princeton creative writing

Creative Writing (Fiction)

  • Creative Writing

CWR 203 • Fall 2014

The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers a perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student’s growth as both creator and reader of literature.

Sample reading list: See instructor for complete list

Reading/Writing assignments: (1) One manuscript every other week.

(2) Reading of other students’ submissions in advance of workshop in which they are to be discussed.

(3) Other assigned readings or exercises. 60 pages of reading per week.

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Chang-rae Lee

Professor of Creative Writing (on leave 2015-16)

609.258.7551

[email protected]

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Edmund White

Professor of Creative Writing, Emeritus

[email protected]

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Fiona Maazel

Lecturer in Creative Writing

[email protected]

Headshot of A.M. Homes

Professor of the Practice; Acting Director (Spring 2024), Creative Writing

[email protected]

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Hanna Pylväinen

2014-16 Princeton Arts Fellow

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Joyce Carol Oates

Lecturer with the Rank of Professor; Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus; Professor of Creative Writing, Emeritus

[email protected]

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Jeffrey Eugenides

Professor of Creative Writing

Headshot of Patrick McGrath

Patrick McGrath

[email protected]

Headshot of Susan Choi

609-258-8561

[email protected]

Wednesday, 2:30 pm - 4:20 pm New South Building, Room 619

Wednesday,1:30 pm - 3:20 pm New South Building, Room 605

Tuesday, 7:30 pm - 9:20 pm New South Building, Room 602

Tuesday, 1:30 pm - 3:20 pm New South Building, Room 602

Monday, 2:30 pm - 4:20 pm New South Building, Room 619

Friday, 9:00 am - 10:50 am New South Building, Room 602

Thursday, 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm New South Building, Room 605

Tuesday, 10:00 am - 11:50 am New South Building, Room 619

Tuesday 10:00 am - 11:50 am New South Building, Room 602

Monday 1:30 pm - 3:20 pm New South Building, Room 606

Instructor(s)

More details.

View this course listing @ registrar.princeton.edu

Previous Courses

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Introductory Fiction

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On Creative Writing and Virtual Community

January 11, 2021, grady trexler.

Zoom isolation is real, especially for the other first-year students and I who haven’t yet had the chance to live on campus because of Princeton’s fully virtual instruction during the fall semester. Oftentimes, during classes or clubs I feel as though I’m the odd one out. Everyone who has been on campus has a shared vocabulary of buildings, Princeton traditions, courses, professors and dining halls. It’s been hard for me to feel a connection to Princeton — or with anyone save the people I've been living with, for that matter — when everything has been filtered through a screen. So, the little pockets of community I found throughout my first fall semester became especially meaningful to me, like the introductory poetry workshop I was able to take.

This year, the Program in Creative Writing  offered workshops only for first-year students. I knew that I wanted to pursue creative writing at Princeton, so I applied and was accepted, and every Tuesday for the fall semester I met with eight other first years and our professor for two hours to discuss poetry. This was a completely new world for me, and one I was keen to experience. I’ve been writing creatively for most of my life — and writing poetry since high school — but had never before had the chance to devote so much time to it at a high level. At my high school, poetry was taught but rarely written, and I didn’t have a chance to spend more than a sporadic few weeks on it in a class. Being able to spend a whole semester writing, reading and editing poetry was something new and did wonders for my writing.

More often than not, we spent our time discussing things completely unrelated to poetry: how we were doing with midterms, what we were looking forward to doing over the weekend, one of our classmate’s new dogs. It was wonderful to be in such a small class and to all be first-years, all interested in poetry, meeting every week for the whole semester. Though, it wasn’t the same as being in the same classroom, but for a while each week, I was happy to join a Zoom call where I knew everyone and everyone knew my name, the type of poetry I liked to write and where I was living for the semester. 

This isn’t to knock larger classes — I took an introductory metaphysics course in the philosophy department which I loved — but a recommendation to try out a smaller class. Especially for your first semester of college, it helps to have a little pocket of the undergraduate community that you can feel at home in, even if it’s only in a Zoom call.

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Printing my thesis, a weekend in my life featuring easter festivities, a look into independent research: the politics junior paper.

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My Creative Writing Journey

January 26, 2022.

I remember my first grade class’ Halloween party like it was yesterday: the mummy wrapping station on the rug, the spooky cupcakes on the desks and a Halloween storytime in the book corner. Though I briefly stopped by the dessert desks to grab a cupcake, I found myself all consumed in the fourth activity: Halloween story starters. Shifting through printed handout starters about witches and ghosts and goblins, I spent the entire party writing story after story. I somehow drowned out the “Monster Mash” track that played on repeat and the laughter of my classmates as they wrapped each other up in toilet paper. All I could hear was the sound of my pencil gliding across the thick-lined paper. 

It’s no surprise then that when applying for colleges ten years later, I was drawn to Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing . With faculty such as A.M. Homes and Idra Novey , and graduates like Jodi Picoult (I am obsessed with her novels!), I knew I wanted to take courses in the department. And ever since I was admitted, that’s exactly what I did. I took everything from “ Introductory Fiction ” to “ Advanced Fiction ,” from “ Introductory Poetry ” to “ Advanced Poetry ,” and even Special Topics courses like “ Political Fiction .” 

But my writing journey came to an abrupt stop at the end of last year. It was Spring 2021 and I applied for the Creative Writing thesis . At Princeton, everyone writes a thesis in their concentration (mine being English), but some certificates also require you to write a thesis. In the case of the English department, you can actually replace your English thesis with a Creative Writing thesis if you are accepted into the program. So anyone can apply for and take creative writing courses, but that does not necessarily guarantee that you can write a thesis in the department. 

When I received the email that my application was not accepted, I was crushed. I felt as if all that I worked for and all that I hoped for since coming to Princeton, since sitting at that table at my first grade Halloween party writing about witches and pumpkins, had meant nothing. Was my writing not good enough? Was I not good enough? I decided to take a semester off from creative writing for the fall. I was hurt, and perhaps a little too prideful to keep taking courses in the department.

But as these thoughts slipped into my head, I remembered something that one of the creative writing faculty members said. She told our class that she herself was rejected from writing a creative writing thesis, and now she’s a bestselling author with several novels that she is proud of. During the fall semester, I missed creative writing so much. Yes, I might have been hurt, but being at one of the top schools in the country not only means that you’re surrounded by other brilliant, talented people, but that you have to learn how to be surrounded by other brilliant, talented people. It means accepting rejection, learning from setbacks and moving forward. 

This semester, my final semester at Princeton, I am taking a course called “ Spark! Sparking Creativity in Writing ” with Professor Quade , who I had as a professor for “Advanced Fiction” during my sophomore year. The course focuses on daily writing practice as opposed to long-form, workshop writing. I hope to leave this course with the tools I need to continue writing in my day-to-day life, even as I start my career after graduation. Receiving rejection is always difficult, but it made me realize that creative writing is something I never want to let go of. Thesis or no thesis, I will continue the dream that little first grader had as she scribbled word after word onto her paper. 

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Printing my thesis, a look into independent research: the politics junior paper, the p in princeton stands for p/d/f.

princeton creative writing

Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

Writing Lessons from my Creative Writing Workshop

This semester, I took my first fiction workshop in Princeton’s Creative Writing Program. I had taken two poetry courses in previous semesters and wanted to try something new. (Pro-tip: if you haven’t yet taken a CWR course, definitely consider applying for one before graduating).

Creative writing is, in many ways, a break from academic writing. It does not center on data, analysis, or argumentation. Instead, workshops focus on developing compelling images, characters, stories. Creative writing also has access to a wider variety of forms than academic writing, which tends to adhere to a narrow set of relatively conservative styles.

princeton creative writing

However, some of my workshop instructor’s writing advice has translated well to my academic writing. After all, writing is writing, and many of the same challenges confront both creative and academic writers. Below I’ve collected five of her best pieces of writing advice:

1. Writer’s block is just an excuse for procrastination. Runners don’t have runner’s block and scientists don’t have science block. Good writing does not emerge from miraculous waves of inspiration or creativity. Ultimately, writing is a task, a gradual skill requiring regular practice and effort. As with lab work and fitness, the writing process relies on a series of productive failures. The key is to keep doing it until you get results—even when you don’t feel particularly inspired.

2. To beat procrastination, picture your future misery if you don’t start now. It’s almost always easier to push a task off to tomorrow, or next week, or vacation. Generally, if I have the choice between doing something now or later, I privilege my now over my later. To overcome this trap, try imagining your life later if you avoid your work now. Actually visualizing your future stress may give you a much stronger motivation to get started.

3. Characters don’t change, they become more themselves. While academic writing tends not to invent characters, a similar logic applies to scholarly arguments. Arguments don’t change—they evolve. We have to trust that our early writing ideas contain the beginnings of complex and developed arguments. At the same time, we also have to allow our arguments to lead us where they want to go, rather than forcing the data into our original vision.

4. Writing with a reader in mind can be more restrictive than it’s worth. Of course, we can’t totally disregard our reader in academic writing—especially when that reader is our professor or grader. Nevertheless, it can be liberating to disregard reader expectations, even temporarily. Writing for yourself can produce much stronger and more interesting work than writing for an imagined reader. When I started my first thesis draft, I spent many hours struggling to catch my reader up on what felt like necessary background information. After completing the chapter, I ended up deleting this entire section. Trying to meet the reader’s hypothetical needs distracted from the actual content of my chapter. My time would have been much better spent focusing on my own ideas from the get-go.

5. Don’t write about what you know; write about what you don’t (yet) understand. When choosing a research topic, it can be easy to choose a comfortable or familiar subject—something covered heavily in class or something you studied in a previous course. However, choosing a topic rooted in your own interests—independent of the course’s content—will produce much stronger results, and will be exponentially more enjoyable to write. I recently experimented with this in an Urban Studies course focused on New York and Moscow. Over the summer, I began learning about the onset of the American AIDS epidemic and knew I wanted to keep reading about it. Unfortunately, no classes on the subject were offered this semester and my thesis adviser counselled against incorporating it into my thesis. Instead, she suggested I continue researching it through one of my existing courses. Even though my Urban Studies course barely mentioned AIDS or LGBTQ+ history, I decided to focus all of my assignments for the course on the epidemic. I cleared the idea with my professors beforehand and, as it turns out, it wasn’t hard at all to build my papers around the topic. In retrospect, my papers for that course were some of the best I’ve ever written—I cared deeply about this still unfamiliar topic and (I think) it showed.

I hope my instructor’s writing advice helps guide us through a relatively calm and inspired reading week. Happy Dean’s Date!

–Rafi Lehmann, Humanities Correspondent

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Creative Writing Seniors Reading: Poetry, Translation & Screenwriting

Tue, 4/30 · 4:30 pm — 6:30 pm · chancellor green rotunda, lewis center for the arts’ program in creative writing.

Seniors in Princeton’s renowned Program in Creative Writing read from the screenplays or collections of poems or translations written as their senior independent work under mentorship of professional writers on the faculty.

Admission: Free and open to the public Accessibility : Chancellor Green Rotunda is an accessible venue via an elevator in the lobby of East Pyne Hall. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at least one week in advance at [email protected]

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Research creative writing: life, by the book.

princeton creative writing

There was no library that novelist Yiyun Li was permitted to visit as a young child. She was raised in Beijing during the final years of the Mao regime, and the government tightly controlled what books were available to the public. It wasn’t until middle school that she finally gained access to a small library — and quickly devoured everything. “I had a hunger for so long, and all of a sudden I had all these books,” says Li, who became a professor of creative writing at Princeton in 2017. 

Books transformed her life — carrying her from a budding career in science to one as a flourishing novelist — and eventually helped save her life when she was suffering from suicidal depression. In Li’s latest work, a memoir titled Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (Random House), readers experience, between glimpses of her time in China and as an immigrant in the United States, the reaffirming power of books. 

Li decided at age 10 that she wanted to live in the United States, and the way to get here was to excel academically. After a compulsory year in the People’s Liberation Army — during which she often carried a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners — she completed college at Peking University and enrolled at the University of Iowa for graduate work in immunology. Once there, she grew intrigued by the university’s writing program, considered the best in the nation. “Someone said, ‘Everyone in town is writing a novel,’ and I thought, ‘How interesting. I should try that, too,’” she says.

Though her written English was still unpolished, she was accepted into the writing program and earned an M.F.A. after finishing a master’s degree in science. Often writing from midnight to 4 a.m. while working in a lab during the day, Li completed a short-story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Random House). The book’s 10 stories, set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States, explore the effects of Communism and the role of fate in the lives of a wide variety of characters, from a recluse who counts the grains of rice on his chopsticks to a boy who so resembles Chairman Mao that he is chosen as a Mao impersonator. The collection won the PEN/Hemingway Award and several other prizes. 

“Bad things happen — wars, plagues, parents abandoning their children, the heartless preying on those with hearts — and no one, not a human or a god, will intervene.” From Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li

Her 2009 novel, The Vagrants, is set in a Chinese provincial town named Muddy River where a brutal public execution of a counterrevolutionary takes place. In 2010, Li was chosen for The New Yorker ’s list of best young writers and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship, which cited her “intimate and elegantly constructed portraits of people largely ignored by history — Chinese nationals as well as expatriates in the United States.” 

Three friends are haunted by their childhood in China — and the mysterious poisoning of one of their playmates — in the novel Kinder Than Solitude (Random House), published in 2015. One passage lays out the novel’s disquieting theme: “Bad things happen — wars, plagues, parents abandoning their children, the heartless preying on those with hearts — and no one, not a human or a god, will intervene.” 

I Write to You in Your Life, Li’s first book of nonfiction, interweaves reflections on the struggle with depression that landed her in the hospital with an homage to writers whose works provided a lifeline. “I am aware that, every time I have a conversation with a book, I benefit from someone’s decision against silence,” she writes. She found particular comfort reading the letters and journals of fellow writers. “Marianne Moore would write to Elizabeth Bishop and say, ‘We are devastatingly lonely here.’ It helped me to know that these moments happened in other writers’ lives, and I’m not alone in feeling that.” 

Li writes movingly of her friendship with the late Irish author William Trevor, which was sparked by a fan letter she sent to him. Visiting him near the end of his life, she muses of their bond, “We are solitary travelers, having crossed paths in the land of stories.”

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Empowering voices: the future of creative writing at rice university.

Creative writing

Creative writing transcends conventional academic boundaries, serving as both a discipline and a practice that invites diverse perspectives and influences. According to Ian Schimmel, associate teaching professor of English at Rice University, creative writing is characterized by its openness to exploration and expression.

“It does not define the scope of what a thought project should be,” Schimmel said, adding that creative writing encompasses a wide range of forms and styles, from traditional genres like fiction, poetry, nonfiction and drama to emerging mediums that shape contemporary discourse. “It’s very permeable to other parts of the university that want to participate in it.”

Extending beyond mere poetic imagery or storytelling, creative writing delves into the depths of human experience, capturing the rhythm, themes and pauses that define individual narratives.

“We’re all an amalgamation of stories,” said Kiese Laymon, the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English. “The rigor of having to explore your imagination and memory with these tools we have is hard work. We try to make it enjoyable work, but it’s definitely hard work.”

Creative writing plays a pivotal role in understanding and interpreting societal narratives, Schimmel pointed out, highlighting the significance of studying hybrid forms that blend elements of journalism, memoir and personal reflection, reflecting the multifaceted nature of contemporary storytelling.

“I prefer the term ‘imaginative writing’ or ‘public writing,’” said Justin Cronin, writer-in-residence in English. “‘Creative writing’ pays less attention to the idea that this is a discipline. It really is a very particular kind of discipline that you need to learn to do.”

Justin Cronin

At its core, creative writing is about having something to say — a point of view or an urgency that compels expression.

“We are equipping students with the tools to say what they feel is most important and urgent,” Schimmel said. “That’s where the fulfillment comes from.”

For Cronin, teaching creative writing is a dynamic process of self-discovery and exploration.

“Anyone who teaches creative writing is teaching themselves, full stop,” Cronin said. “We are doing both all the time.”

He emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the discipline, drawing connections between literature, film and societal trends. Cronin’s spring 2024 course titled “The End of the World as We Know It: Writing (and Reading) Apocalypse” exemplifies this interdisciplinary approach, blending literary analysis with creative expression to explore existential themes.

“There is a lot to learn about craft, about how to make a good sentence, how essays really work, how stories or novels work,” Cronin said. “But then there are also the broader questions: Why do we do this? Where does it come from, and where does it go?”

‘It feels like home’

It’s worth reflecting on the latter question in relation to Rice’s creative writing program. Of the current faculty, Cronin has the longest institutional knowledge. He came to Rice in 2003, effectively doubling the program’s full-time faculty.

“It was just me teaching fiction and one poetry professor,” Cronin said. “That was creative writing in 2003.”

A couple of years later when he sold a partial manuscript of what evolved into his trilogy “The Passage,” Cronin stepped down from his full-time teaching role to focus on the series.

Schimmel later joined Rice during a two-year fellowship starting in 2011. After his first year, the two other creative writing faculty members retired.

“I was one of only one or two other people teaching creative writing at Rice in 2012,” Schimmel said.

Associate professor Amber Dermont joined the faculty followed by assistant professor Paul Otremba then Lacy Johnson in 2016, which is when Cronin returned to teach at Rice.

Lacy Johnson

“We made a strategic plan that involved investing in creative writing, trying to make Rice the best undergraduate creative writing program in the country,” said Lacy Johnson, associate professor of creative writing and director of undergraduate studies in English. “We proposed hiring a few more writers so that we could continue to grow.”

And they did, adding Laymon, professor in the practice Andrea Bajani, assistant professor Bryan Washington and associate professor Tomás Q. Morín.

“When I saw the job posting at Rice, every writer I knew was applying for the job,” Morín said. “Every writer I knew wanted to work at Rice because it was a dream job.”

Morin said his desire to join the faculty only grew after visiting the campus during the interview process when he got to meet the people he’d be working with and the students he’d be teaching.

“I felt like this job could be my last stop in terms of my academic career,” Morín said. “This is a place where I could retire. Once I actually did start teaching here, all of that was affirmed. I don’t want to ever teach anywhere else again. This doesn’t feel like a job. It feels like home.”

“With Lacy Johnson, Ian Schimmel, Kiese Laymon, Bryan Washington, Tomás Morín, Amber Dermont, Andrea Bajani and Justin Cronin, Rice boasts some of the most significant writers in the United States,” said Kathleen Canning, dean of the School of Humanities, in sharing her assessment of the creative writing faculty she calls “amazing.”

“Spectacular” is the word Cronin choses to describe his colleagues.

“The amount of raw achievement in so many areas is unparalleled,” Cronin said, pointing to Laymon’s selection as a MacArthur Fellow and Johnson’s creation of the Houston Flood Museum. “We have short story writers, essayists, novelists, poets, screenwriters. We have it all.”

Laymon, who started teaching at Rice in January 2022, expressed that he’s been impressed by how dynamic and thoughtful his colleagues are.

“Our ability to work together is one of the reasons why the creative writing program is growing at such an incredible rate,” Laymon said.

"The learning and the doing"

The program’s not growing just in terms of faculty; the academic powerhouse has captured the imagination and enthusiasm of students, sparking a surge of interest that far exceeds available capacity. Most creative writing classes have waitlists at least 20 students deep, while the waitlists for intro workshops are closer to 75.

 Tomás Q. Morín

“I’ve never worked anywhere where there was such a tremendous curiosity, passion and interest in creative writing at the undergraduate level,” Morín said.

“The desire on the part of these students to use creativity to explore critically and intellectually, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Laymon said, adding that he believes the interest is connected to the strength of the faculty. “You don’t find creative writing programs with any sort of growth unless the students are being taught well.”

Laymon suggested the program’s success also lies in its ability to attract students from diverse disciplines, including computer science, biology and engineering.

“There is such a hunger on our campus to make things and to take what you learned in the classroom and apply it,” Schimmel said. “There’s often a gulf between the theoretical and the practical in an education setting. What’s powerful about creative writing, and the arts in general, is the connectivity between the learning and the doing.”

Faculty members say they appreciate the diverse perspectives and interdisciplinary collaborations that emerge from such a dynamic student body.

“There are so many different kinds of expertise for students to use Rice and Houston as a laboratory to think about the issues that are facing us today,” Johnson said. “Thinking about climate, about science, about community, about culture, where better than Houston to come to learn to write about those things?”

"Experimenting with words"

The creative writing program is a catalyst for that exploration and discovery, empowering students to engage with a myriad of topics and formats while honing their skills as storytellers.

For example, on the nonfiction side, Laymon’s spring 2024 course titled "Verses/Versus: Miseducation of Lauryn Hill v. good kid m.A.A.d. city (or 1998 vs. 2012)” allows students to reflect on how music influences their lives, whether through personal experiences or the albums discussed in class. “Nonfiction Nature Writing,” taught by Johnson, merges writing and environmental philosophy.

“We’re giving consideration to the ways that we think about and talk about the environment as well as practicing writing about our relationship to the environment,” Johnson said. “Students often come to that class from the sciences. I have a lot of students from environmental sciences, geology, physics, ecology and evolutionary biology.”

The class is a different application of science, Johnson added, explaining that it provides students an opportunity to apply and translate what they’ve learned in their other classes in creative ways.

Schimmel, meanwhile, teaches podcasting courses, challenging students to report on stories beyond the hedges of Rice. By interviewing real-life characters and crafting compelling narratives, students gain valuable storytelling skills while exploring the power of audio storytelling.

“We deconstruct the narrative structures of radio storytelling to understand how a large amount of material can be condensed into something that is manageable, enjoyable and informative for an audience,” Schimmel said.

Central to the creative writing experience at Rice is the workshop. Through peer critique and experimentation, students refine their writing and gain insights into audience engagement and narrative structure.

Kiese Laymon

“A workshop environment helps you compare your intentions with the realities of your audience,” Schimmel said. “It pulls you out of yourself. It makes you conscious of how form and technique affect your reader’s desire to interact with your work.”

Laymon underscored the importance of experimentation in creative writing. By encouraging students to explore literary traditions and experiment with language, the program fosters a culture of innovation and self-expression.

“We all have these 26 letters. How do we create a story with them?” Laymon said. “We need young people out there experimenting with words and to be encouraged to do that.”

"A unique opportunity"

As Rice’s creative writing program has evolved, its faculty have remained dedicated to fostering a culture of creativity, expression and intellectual inquiry, shaping the next generation of writers and thinkers.

“One of our goals is to broaden the public’s understanding of what creative writing is and how it can serve as a public utility for all,” Schimmel said.

The next step for the program, according to Cronin, is to elevate from a strong program to a national leader in undergraduate creative writing education.

Ian Schimmel

“We want to be the best undergraduate creative writing program in the country, which means students come to Rice specifically for that,” Cronin said. “We want to build the kind of program that people deliberately seek out. Students apply to a university for a thing, and we want to be that thing.”

Faculty members are exploring the possibility of establishing a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing, which reflects the program’s commitment to furthering its impact and engaging with a broader community of writers.

“There’s a lot of interest,” Johnson said. “We have a really unique opportunity at Rice to build something from scratch.”

“That feels incredibly exciting to me,” Morín said, explaining that the goal is to create a program that addresses the shortcomings of the traditional MFA model while offering a fresh and dynamic approach. “It gives me a lot of energy, because as a group, we can offer the kind of experience that a graduate student in creative writing can’t find anywhere else.”

For more information about Rice’s creative writing program, click here .

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2024 duke english creative writing scholarship awards, april 23, 2024.

Quantá Holden | Duke English | Digital Communication Specialist

Duke English CW logo with Scholarships

Duke English is delighted to share the 2024 Creative Writing Scholarships honorees. Each year, Duke English faculty members nominate undergraduate students for one of the Creative Writing Scholarships based on the exceptional work they submitted in one or more of their creative writing courses. The Creative Writing Committee selects the winners of the prestigious William M. Blackburn, Francis Pemberton, and Margaret Rose Knight Sanford Scholarships. Students nominated must be eligible for financial aid to receive these scholarships.

2024 Creative Writing Scholarship Recipients:

Frances Pemberton Scholarship Awarded to a junior or senior pursuing the study of creative writing.  This scholarship was created by the Trustees of The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation in memory and in honor of Francis Pemberton's service to the Biddle Foundation.

Ryan Copeland , ‘25

Margaret Rose Knight Sanford Scholarship Awarded to a female student who demonstrates particular promise in creative writing.  This scholarship was established in recognition of the untiring efforts of Margaret Rose Knight Sanford on behalf of Duke University.

Ali Thursland , ‘24

William Blackburn Scholarship Recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of creative writing.  Established in 1962 by students and friends of Professor William Blackburn (1899-1969) who first began teaching creative writing at Duke.

Jocelyn Chin , ‘24 Sage Cooley , ‘25 Joshua Lee , ‘26 Rani Teddy , ‘26

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IMAGES

  1. Princeton Creative Writing Professor Yiyun Li Wins PEN/Jean Stein Book

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  2. Readings celebrate 70 years of creative writing at Princeton

    princeton creative writing

  3. Pushcart Prize-Winning Poet Saeed Jones Reads with Six Seniors in

    princeton creative writing

  4. The Princeton Anthology of Writing

    princeton creative writing

  5. Award-Winning Fiction Writer Chinelo Okparanta Reads with Six Seniors

    princeton creative writing

  6. C.K. Williams Reading by Ottessa Moshfegh and Princeton Creative

    princeton creative writing

VIDEO

  1. Susan Wheeler, Princeton University Professor of Creative Writing, Interview

  2. Underwriting #2: Creative Deal in Princeton, TX

  3. Alaa Al Aswany’s Creative Writing Workshop at Princeton University

  4. America's Graduate Adviser: A Conversation with Leonard Cassuto

  5. Where the Sun Rises: Under the Shadow of the Assam-India Conflict

  6. Princess Writing Prompts (Aspiring Author Series)

COMMENTS

  1. Creative Writing

    The Program in Creative Writing offers Princeton undergraduates the opportunity to craft original work under the guidance of some of today's most respected practicing writers including Michael Dickman, Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Christina Lazaridi, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, Patricia Smith and Susan Wheeler.. Small workshop courses, averaging eight to ten ...

  2. Creative Writing

    The program allows undergraduates to work with practicing writers to develop their writing skills, learn the possibilities of modern poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting and translation, and gain a special access to the critical understanding of literature through their involvement in the creative process.

  3. Lewis Center for the Arts

    ATL 496 / CWR 496·Spring 2021. S01·Tuesdays, 1:30-4:20 PM. Instructors: Bridget Kearney · Paul Muldoon. Taught by Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive) and Paul Muldoon (Rogue Oliphant) with class visits from guest singer/songwriters and music critics, this course is an introduction to the art of writing words for music, an art at the core of ...

  4. Creative Writing

    The Program in Creative Writing, part of the Lewis Center for the Arts, with a minor in creative writing, like our present certificate students, will encounter a rigorous framework of courses. These courses are designed, first and foremost, to teach the students how to read like a writer, thoughtfully, artistically, curiously, with an open mind attuned to the nuances of any human situation.

  5. Yiyun Li Named Director of Princeton University's Program in Creative

    Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts has named award-winning writer Yiyun Li as the new director of the University's Program in Creative Writing. Li, a Professor of Creative Writing on the Princeton faculty since 2017, succeeds Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who has led the program since 2019. Li begins her tenure as director on July 1.

  6. Creative Writing (Fiction)

    Creative Writing (Fiction) Creative Writing. CWR 203 • Fall 2014. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers a perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the ...

  7. Creative writing turns 70

    Bettman/Corbis. The Lewis Center is celebrating 70 years of creative writing at Princeton with a yearlong series of public readings by award-­winning writers who are program alumni or have served on the faculty. Novelist Robert Stone, formerly a visiting fellow, and poet C.K. Williams, a current member of the faculty, were scheduled to read in ...

  8. Lewis Center for the Arts

    The Lewis Center for the Arts is an academic unit made up of programs in creative writing, dance, theater, music theater and visual arts, as well as the Princeton Atelier.Lewis Center courses are offered with the conviction that art making is an essential tool for examining our histories and our most pressing social challenges, envisioning creative responses, and making sense of our lives in ...

  9. On Creative Writing and Virtual Community

    So, the little pockets of community I found throughout my first fall semester became especially meaningful to me, like the introductory poetry workshop I was able to take. This year, the Program in Creative Writing offered workshops only for first-year students. I knew that I wanted to pursue creative writing at Princeton, so I applied and was ...

  10. My Creative Writing Journey

    It was Spring 2021 and I applied for the Creative Writing thesis. At Princeton, everyone writes a thesis in their concentration (mine being English), but some certificates also require you to write a thesis. In the case of the English department, you can actually replace your English thesis with a Creative Writing thesis if you are accepted ...

  11. For Undergraduates

    Undergraduate Initiatives. The Writing Center offers individual appointments to student writers across all levels and disciplines. The Writing Seminars provide first-year students a foundation for their ongoing development as critical readers, writers, and researchers. The year-long Sophomore Research Seminars offer students close mentoring and ...

  12. Writing Lessons from my Creative Writing Workshop

    This semester, I took my first fiction workshop in Princeton's Creative Writing Program. I had taken two poetry courses in previous semesters and wanted to try something new. (Pro-tip: if you haven't yet taken a CWR course, definitely consider applying for one before graduating). Creative writing is, in many ways, a break from academic writing.

  13. Creative Writing Seniors Reading: Poetry, Translation & Screenwriting

    Seniors in Princeton's renowned Program in Creative Writing read from the screenplays or collections of poems or translations written as their senior independent work under mentorship of professional writers on the faculty. ... Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey 08544 Contact Tel (609) 258-4717

  14. Creative Writing: Life, By the Book

    Often writing from midnight to 4 a.m. while working in a lab during the day, Li completed a short-story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Random House). The book's 10 stories, set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States, explore the effects of Communism and the role of fate in the lives of a wide variety of ...

  15. Grad Program in Creative Writing

    Degree Information. A Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing takes from one to two years, and requires a thesis and often a comprehensive exam in English Literature. A Master of Fine Arts usually takes two to four years (though students can sometimes apply credits from an M.A.) and usually requires a manuscript of publishable quality.

  16. Creative Writing

    Typically works of fiction, creative writing spans different genres and styles and can include short stories, novels, poetry, plays and scripts. Creative writing can be any type of written work that is not technical or analytical. The skills you develop through practice and critique of your written work can prepare you for many career paths ...

  17. Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (LA)

    Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (LA) Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (LA) Subject associations. CWR 205 / COM 249 / TRA 204. Term. Fall 2023. Instructors. Jenny McPhee. ... Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. 609-258-7799. JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. Follow Us. Instagram;

  18. Empowering voices: the future of creative writing at Rice University

    The creative writing program is a catalyst for that exploration and discovery, empowering students to engage with a myriad of topics and formats while honing their skills as storytellers. For example, on the nonfiction side, Laymon's spring 2024 course titled "Verses/Versus: Miseducation of Lauryn Hill v. good kid m.A.A.d. city (or 1998 vs ...

  19. 2024 Duke English Creative Writing Scholarship Awards

    2024 Creative Writing Scholarship Recipients: Frances Pemberton Scholarship. Awarded to a junior or senior pursuing the study of creative writing. This scholarship was created by the Trustees of The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation in memory and in honor of Francis Pemberton's service to the Biddle Foundation. Ryan Copeland, '25.