Vibrant Writers Community at Undergrad Level?

Parents Forum
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<p>My daughter is looking for an excellent liberal arts education that will also help her develop as a fiction writer. She has found that she loves being part of a vibrant writers community. We've read all the old threads suggesting which colleges offer the best creative writing programs. Does anyone have actual experience with those programs, and an opinion about whether the school facilitates a writers community at the undergrad level? </p>

<p>So, for instance, Wesleyan has the Shapiro Writing Center, that offers an actual physical space for creative writers. So does Penn, with its Kelly House. Both are welcoming, active, diverse and non-competitive. Brown also has such a house (and a Creative writing major!) but prides itself on being avant garde -- does that mean it is less diverse? Most good schools invite writers to speak and offer some creative writing courses, but seem to leave the students to organize themselves to do workshopping outside of those classes, and there is no gathering space. And because the creative writing classes are small, they seem to be hard to get into at many schools. </p>

<p>(My daughter's GPA is 3.9, her SAT is 2320. She has won many Scholastic awards for her writing and has finished her first novel.) Thanks so much for any information and opinions!</p>

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<p>I would also suggest doing some research on community based writing clubs in various areas. Obviously the quality of those are going to range, but you can find some pretty active groups that have good reputations.</p>

<p>I don’t know how the writing community is at Washington U in St. Louis but I do know of a very active, very successful writing group in that area, for example.</p>

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<p>Look at Goucher, Beloit, Knox, Bard, Bennington, Marlboro, Hampshire for LACs.</p>

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<p>There are very few liberal arts curriculum colleges and universities that don’t at least try to offer a quality creative writing program, and no shortage of quality writers who are willing to accept payment for teaching students.</p>

<p>It is true that schools rarely offer enough creative writing classes to truly meet demand, although at the ones with creative writing majors or concentration-areas within English I have never heard that majors/concentrators have problems. The issue for entry-level classes is whether or not admission is selective. If it isn’t, admission is by a lottery, and good writers can get excluded. If admission is selective, well . . . sometimes you aren’t selected. The colleges with serious writing programs all, I believe, have selective admission to writing courses. And serious writers tend to prefer them.</p>

<p>The other thing to look at is size. Brown probably has the largest program, but it also has a large MFA program, and there is a lot of use of MFA students to teach undergraduates. (Which is not necessarily bad, but is different from what other colleges do.)</p>

<p>I don’t know why you are fixated on a dedicated physical space. It’s nice marketing, but I’m not certain it is more than that.</p>

<p>Personally, I am wary of Creative Writing majors. I don’t think majors matter that much to what kids do after they graduate, but something about “Creative Writing” seems to communicate lack of seriousness to employers. I know several Creative Writing majors who have been utterly unsuccessful in obtaining meaningful employment, notwithstanding having fancy names on their diplomas. And I don’t think the writing/publishing world accepts Creative Writing BAs as anything remotely like a quality MFA.</p>

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<p>Have you looked at Penn? The Kelly Writers House might be interesting to you. </p>

<p>[Highlights</a> for prospective students](<a href=“http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/highlights/prospective.php]Highlights”>Highlights for prospective students)</p>

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<p>Take a look at Kenyon.</p>

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<p>The first school I think of re: writing is Kenyon College.</p>

<p>[Creative</a> Writing at Kenyon - The Kenyon Review - Kenyon College](<a href=“http://www.kenyon.edu/x23958.xml]Creative”>http://www.kenyon.edu/x23958.xml)</p>

<p>Hunt GMTA!</p>

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<p>Take a look at Oberlin, too.</p>

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<p>You can also check out U Rochester; the city has this: [Writers</a> & Books- Welcome](<a href=“http://www.wab.org/]Writers”>http://www.wab.org/).</p>

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<p>Thanks for all the very helpful suggestions, many are not on her list – will check them out. </p>

<p>JHS- I’m grateful for your comment about Creative Writing looking like a flimsy major to employers. I admit I hadn’t even thought about career paths on the other side. At least with an English major, there are other writing jobs. </p>

<p>As for the physical space, I hadn’t thought of it before we began visiting schools, but my daughter responded very differently when she saw a lounge where students gather to read and share writing, and the school funded a recent graduate to staff the center and coordinate activities. The bulletin boards were full of writing/literature activities and the kids walking in knew they’d find compatriots, and be passing by the open doors of famous visiting writers. Maybe it just helped her feel at home and welcome, but I think a physical space does build community and connection, and that trust is very helpful to the experience of sharing and workshopping student writing.</p>

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<p>Barnard turns out more successful writers than any other undergraduate institution. Two recent award winners are Jhumpi Lahiri and Edwidge Dandicant. </p>

<p>I really encourage you to look into the statistics and facts about this.</p>

<p>The chair of the English Department, Mary Gordon, won the Pulizter? or National Book Award? I’m too lazy to check which.</p>

<p>And at Barnard, one must major in English with a Creative Writing Concentration. I think it should be this way from my experience as a poet and novelist. Reading helps writing. That’s just the way it is.</p>

<p>The writers give many public readings along with professional alumni writers like Anna Quindlen who served at the midnight breakfast every year my daughter attended Barnard. My D was not a writing or English major but is now at work on a novel. The atmosphere at Barnard just encourages writers.</p>

<p>However, lest I seem Barnard-chauvinist, I will also suggest what others have: Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, Bard, New College of Florida, Yale (Joyce Carol Oates did wonders for Jonathan Safran Foer’s career), Princeton (looking for more arty kids and had Toni Morrison there for many years), Williams (Andrea Barrett is there). Kenyon is also a good choice.</p>

<p>Writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, though, and a great education that teaches a lot of things will produce interesting writing. Pynchon and Vonnegut were at Cornell (Engineering – Pynchon; Chemistry then Antho – Vonnegut) and Richard Powers (Biology – then English) was at University of Illinois. </p>

<p>Life experience is more precious to a writer than a creative writing class so I think you D should go where she is most inspired in many ways.</p>

<p>I have not been impressed by the English majors from Brown. To be clear, it’s not the kids I haven’t been impressed with, it’s the way the education is structured.</p>

<p>Sorry to be so opinionated, it’s just something dear to my heart that I’ve thought a lot about. If you any questions about Barnard or writing programs, please PM me.</p>

<p>The most famous writing program is Iowa. I’m not sure if it improves a young person’s writing the most, but it certainly improves his/her chances of being published.</p>

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<p>^wise advice from a literature professor and writer, too modest to mention her own credentials to a new member</p>

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<p>

I think your best bet for getting published is to have one published writer in your court. I had a friend in college not known at all for it’s support for creative writing (they offered one creative writing class at the time). Her professor introduced her to a publisher and she had two books published before she graduated. She was a music major, by the way, though she took a lot of English classes and went to Divinity School later.</p>

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<p>Kenyon, many LAC but this one stands out.</p>

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<p>A few points of clarification:</p>

<p>Iowa is the gold standard for writing programs, but it’s the Iowa MFA, not its BFA or BA program. And it clearly does improve one’s chances for publication, but it’s also about as selective as a Supreme Court clerkship.</p>

<p>Joyce Carol Oates is at Princeton, not Yale, and has been there for at least a decade. (And Toni Morrison hasn’t been there for awhile.) Oates wrote movingly about her Princeton writing students in her recent memoir, and she sounds like a wonderful teacher.</p>

<p>Pynchon may have started at Cornell as an engineer, but he finished as an English major. A high school English teacher I knew was a TA in a class he took as a senior, and was present in a meeting where he was offered a fellowship and a spot in Cornell’s (then really highly regarded) PhD program, which he turned down because he wanted to try writing.</p>

<p>Two programs that I think have high-quality reputations, and that haven’t been mentioned yet, are Johns Hopkins and Carnegie-Mellon. When my daughter was thinking about transferring to someplace with a better creative writing program, those schools, and Barnard, Penn, and Brown, were essentially her list.</p>

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<p>Thanks JHS for the corrections.</p>

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<p>A couple corrections. Unlike what JHS said, Brown’s MFA program is one of the smallest, admitting 10 or less students each year, all genres combined. Iowa’s very famous program, cited above, is a grad program, and one of the largest in the country. I’m not sure its illustrious line-up of writers teach undergrad at all.</p>

<p>Most LACs don’t have grad MFA’s, so any writing program they have will be geared to undergrads. Some grad programs do share their faculties with undergrad; I have an acquaintance now majoring in CW at Michigan who has taken many classes with the same instructors from its MFA (usually ranked one of the top three in the country.)</p>

<p>I suggest looking at the semester schedules of the schools mentioned by posters, such as Oberlin, Kenyon, Wesleyan, Barnard, etc. and see what’s actually scheduled each semester–as opposed to what’s in the course bulletin. that should give you an idea of how pervasive the programs are. </p>

<p>All CW programs (most English programs) will have published authors, so having one “in your court” is not dependent on where you go, but on being the writer they want to mentor. Hard to tell who/where that might happen ahead of time.</p>

<p>I agree with Mythmom that a broad education and life experiences are huge assets (they are for everything, actually.)</p>

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<p>Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland has a creative writing minor and the Rose O’Neill Literary House. It’s a small LAC, and she would probably get some good merit aid with her stats. They also have the Sophie Kerr prize ($64,000) “for the graduating senior who has the best ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor.” They also bring in a lot of well known writers for classes and workshops.</p>

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<p>Pomona or Claremont-McKenna are also schools I recommend to folks looking for writing. The late David Foster Wallace taught at Pomona, alongside the novelist Jonathan Lethem. The wonderful author Jamaica Kinkaid is departmental chair at CMC, where the department is chock-full of prize-winning Pushcart, PEN, and Stegner-award winning authors/writers, such as Katharine Noel (who wrote Halfway House, a great novel) and the novelist/short story-ist Eric Puchner (plus some poets). It’s definitely not a “writer’s place” in the vein of Oberlin/Kenyon/Wesleyan/Brown, but I think it offers much too and has that LAC milieu.</p>

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<p>Just about every college or university has a bonafide, published writer on faculty – either tenured or visiting. The visitors tend to move from school to school, hence the updates above, so don’t choose a school because of a favorite author who may or may not be there when you attend. </p>

<p>In my opinion, your daughter should select the college/university that suits her in environment, culture and overall ambience. Academically rigorous schools will usually (always?) have very strong English departments and strong English departments will usually have creative writing concentrations and creative writing is usually taught by a published writer or two.</p>

<p>At an LAC you’ll be able to get upclose and personal to the faculty authors. (For example at Williams in addition to Andrea Barrett, who is visiting, you get Jim Shepard and Karen Shepard, who will most likely stay at Williams.)</p>

<p>But choose the right fit first, then zoom into the creative writing options.</p>