediately started checking for the recommended titles anytime he visited a used-book store. “I’d stack them up, and I’d read a novel a day off of his list,” he said. “That was a totally different kind of experience than studying Henry James or Shakespeare or Chaucer in the academy. A lot of these books [on Abish’s list] were not perfectly made. A lot of them are stabs at something.”

Matthiessen, mentor and friend

The year after Abish taught at the school, Peter Matthiessen arrived for a semester. Matthiessen was already a celebrated writer of both nonfiction (“The Snow Leopard”) and fiction (“At Play in the Fields of the Lord”). He singled out Towles’s work for praise and told the young writer, “I’m going to take your time here very seriously, and I hope that you’re going to take your time with me very seriously, too.” The encouragement was “a gift,” Towles said. The next year, Towles worked with him again, and the two struck up a long friendship.

Towles laughed remembering Matthiessen’s underwhelmed reaction to the draft manuscript of “Rules of Civility” (“He didn’t know why I was writing a book set in 1938”), but when the book became a bestseller, the mentor wrote him a note of congratulations, saying that his sister had loved it and was thrilled to find her brother’s name in its acknowledgments.

New ideas, new language

In addition to his fond remembrances of his formal education, Towles referred to himself more than once during the tour as a “reader-writer,” someone who is constantly refining each of those skills in a conscious conversation between them. He stopped at a shelf of books — the “big ideas” collection, kept together — by Augustine, Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and others. “What these things have in common for me is that [their authors] had to invent a new language to express their discovery. They weren’t doing the new version of something or doing a ‘spin’ on so and so. [Freud’s] ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ is a totally radical, weird book.”

“Marx and the group around him, they invented that whole thing of, ‘There is no more time! Now is the time to make a decision!’ This sweeping, bold things in single-sentence paragraphs: ‘ All people must …’ That’s electric. And you realize that you can apply that language in your novel. It’s doing something very different. I get very interested in how non-narrativists turn on language in the pursuit of a particular outcome, that I can then sort of use in some weird way.”

“Now you’re in the first-edition zone,” Towles said, opening the glass doors directly behind his writing desk. “And now you’re really into heroes: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Conrad, Emily Dickinson.” (Towles also listed the Transcendentalists in this league; he was born and raised in the Boston area and said that “a lot of the personality aspects of Emerson and Thoreau are second nature to me.”)

“This is kind of crazy, just time coming around the corner,” he said, pulling one modest-size blue book off the shelf. “This is a first edition of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It was owned by Dorothy Ann Scarritt,” he noted, pointing to her signature inside the book. “This is August 1925. She later becomes famous because she is Oppenheimer’s secretary at Los Alamos. She’s like the second employee at Los Alamos; she’s there the entire time and she organizes his entire life. She’s involved with bringing everyone in, getting them set up.”

Scarritt’s signature has a lot of company among Towles’s books. A signed copy of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize lecture — a small book nestled inside a larger case — was a gift from his wife. Towles is a longtime fan of Dylan’s and mentioned him in the same sentence as Rimbaud and T.S. Eliot, so when the singer received the Nobel in literature in 2016 to divided opinion, Towles was ecstatic. “It was not controversial for me at all .”

Going back a century further, Towles took down a copy of Proust signed by its translator, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, to Joseph Conrad in 1922.

On a shelf across the room, Towles has another edition of Proust’s work, as well as several books about what he calls “Proust-y stuff” — “different things about Proust — Proust’s letters, paintings in Proust, the music of Proust …”

A long-running book club

Proust also holds a place of honor in an intense book club that Towles has been in with three close friends for just over two decades. “We basically read a novel a month, and we do projects. And we do almost explicitly dead authors; occasionally we veer from that, but mostly it’s dead. We started with Proust. Twenty years ago, we read it as a team. That took longer. We didn’t do it over seven dinners [one per book], more like 14 — over a year and a half.”

The club’s creation was inspired by Harold Bloom’s “Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?,” in which the literary scholar and critic pondered which writers he’d learned more from about the human condition: Plato or Homer? Freud or Proust?

“I was turning 40 in like two months,” Towles said, recalling when he read Bloom’s book. “I thought, if I live to 80 and read a book carefully a month, that means I have 480 books left. And if that’s true, I better focus on books that you could reread at 20, 40 and 60 and learn something new. I was ranting about this to my friend Ann Brashares at a cocktail party, and she said, ‘I’m in.’ And we’ve been going ever since.”

Given the size and ambitions of the books they normally choose, one of the friends recently suggested a “palate cleanser,” which led to “a dinner we called the Fitzgerald-Salinger Death Match. We realized that we’d all read ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as children . So the question was: Which was better? We would reread both in a week and then come back and debate.” I later realized I had left Towles’s home without asking who won.

An earlier version of this article misidentified the person who sent Peter Matthiessen a note after reading "Rules of Civility." It was Matthiessen's sister, not his daughter.

About this story

Editing by John Williams. Photography by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post. Design and development by Beth Broadwater. Photo editing by Annaliese Nurnberg. Copy editing by Jennifer Morehead.