DU's Program in Creative Writing is the only writing program 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 (recent PhD students have come from Brown, Iowa, the Art Institute of Chicago, Syracuse, U-Mass-Amherst, Florida, and many other celebrated MFA programs).  We no longer offer an MA in creative writing (and we've never had an MFA).

At DU, a little more than half 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.  The doctoral program in creative writing at the University of Denver resembles a pure mathematics or philosophy PhD.  Our students do a good deal of hard critical reading and research, and some of them write and publish traditional literary critical works.  But we also prepare them as writers, just as a philosophy program prepares philosophers, who think and apply their historical knowledge to contemporary problems.  Our PhD is a theoretical doctorate, an experience that builds creative thinking.

Our program has about eighteen 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 strong and committed writers each year to become teaching fellows (we do not accept anyone without a teaching fellowship).

Here is a history of the program.

And here are some frequently asked questions (and answers) for applicants to the English Department.

Congratulations to Janet Bland, a recent alum of the program, who is a finalist for the Colarado Book Award (Best Fiction) this year for her book of stories, A Fish Full of River.

Current Faculty

Eleni Sikelianos, Director of the Creative Writing Program and poet, author of The California Poem, The Book of Jon, The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls, among other books.  A page on Eleni Sikelianos.  Email: esikelia@du.edu

Bin Ramke, poet, editor of The Denver Quarterly, and author of Tendril, Matter, Airs, Waters, Places, Wake, and Massacre of the Innocents, among many other books.  Bin Ramke's home page.  Email: bramke@du.edu

Brian Kiteley, fiction writer, who has published The 3 AM Epiphany, Still Life With Insects, and I Know Many Songs, But I Cannot Sing.  Brian Kiteley's home page.  Email: bkiteley@du.edu

Bill Zaranka, poet and author of A Mirror Driven Through Nature and Blessing; editor of The Brand-X Anthology of Poetry, A Parody Anthology, and The Brand-X Anthology of Fiction.  Email: bzaranka@du.edu

Laird Hunt, fiction writer and author of The Exquisite, The Impossibly, and Indiana, Indiana, among other books.  Here's a recent interview.  The Laird Hunt page.  Email: lhunt@du.edu

Selah Saterstrom, fiction writer and author of The Meat and Spirit Plan and The Pink Insitution.  Her home page.  Here's an interview of Selah.

Nuts and Bolts

The Creative Writing Program offers a challenging intellectual experience with most of the same requirements as the Literary Studies PhD  There are two principal differences: 1) The dissertation is a body of creative work with a short critical preface or afterword (more below).  2) The coursework includes four workshops over a three-year period (with one of those workshops out of the writer's genre).  This is not a studio program.  Workshops do not occur nearly as often they do in an MFA program.  But everything students do during their coursework seems to interact with their writing.

The preface or afterword of the creative dissertation is a critical essay of approximately 25 pages, which may cover any subject reasonably connected to but not directly engaging the creative work of the candidate, such as a group of writings, a genre, a school of writers, an historical theme, theory, style, or diction  This will be an exercise in publishable literary criticism or a more informal literary essay, which demonstrates the candidate's professional maturity.

We offer an environment for writers who are also serious and cross-disciplinary readers.  We believe writers are enriched by a heady diet great literature―both from the past and very contemporary―in conjunction with philosophy, history, critical and aesthetic theory, anthropology, art history, and the history of science.  We teach students to read constantly, think hard, but only rarely self-consciously put that reading and thinking into their writing.  Instead we believe it is the mind behind the work that is altered and will in turn eventually alter the writing.

Each teaching fellow receives three years of full scholarship aid.  Adjunct teaching positions are usually available after the three years of coursework.  We also offer the $11,000 Evan Frankel Award to one fourth-year student in either creative writing or literary studies.

Applicants to the Creative Writing Program must take both the Graduate Record Exams and the English Subject test of the GRE's.  Applicants who have not completed these exams before the application deadline may not be considered (at the very least applicants should have signed up for the April GRE subject test).

Frequently asked questions (and answers) for applicants to the English Department.

The deadline for applications to the Creative Writing program is February 1.

A Variety of Teaching Experiences

Graduate students teach an unusual variety of courses: several types of creative writing workshops, literary studies courses, and undergraduate tutorials.  First-year teaching fellows do not teach courses (they tutor in the new writing center and they assist a senior professor in one course, as a true TA).  Second-year and third-year fellows teach creative writing courses and a wide range of other types of classes.  The teaching load is three courses a year (over three quarters).  Graduate students can also assist various department faculty (The Denver Quarterly, the director of creative writing, and several other assistantships, which reduces the teaching load to two courses a year).  Our teaching fellows have the opportunity to craft and personalize many of their own classes. 

Alumni

Alumni of the writing program include Heather McHugh, Es'kia Mphahlele, Njabulo Ndebele, Mark Harris, Reginald McKnight, Maureen McCoy, Nicholas Samaras, Annie Dawid, Michael White, Paul Kafka, Kristen Iversen, Christine Hume, Malinda Markham, Dan Beachy-Quick, Catherine Kasper, Amy England, Jen Bervin, Joanna Howard, Richard Greenfield, J. Eric Miller, Janet Bland, and Aaron Gwyn.

2007-2008 Visiting Writers

All events are free and open to the public.  The readings are in Room 451, Sturm Hall, at 7:30pm, all Friday nights, unless otherwise noted.  Sturm Hall is on the corner of Race and Asbury.  Room 451 is on the fourth floor, toward the southern end of the building, above Davis Auditorium, down the hall from the English Department central office.

FALL, 2007

October 3 (Wed): Scott Blackwood, fiction writer, 4pm, Evans Chapel (which is just south of the new Hotel Restaurant Management Bldg, half a block south of Evans, off High Street)

October 12 (Fri): Peter Cole, poet and translator (here's a link to a review by Marjorie Perloff of Peter's recent book The Dream of the Poem in Book Forum), 7:30 pm, Sturm Hall 451

November 2: Graduate student reading, 7:30 pm, Sturm Hall 451

November 8: CU-Boulder 4X4 graduate student reading: Jen Tynes

WINTER, 2008

February 15th: Graduate student reading, 7:30 pm: Shawn Huelle & Richard Froude & Chris Merkner

February  22: Graduate student reading, 7:30 pm: Naropa 4x4 with Laura Davenport

March 7: Dominique Fabre, fiction writer

March 14: Graduate student reading, 7:30 pm: Chris Narozny & Tina Celona & Rachel King

SPRING, 2008

April 4: The Harry Mathews reading has been cancelled.

April 11: DU 4x4 graduate student reading, 7:30 pm

April 18: Eileen Myles and Maureen Owen, poets, at 7:30 pm

May 16: Graduate student reading, 7:30 pm: Erik Anderson & Sara Veglahn & Greg Howard

Recent Visitors

The 2006-2007 visitors were Rebecca Brown, Anne Waldman, Brenda Coultas, Dara Wier, Gary Lutz, and Bhanu Kapil.

The 2005-2006 visitors were Lydia Davis, Robert Glück, Lance Olsen, Don Revell, and Claudia Keelan.

The English department hosted the Attention/Inattention Graduate Critique and Creativity Conference this October 7-9, 2005.  The plenary speakers were Anne Carson and Marjorie Perloff.  For information about the conference, click here.

In the last dozen years, these luminaries have visited: Aleksandar Hemon, Shelley Jackson, Richard Powers, Jorie Graham, Cliff Chase, George Saunders, Rosmarie Waldrop, Michael Palmer, Keith Waldrop, Bei Dao, Michael Martone, Diane Williams, Su Friedrich, Lynne Tillman, Joan Retallack, Grace Paley, Ben Marcus, Marjorie Perloff, James Welch, Diane Williams, Patricia Powell, Forrest Gander, Elizabeth Robinson, Jennifer Moxley, Steve Evans, Catherine Wagner, Martin Corless-Smith, Steve McCaffery, Charles Simic, C.D. Wright, John Yau, Harry Mathews, Lyn Hejinian, Eli Gottlieb, Amitav Ghosh, Mary Caponegro, Czeslaw Milosz, Arthur Sze, Carole Maso, Erin Moure, Josip Novakovich, Laura Mullen,  John Ashbery, Alphonso Lingis, and Robert Creeley.

Recent Long Term and Visiting Faculty

Cole Swensen, Brian Evenson, Rikki Ducornet, Beth Nugent, Robert Glück, Cecilia Vicuňa,  Elizabeth Willis, Donald Revell, Mark Irwin, William Wiser, Ann Lauterbach, and Susan Howe