Courses in creative writing within the Arts Program are designed for students who wish to develop their skills and appreciation of creative writing in a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting) and for those intending to pursue studies in creative writing at the graduate level.
Any English major may include one Creative
Writing course in the major plan. Non-English majors may pursue a minor as
described under Degree Options. While there is no existing major in Creative Writing, exceptionally
well qualified students have completed majors in Creative Writing through
the Independent Major Program.
Spring Registration Information:
Please note, enrollment in the Creative Writing workshop is a three step process. Students must:
(1) preregister
(2) download and print a Creative Writing Program questionnaire from the Creative Writing homepage, complete this and drop it off (hard copy) to Professor Daniel Torday ’s faculty mailbox in English House by the end of the pre-registration period.
(3) attend the first meeting of the class in the Spring term. Note: Students applying to 300-level courses without having completed the corresponding 200-level course must submit a writing sample.
NEWS
Literary Contest Results, 2012
Academy of American Poets Prize
Co-Winner: Mowie Freeman (‘14), for a sequence of poems comprising: “greenhouse,” “on digging,” “I take this wanting by the tail,” “untitled,” “what river takes”
Co-Winner: Zebbie Watson (‘12), for a sequence of poems comprising: "Hole,” “Stopped Body,” “Elverson, Mid-Winter,” “Articulation,” “Sow Belly Trail””
Honorable Mention: Jessika Rieck (‘12), for a sequence of poems comprising: “Following Directions,” “aftermath,” “Gone Fishing,” “a long way from home,” “Living Spaces,” “ i’ve been gathering stones”
Honorable Mention: Mattie Wechsler (’14), for a sequence of poems comprising: “Pygmalion’s Wife,” “Unda Gravet Pennas,” “Figitur”
Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize
Winner: Lillie Estelle Williams (‘14) for “The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse”
Honorable Mention: Zebbie Watson (‘12) for “Hole”
Honorable Mention: Emily Gaudette (‘12) for “Back Seat in Ballygran”
Alexandra Peschka Prize
Winner: Hema Surendranathan (’14) for “Some Fires” (short story)
Honorable Mention: Hayley Burke (’15) for “The Party” (short story)
Honorable Mention: Mattie Wechsler (’14) for “Open Mind” (short story)
Anne Kirschbaum Winkelman Literary Prize
Winner: Hema Surendranathan (’14) for “Petunias”
Honorable Mention: Emily Gaudette (’12) for “Things I Haven’t Told the Guy I’ve Been Seeing”
Honorable Mention: Rose Heithoff (’12) for “Collision”
Katherine Fullerton Gerould Award
Winner: Zebbie Watson (’12) for “The Haircut” (short story)
Honorable Mention : Maria Aghazarian (’12), for “Redemption” (short story)
Honorable Mention : Lauren Smith (’12), for “The Sleeping Porch” (short story)
Honorable Mention : Hayley Burke (’15), for “Just Go” (short story)
Seymour Adelman Poetry Award
Winner: Emily Gaudette (’12), for a two-tiered project in which the poet leads a series of community workshops encouraging teens to use poetry as “a door-to-the-self,” then completes a chapbook of poems inspired by her relationship with the teens.
Honorable Mention: Brianna Nelson (’12) for an interdisciplinary project of poems and photographs written during a cross-country road trip resulting in the writer producing multiple copies of a handset, hand-bound artist’s book.
Richard Lattimore Prize for Poetic Translation
Winner: Gillian Diffenderfer
Winner: Molly Murry
--CWP Director Daniel Torday's novella The Sensualist has launched! Published by Nouvella Books. He will read from the book at Bryn Mawr on April 25, at 7pm, in the Goodhart Music Room. An excerpt of the book's first chapter appears in the March issue of the literary magazine The Collagist. The book's publisher gets an excellent profile in the new issue of Poets and Writers. You can find interviews with Torday, about the book, here and here. Also, here.
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--With great sadness, the Creative Writing Program learned this week that Florence "Flossie" Trefethen (BMC '43) has passed away. Flossie was a great champion of the arts, and of poetry in particular, at Bryn Mawr in the years after she graduated, and in the past decade made it possible for the CWP to offer a unique series of Poetry Master Classes. Her generosity and energy allowed a distinguished group of poets-- including Frank Bidart, Cornelius Eady, Marilyn Hacker, Yusef Komunyakaa, JD McClatchy, Paul Muldoon, Carol Muske-Dukes, Marie Ponsot, Mary Jo Salter, Sonia Sanchez and Gerald Stern-- to teach at Bryn Mawr. A professor of English at Tufts University, she was also the editor of two influential anthologies, The Little Brown Reader and Fairbank Remembered. Flossie's contribution to the literary life on Bryn Mawr's campus will not be forgotten. --The CWP
--Creative Writing professor Daniel Smith's essay on anxiety appears in The New York Times Week in Review.
--Creative Writing Program professor Elizabeth Mosier's novella The Playgroup published as part of Gemma Open Door Series. Mosier gave a reading to a packed audience in Bryn Mawr's Goodhart Music Room on March 14.
