The Brandeis English Department has a long and enviable tradition of hospitality to creative writers, unmatched for universities of its size. J.V. Cunningham, a well-known poet and Renaissance scholar, was a founding member of the department in 1949. The current faculty includes poet-in-residence Olga Broumas, fiction writer-in-residence Gish Jen and the poets John Burt and Mary Baine Campbell.

In addition, two writers of national renown join the department each year as the Fannie Hurst Visiting writers-in-residence. Examples include Alice Walker, Sharon Olds, Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, John Irving, Adrienne Rich, Geoffrey Wolff, Galway Kinnell, Jill McCorkle, Carolyn Forché, Mark Doty, Louise Glück, and Marilyn Hacker. This year our visitors are Franz Wright and Thisbe Nissen

Among our graduates are the poets Allen Grossman, Linda Pastan, Alicia Ostriker, and Mary Leader; the playwright and screenwriter Teresa Rebeck; and Ha Jin who won the the Pen/Faulkner Award for War Trash and the National Book Award with his novel Waiting.