What is the Creative Writing Major?
The creative writing major, housed primarily in the English Department, offers courses in fiction, poetry, dramatic scripts, and Internet literature. The English Department's creative writing courses are designed to help students develop the knowledge and skills appropriate for writing sophisticated and engaging texts in a variety of genres. The creative writing program includes the following enriching programs and activities:
- Topics in Creative Writing offers introductory courses in several genres, including short story, popular fiction, youth fiction, playwriting, fantasy, and writing for the Internet (e.g. blog fiction and hypertext literature). One example is the fantasy class e-magazine, Fantasticoe.
- Workshops in fiction, poetry, and scriptwriting.
- Frequent opportunities to meet famous and new poets, storytellers, and playwrights. Recent visitors include Marvin Bell, Mary Swander, John Updike, Z.Z. Packer, Jorie Graham, T.C. Boyle, Chris Offutt, and Kevin Moffett.
- Editing a literary magazine, a year-round activity course organized around the publication of The Coe Review. Students learn all aspects of magazine publication: selecting, editing, design, layout, publicity, finance, printing, correspondence, and personnel management.
- Student readings. There are multiple opportunities for students to present their work in public, including student organized programs such as Blindspot and course-centered readings by students in workshops. The Creative Writing program emphasizes oral presentation as an important skill for creative writers, who need to develop "ears" for fine writing as well as skills of oral interpretation.
