Creative Writing Program
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Overview Participation |
The Minor The Major |
Thesis Option The Faculty |
The School of Night Student Publications |
| See also: Creative Writing Program Website | |||
| PDF version of this brochure | Creative Writing FAQs | ||
| Undergraduate Departmental Representatives 2008-09: Miriam Cooper, Emily Jaeger, and Michelle Olney | |||
Overview
Creative Writing workshops have been taught at Brandeis since 1951. In 1977 Creative Writing became one of the English tracks, and in 2003 a major in its own right. It is also a popular choice in a minor.
Beginning in the Fall of 2003, the Department of English offers a B.A. in Creative Writing, as distinct form the B.A. in English, joining the select number of American universities to make this degree available to undergraduates. Unlike many comparable schools, however, the Brandeis program will be taught and administered entirely by established authors; poets, novelists, short story and non-fiction writers. The major consists of a combination of writing workshops, literature courses, studio art, and independent study, culminating in a body of creative work of high caliber, and a historical and contemporary grasp of literary currents. Under the thesis option, it culminates in a book-length thesis in poetry, fiction, or another literary genre, written under the close supervision of a Creative Writing faculty member over the two semesters of the senior year.
Brandeis’s exceptional offerings in creative writing are not limited to those wishing to major in the subject. Any student, in any field, may apply to a Creative Writing workshop at any time in her or his career at the university, or may choose the program as a minor. The program offers up to nine workshops annually, and interested undergraduates are invited to submit samples of their work. Eligibility extends to freshmen, who may send in their writing samples in August, immediately prior to the fall semester. All submissions will be carefully screened by our distinguished roster of authors, and no more than twelve individuals will be admitted to each workshop. Students should inquire at the English Department, (781.736.2130, or chaucer @ brandeis.edu.) for application guidelines for each course.
The Brandeis English Department has a long and enviable tradition of hospitality to creative writers, unmatched in 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 Stephen McCauley, 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, Gloria Naylor, Carolyn Forché, Mark Doty, Louise Glück, Thylias Moss, Jay Wright, and Marilyn Hacker. Among our graduates are the poets Allen Grossman, who was also a shaping force in the department and program for over 30 years, shaping and feeding so many of the writers we are proud of: Linda Pastan, Alicia Ostriker, and Mary Leader; the playwright and screenwriter Teresa Rebeck; the poet, fiction-writer and memoirist Shirley Geok-Lin Lim; and Ha Jin who won the National Book Award with his novel Waiting. In 2003, Brandeis celebrated its 50 years of sponsoring the Creative Arts with public readings by such celebrated writers as Ha Jin, J.M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature that spring, Russell Banks, and Li Young Lee.
The School of Night reading series brings several outstanding writers to campus each year to read their work and meet with students, and there is lively campus literary activity, including student-sponsored readings, workshops, festivals, coffeehouses, poetry slams, literary magazines such as Laurel Moon, Pseudonym, and Where the Children Play, as well as WBRS and theater productions.
Recent majors have received honorific graduate fellowships at Cornell, Syracuse, Michigan, Arizona, and Washington Universities, among others. Graduates from the mid-nineties Mary Leader and Ross Martin have published books of poetry and/or fiction, Ha Jin has earned a national Book Award, and Mytili Jagannathan has been awarded a $50,000 Pew Fellowship in the Arts for her poetry. Several more are teaching Creative Writing in schools such as Tufts, Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Bentley College. Yael Shinar, 2003, won a St. Botolph Club Literary award upon graduation. Our strength is the rigorous passion of our students to hone, explore, challenge and pursue their art, and the excellence of our faculty, both in their literary endeavors and their commitment to teaching.
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Participation in the Program
The Creative Writing Program is structured to allow flexible participation in its activities by a diverse body of students, whose interest or commitment may vary in nature or over time.
We are excited to have had students from fields as different as Neuroscience, Judaic Studies, Economics, Psychology, Fine Arts, Languages, Literature, Biology, Chemistry, Pre-med., Law, AAAS, Women’s Studies, Sociology, or Classics
Participation can be as informal as attending readings and other public events, to submitting work for the literary magazines or attending a festival or a poetry slam, to meeting with a poet or writer in residence, to taking a workshop or literature course offered by our faculty, to taking as many of our courses as one might have time and energy for, to declaring a minor concentration, to applying for the Creative Writing major.
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The Minor
Any student may minor in Creative Writing by fulfilling the following requirements:
a) Three writing courses in Poetry or Fiction conducted as workshops. Such courses facilitate writing under direction in a creative and critical community, and are offered exclusively on a Credit/No Credit basis.
b) Two literature courses in the Department of English to complement the student’s interest.
c) No transfer credits or cross-listed courses are accepted toward the minor in Creative Writing.
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The Major
The major may be declared at the completion of a minimum of three courses in directed writing and of ENG 11a, Literary Method.
Ten semester courses are required, including the following:
a) A semester course in literary method, ENG 11a, which should be taken as early as possible.
b) A minimum of four semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or theater): ENG 19a, ENG 19b, ENG 39a ENG 109a, ENG 109b, ENG 119a, ENG 119b, ENG 129a, ENG 129b, THA 104a; one of these courses may be fulfilled by an independent study (ENG 98a or b) in the student’s senior year. At least one course, preferably two, in directed writing must be completed before the end of the sophomore year. A student may take as many workshops as she or he might like, but two must be concluded before the beginning of the senior year. No more than one course in directed writing can be taken in any semester in the same genre. Two such courses may be taken in different genres. All Directed Writing courses are by instructor’s signature, and require a manuscript submission. Majors are not guaranteed entry to such courses outside the selection process of each.
c) One course in foundational texts; either ENG 10a or HUM 10a.
d) One course in world Anglophone literature taught in the English language. For the purpose of this requirement, world literature includes literature written in English outside the United States and England (e.g., Irish, Canadian, Australian, Indian, African, or Caribbean literature). Other courses may also be suitable; students with questions should consult the director of Creative Writing.
Selected World literature courses: ENG 17b, 77b, 107a, 111b, 127a, 147b, 197b, AAAS 132b, 133b, 134b. Please note that ENG 10a and HUM 10a do not count as world literature courses for this major.
e) Two English electives.
f) An elective course in a studio or performing art.
g) Advanced placement credits do not count toward the major.
h) A maximum of three courses taught by persons other than members of the faculty of the English and American literature department may be counted towards the major, of which only one may be a workshop. This restriction includes courses taken while studying abroad, cross-listed courses, and transfer credits.
i) No course with a final grade below C- can count toward fulfilling the major requirements in Creative Writing.
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Poetry or Fiction Thesis Option
Poetry or Fiction Thesis Option: Eleven semester courses are required. The directed writing requirement is reduced to a minimum of three semester courses in directed writing (poetry, prose, or both): ENG 19a, ENG 19b, ENG 39a, ENG 109a, ENG 109b, ENG 119a, ENG 119b, ENG 129a, ENG 129b, THA 104a), and the satisfactory completion of two semesters of Senior Creative Writing Thesis (ENG 96D), is added:
ENG 96d (Senior Creative Writing Thesis). The student will produce, under the direction of his or her advisor, a body of writing (usually a book of poems, collection of stories, or a novel) of appropriate scope (two semesters). The writing is expected to be of high imaginative caliber, rigorously conceived and crafted. The Poetry or Fiction Thesis Option major also requires an essay on a tutorial bibliography: a list of 8-12 books, chosen by the candidate in collaboration with the thesis advisor and/or the director of Creative Writing. The essay will be due at the end of the senior year, along with the thesis.
Admission to the Poetry or Fiction Thesis Option in Creative Writing is by application only. Admission will be decided by the Creative Writing faculty on completion by the student of at least one course, preferably two, in directed writing. The deadline for admission is at the end of April of the sophomore year. Students are notified by the end of the spring examination period. Recommendations for honors in the Creative Writing major are made to the English department by the Creative Writing faculty, based on the student's work as exemplified by the senior thesis.
The Creative Writing Committee, in selecting students for the thesis, evaluates native talent, aspiration and discipline, as evidenced in submitted work and attested to by writers the student has studied with. It also evaluates whether the student is in that phase of creative development that is leading toward the massive closure a book-length effort requires. Some students of exceptional talent are better served by the regular major, with its expansive modality, if they are in a phase of rapid imaginative or stylistic development that would be arrested by the formalizing nature of conceiving and finalizing a book. It is fair, here, to quote from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life on the subject of writing a book in a year, an event so rare in a writer's lifetime that those who experience it refer to it ever after “with awe, almost whispering. ... Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms."
Application to the Thesis Option is made at the end of the sophomore year, usually by the end of April -- inquire at the English Department for each year’s deadline date. Admission will be decided by the Creative Writing Committee, on completion by the student of at a minimum of one course in directed writing. Students should submit a sample of work: 20 pages of poetry, or 35-50 pages of fiction (e.g., two short stories, or a chapter of a novel), as well as a transcript of courses taken to date. Students are notified of the results by the end of the spring examination period.
A student majoring in Creative Writing may double-major in English and American literature, or may minor in English, American and Anglophone literature. Please consult the Bulletin for more specific course information for double-major requirements, or for major-minor combinations.
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The Faculty
Olga Broumas
M.F.A. University of Oregon
Poet-in-Residence, and Co-Director of Creative Writing
Rave: Poems 1975-1999
Eros, Eros, Eros, collected translations of Odysseas Elytis (1998)
Olga Broumas: a Compact Disk, featuring selections from the above
works
Open Papers, translated essays of Odysseas Elytis, with T Begley
(1995)
Sappho's Gymnasium, collaborative poetry with T Begley (1994)
Perpetua (1989)
The Little Mariner (Elytis translations, 1988)
What I Love (Elytis translations, 1986)
Black Holes, Black Stockings (prose poems, with Jane Miller, 1985)
Pastoral_Jazz (1983)
If I Yes (audio tape, 1981)
Soie Sauvage (1980)
Beginning with O (1977)
Caritas (1976)
Restlessness (1967) (in Greek)
Professor John Burt
Ph.D. Yale
Work Without Hope (poems, 1996).
The Way Down (poems 1988)
The Collected Poetry of Robert Penn Warren (1999)
After the Southern Renascence (a section of the Cambridge History of American Literature)
Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (1988)
Professor Mary Baine Campbell
Ph.D. Boston University
Trouble, (poetry, 2002)
Wonder and Science: Representing Worlds in Early Modern Europe,
(1999)
Are Sin, Disease and Death Real? (chapbook featured in Black
Warrior Review, spring 1993)
The World the Flesh and Angels (poetry, 1989)
The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel
Writing, 400-1600 (1988)
Co-editor of Begetting Images: Studies in the Art and Science of Symbol
Production (1989)
Gish Jen
M.F.A. Iowa Writer's Workshop
Fiction Writer-in-Residence, and Co-Director of Creative Writing
The Love Wife (2004)
Who's Irish (2000)
Mona in the Promised Land (1996)
Typical American (1991)
Stephen McCauley
M.F.A. Columbia University
Fiction-Writer-in-Residence
Novels:
After the Fact (2006) Film adaptation scheduled for shooting 2006, Films A4, Paris.
True Enough (2001)
The Man of the House (1997)
The Easy Way Out (1992)
The Object of My Affection (1988) Film adaptation released in 1998, 20th Century Fox.
Fannie Hurst Visiting Writers in Residence
Fannie Hurst Visiting Writers in Residence
Each year, a poet and a fiction writer of national renown join the Creative Writing faculty as the Fannie Hurst Visiting poet or writer in residence, offering four workshops during the academic year. In 2008-2009 these writers are Franz Wright and Thisbe Nissen. Recent Fannie Hurst Visiting writers include, Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, Jay Wright, Henri Cole, Louise Glück, Marcie Hershman, Margot Livesey, and Stephen McCauley.
Visiting Writers at Brandeis 2008-2009
Fannie Hurst Fiction Writer in Residence
Thisbe Nissen is the author of Osprey Island (2005), The Good People of New York (2001), and Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night, which was the recipient of the 1999 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her work has also been published in Short Story Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly, Glamour, and Vogue. Thisbe has taught at the Iowa Young Writer’s workshop at the University of Iowa, and also at Columbia University. She also co-authored The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook with Erin Ergenbright.
Jacob Ziskind Visiting Poet in Residence
Franz Wright author of Walking To Martha’s Vineyard, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004; The Beforelife, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002; Ill Lit: Selected and New, 1998; Entry In An Unknown Hand, 1989; The Earth Without You, 1980; and several smaller collections. Two new books, God’s Silence, and Early Poems, were published in 2006.
Franz Wright is also a noted translator, primarily from the French and German, especially well-known for his translations of Rainer Maria Rilke, The Unknown Rilke, and The Life of Mary, as well as volumes of Erica Pedretti, Rene Char, and Hermann Hesse, the latter in collaboration with his father, the late poet James Wright. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his honors include The Denise Levertov Award, the Pen/Faulkner Award, a Witter Bynner Award, a Whiting Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Visiting Writer in Residence
Melanie Braverman is the author of Red, a collection of poetry that won the Audre Lorde Prize last spring from Publishers Triangle Consortium, and was nominated for both a Lambda Literary Prize and a Los Angeles Times Book Award in 2003. She is also the author of the novel East Justice, and the prose chapbook The Rains Of Home. She has had over a dozen one-woman shows of her visual artwork, and been included in many invitational and honorary group shows. Among her honors are two fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and two grants from the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation.
Visiting Writer
Marc Weinberg is screenwriter who has worked on projects for the Discovery Channel, the A&E Network, the USA Network, and Dick Clark Productions. He was a Script Analyst for 20th Century Fox Studios, and has taught screenwriting to students at Colleges and Universities across the country. A working member of the Writers Guild of America, he “emphasizes both the technical craft of writing for film and television, and the practical issues of breaking into the historically competitive entertainment industry.”
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The School of Night
The reading series of the Creative Writing Program, featuring distinguished poets and fiction writers, as well as student events, such as the By Heart festival of poetry recited from memory, and the Graduating Seniors reading. Recent authors featured in the series include J.M. Coetzee, Li Young Lee, Denis Johnson, Amy Bloom, A.J. Verdelle, Russell Banks, Ha Jin, Allen Grossman, Eleni Sikelianos, Laird Hunt, Mark Doty, Louise Glück, Grace Paley, Jessica Hagedorn, Anne Waldman, and Elizabeth McCracken.
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Student Publications
Laurel Moon -- poetry and fiction.
Pseudonym -- poetry, fiction, drawings, photographs.
Where The Children Play -- poetry, stories, art, photography.
For more information on specifics of deadlines and events please contact the Department of English at 781-736-2130, or at chaucer_@_brandeis.edu.
To receive announcements of readings and events, send an email to join-schoolofnight @ lists.brandeis.edu.
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this page updated June 24, 2008