English and Creative Writing

Special topics classes across genres — and in new and evolving genres — ask students to engage in directed readings and sustained individual creative projects. We train students to engage with texts in the way that working writers do, dissolving the boundary between critical engagement and creative response and helping students discover that they grow as writers, as readers, and as human beings through explorations of both canonical and contemporary works of literature and through creative practice.

The reading and writing of literature are always in dynamic conversation, and we encourage students to produce work that references both the historical traditions of literature and the contemporary climate. As working writers, our faculty engage in projects that shift and develop over time and are informed by what we’re reading and what we discover as we write, as well as by the changing world around us. We prepare students to live and work as writers and to be more empathetic citizens and competent communicators, no matter what subjects they go on to study or what careers they pursue.