English Department

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The Creative Writing Program

Just for PhD Students

Poets and Writers recently ranked our program the Number 1 Creative Writing PhD in the country (see link). DU's program in creative writing is one of the only writing programs in the country that focuses exclusively on doctoral study. All of the University of Denver's graduate students in Creative Writing are PhD students.

At other creative writing doctoral programs, MFA and MA students generally outnumber creative writing PhD students in workshops. We pitch our workshops and other courses to the sophisticated levels of students who have done an MA or MFA in creative writing elsewhere.

We no longer offer an MA in creative writing (and we've never had an MFA).

Education and Experimentation

At DU, two-thirds of the graduate students in the English Department are in creative writing. The creative writing, literature, and rhetoric and theory students all work closely together in courses and on other projects. We believe that the experience of writing is crucial to a profound appreciation of literature and theory.

We encourage students to regard genre in an open way, to experiment with hybrid genres, and to create new ones. We concentrate on writing first and categories later. We do workshops in cross-genre writing, travel writing, translation, book reviews, and prose poetry, as well as poetry and fiction.

More and more, the faculty regards the old workshop model as outmoded. All of our workshops integrate literature and writing, and we believe that all writing is creative writing.

Attracting Talented Writers

Our program has about twenty writers at any one time, and it offers an intimate writing community as well as a bracing academic experience. We are able to hand-pick students from a highly competitive pool of applicants, selecting six or seven strong and committed writers each year to become teaching fellows (we do not accept anyone without a teaching fellowship).