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With a faculty composed of renowned scholars and dedicated teachers, the MIT Literature section offers a wide range of courses across time periods, international cultures, and languages. Literature courses at MIT examine how novels, poems, plays, films, visual art, and other media make imaginative and critical sense of history and the present.

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The Literature concentration takes about three approved subjects to complete! Lit concentrators often go on to minoring or majoring in Literature!

Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She won the Pulitzer in 1988 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

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Frank Stella’s “Loohooloo” (1995) conference room located at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning references Herman Melville’s novel, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Sea .

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MIT Writing & Communication Center

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Writing and Communication Center offers a number of programs to the wide community of MIT undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, and staff, which include:

• Individual Consultations on oral, visual, and written projects (see how consultations work here and check available sessions here )
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• WCC Blog “Like It Or Not, Writing Is…” hosted by Amanda Sobel, a WCC lecturer, scholar, and writer, shares important insight about writing and the writing process. Please join us in reading her blog .

We’ll help you succeed with:

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Prospective Students

Comparative Media Studies/Writing is at the vanguard of media and writing education and practice.

We’re home to some of the world’s great talents: Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz , digital media scholars-and-makers Fox Harrell and Nick Montfort , ethnographer T.L. Taylor , fiction writer Helen Elaine Lee , science writers Tom Levenson and Seth Mnookin , and many others .

CMS/W is where the humanities rise from the page and canvas into what we call “applied humanities”.

We also feature more than half a dozen research groups , where the humanities rise from the page and canvas into what we call “applied humanities”—work developed by faculty, staff researchers, and students who together produce games, tools for civic action, code for data visualization, documentary filmmaking, and much more.

As you look through our degree offerings below, you might ask, “What’s in a slash? Is CMS/W one thing or two?” The answer is…yes. As an undergraduate, you’ll major in either Comparative Media Studies, Creative Writing, Science Writing, or Digital Media. As a graduate student, you’ll graduate with a degree in Comparative Media Studies or Science Writing. Likewise, your curriculum will be shaped to meet the requirements of those courses of study.

But the faculty , lecturers , staff , research groups , subject offerings , events , and thus the ethos of CMS/W contribute to form a single unit.

And now the nitty gritty about the degree programs themselves, how to major, and how to apply…

Degrees and Majors

Comparative media studies, undergraduate major, minor or concentration.

• Undergraduate Major, Minor or Concentration in Comparative Media Studies : for undergraduates already at MIT

Undergraduate Majors, Minor, Concentration, or Joint Degrees

Undergraduate majors, minor, concentration, and joint degrees (with engineering or the sciences) : for undergraduates already at MIT.

Majors and areas of study in Writing include:

• Creative Writing
• Science Writing
• Digital Media

Graduate Program in Science Writing

Graduate Program in Science Writing (Master’s Degree): for prospective students who already hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

International Applicants

All programs are open to students from outside the United States. Materials needed for admission are largely the same but must also include test scores proving English proficiency. Learn more at the MIT Office of Graduate Admissions and the International Students Office .

Visiting Students and and Special Students

• Visiting student : for students currently enrolled in another graduate or undergraduate degree program who have been invited by CMS/W faculty to participate in research here.
• Special student : for people not currently enrolled in a degree program, who wish to take classes in CMS/W.

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English Language Studies joins Comparative Media Studies/Writing

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English Language Studies (ELS), MIT’s unit for supporting the language needs of the Institute’s large bilingual and international populations, has officially moved to be under the umbrella of Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W). With this addition, all of MIT’s Institute-wide writing and communications instruction are now under one academic roof.

Professor Eric Klopfer, head of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, says he was “delighted to welcome the ELS program,” adding: “I see this as a useful expansion of our program, which helps consolidate these related programs in one place.”

Created over 40 years ago and until now part of the Global Languages section in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, ELS has been critical to the success of undergraduates and graduate students whose first language is not English. Rather than the typical university model of simply providing tutors to students still developing their college-level English, ELS is integrated into MIT’s education more broadly. It offers credit-bearing subjects targeting skills like expository writing, public speaking, pronunciation, and field-specific communication, and students taking three of these or related subjects can craft a HASS concentration . It administers the English Evaluation Test, a pre-semester assessment of roughly 300 incoming international graduate students, to appraise their written and spoken English and recommend appropriate ELS subjects.

Similarly, ELS plays a role in CMS/W’s First-Year Essay Evaluation , which places new MIT undergraduates in communication-intensive writing classes, including ELS’s 21G.222 (Expository Writing for Bilingual Students).

The integration of language instruction into MIT education generally — and ELS into CMS/W specifically — is fairly unique: unlike most colleges’ approaches, ELS classes are offered for credit in parallel with, rather than as prerequisites for, major coursework, and CMS/W facilitates this by overseeing MIT’s communication requirement . Global Languages has recently refocused on non-English language education and travel abroad, making it an apt time for ELS’s English-focused work to switch homes.

Lecturer Eric Grunwald is the interim head of ELS. “It’s an exciting move for us,” he says. “We’ll miss the camaraderie and constant pedagogical cross-pollination we shared with the other language groups in Global Languages, but like CMS/W we care about communication, particularly academic and professional English and helping students deploy those well, so it’s a great fit in that way. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership.”

Grunwald developed a background in STEM as an undergraduate and afterward lived in Germany. In addition to his interests in academic and second-language writing and reading, he has a strong interest in creative writing and worked as managing editor at the esteemed Boston-based literary magazine AGNI . A published author of short stories and translation, Grunwald developed the ELS subject 21G.240 (Imagining English: Creative Writing for Bilingual Students).

The other lecturer making the move from Global Languages to CMS/W is A. C. Kemp, whose interests are in academic and professional writing, teacher training, academic integrity, and vocabulary acquisition. She has written over 300 columns on slang and colloquial language for the Slang City website since 2002, and in 2008 published a humor book on obscure vocabulary, “The Perfect Insult for Every Occasion: Lady Snark's Guide to Common Discourtesy.” Kemp agreed with Grunwald, saying “This is a terrific fit for us. We and CMS/W have a lot of common interests, especially with the Writing and Communication Center and Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication.”

The Writing and Communication Center Kemp mentions is a CMS/W unit led by Elena Kallestinova that hosts one-on-one consultations, workshops, and online resources for MIT community members. Kallestinova says the incorporation of ELS into CMS/W means they can “learn from each other, share effective strategies and resources, and come up with joint initiatives to engage the vast multilingual and international community of MIT students and scholars.”

ELS has already had a long-running collaboration with another CMS/W group: Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (WRAP), which teaches MIT’s foundational writing subjects and partners with MIT faculty and departments to teach written, oral, and visual communication. Like Kallestinova, WRAP Director Suzanne Lane is excited about the chance to work more closely with ELS colleagues. “WRAP and the ELS program have a long history of collaborating and learning from each other. ELS plays a role in the First-year Essay Evaluation, which WRAP administers, and both programs offer communications-intensive humanities and writing subjects, so we’ve often collaborated about pedagogy as well. We expect to find more ways to work together to enrich the communication instruction we provide to MIT students at all levels.”

Even beyond its departmental spaces, Grunwald and Kemp have found ways to connect ELS to other parts of MIT. They have worked with the International Scholars Office and OpenCourseWare (with Kemp’s course RES.21G-001( The User-friendly Classroom ), and ELS has supported teacher training capacities, such as Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science in MIT’s Office of Engineering Outreach Programs.

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Gallery | new faculty 2023 mit shass welcomes ten new faculty professors join mit in these fields: comparative media studies/writing, economics, literature, music and theater arts, science, technology, and society, and political science.

Dean Agustín Rayo and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences warmly welcome ten new professors to the MIT community. They arrive with diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in their areas of research. Welcome to all! 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

• Faculty & Staff
• Instructors

Sarah R. Akaaboune

Class of 2025 General science

Sarah R. Akaaboune is a writer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan, where she studied neuroscience and English. In the lab, she studied the impacts of Golgi fragmentation on lysosomal protein biogenesis and the development of neurological disorders. Outside of the lab, she served as a writer and editor for her student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, where she covered a variety of topics, most notably medical malpractice and its impact on survivors.  

Sarah has also explored science communication and data accessibility as a community leadership fellow at her local health department and as a student correspondent for Teen Vogue, where she covered the 2024 presidential election cycle in Michigan.

When she isn’t writing, Sarah can be found in the lab, listening to old episodes of This American Life , or spending time with her cat.  

Anika Jane Beamer

Class of 2025 Environmental science, microbiology

Anika Jane Beamer  is a Midwesterner and a writer with a background in the biological sciences. She’s spent years researching and thinking about life’s little guys—viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Now, she’s interested in writing about how manmade changes to the environment are transforming microscopic life, for better and worse.

Anika Jane has spent the last two years as the science writer for Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. There, she shared stories about research, faculty, and students in fields as far-flung as robotics, galaxy formation, water geochemistry, and lung cancer.   She sees herself as a translator, deconstructing the “language of science” to ensure that the hard-to-see, and harder-to-fathom, can be understood by a wide audience. Whether hiking, painting, birdwatching, or playing soccer, she’s often thinking about her place in nature and the science that surrounds her.

Jessica Chomik-Morales

Class of 2025 General science, neuroscience

Jessica Chomik-Morales was raised in South Florida, where from an early age she wondered why people act the way they do. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and since graduation, has worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab at MIT, where she uses fMRI to explore abstract thought in humans.

As a daughter of immigrant parents from Paraguay, Jessica is fiercely proud of her heritage and uses her privileged position as a bilingual scientist to bridge the gap between a predominantly English-speaking academic world and the Spanish-speaking public. She hosts and produces Mi Última Neurona , a neuroscience podcast in Spanish, to ignite curiosity, spark conversations, and empower her community.

At MIT, Jessica is excited to expand her communication abilities while serving the Spanish-speaking community, weaving together population-relevant narratives to foster understanding and inclusivity within the scientific landscape.

Nanticha Ocharoenchai

Class of 2025 Environmental science, general science, wildlife conservation

Nanticha Ocharoenchai , or Lyn,  first started journaling when she left her hometown of Bangkok to go on a year-long exchange in Italy. When she found hiking and backpacking, the se hobbies and adventures sparked her  love of environmental journalism and activism.

Just before graduating in communications from Chulalongkorn University in 2019, Lyn organized what grew into Thailand’s first youth climate movement. Since then, she has written and produced short films for WWF, Greenpeace, Mongabay , The Pulitzer Center, and more, covering topics from wildlife conservation and sustainable design, to Indigenous knowledge and land rights. In a search for practical—and fun!—environmental solutions, Lyn is furiously learning about natural science and conservation technology and is excited to explore more at MIT.

Pratik Pawar

Class of 2025 Global health, medicine, science policy

Pratik Pawar is a science journalist who covers stories about global health, medicine, and science policy. He is particularly interested in covering neglected health issues in the Global South and in understanding the role of inequity and socio-political realities in furthering health crises. His work has been published in The Atlantic , Nature , Science , and Undark , among other outlets.

At MIT, Pratik aims to learn new skills in data and investigative journalism to help him tell nuanced and substantive stories about global health. When he’s not at his desk, you can find Pratik noodling on his guitar, reading personal essays, or out in nature.

Paula Rowińska

Class of 2025 Environmental science, geography, math, mental health

Paula Rowińska is a writer from Warsaw, Poland, and is the author of Mapmatics: A Mathematician’s Guide to Navigating the World, a popular science book about the mathematics of maps.

While pursuing her Ph.D. in mathematics and statistics at Imperial College London, Paula discovered that she prefers science communication to research. She has shared her passion for math by contributing to newspaper articles, radio shows, and TV programs. Since graduation, she has been creating interactive math and data science content for Brilliant, an educational company.

At MIT, Paula will continue exploring the role of mathematics in our daily lives while also covering topics like mental health and environmental issues. In her free time, she reads more books than she cares to admit, loves learning foreign languages, and has a soft spot for musicals.

Mackenzie White

Mackenzie White is a writer and planetary scientist from Austin, Texas. Her journey into science writing began at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received liberal arts and science degrees.

Driven by curiosity about other worlds, she earned a Ph.D. in geophysics, specializing in temperatures on the Moon and Mars. During graduate school, she worked on NASA missions, which fueled her enthusiasm for sharing discoveries with the public. She has contributed to outlets like Google Arts & Culture and Eos and was a 2022 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Science Friday .

At MIT, Mackenzie aims to strengthen the connection between humans and the natural world through storytelling. When she’s not writing about space rocks, you can find her along the rivers of central Texas with her dogs, Rocky and Maggie.

Celina Zhao

Class of 2025 Anthropology, biology, technology

Celina Zhao is pumped to be staying in Cambridge for another year after studying writing and biology as an undergraduate at MIT.

Celina’s work with Science, NOVA, and Cell Press has led her to explore scientific topics ranging from telescope cyberattacks to controversial fossils to microbes that travel through wildfire smoke. She’s fascinated by the relationship between culture, technology, and the natural world, and is excited to work on long-form projects that explore the evolution of this intersection in the coming year.

Outside the classroom, you can find Celina running along the Charles, drinking too much matcha, and challenging herself to try something new every day.

Eva Cornman

Class of 2024 Biology, medicine

Eva Cornman is a writer from the suburbs of Chicago. While studying molecular and cellular biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she realized that she preferred writing and talking about science over actually doing it. She left the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s in biology, a minor in creative writing, and a newfound passion for science writing.

After graduating, Eva spent a year managing a clinical research laboratory that studies the human gut microbiome. At MIT, Eva hopes to use her science background and clinical lab management experience to inform her writing on biology and medicine.

When she isn’t writing, Eva can often be found dancing, hiking, or hanging out with her cat.  

Class of 2024 Health, medicine

Noah Daly is a writer and reporter covering drug policy, psychedelic science, art, and medical tech innovations. His reporting can be found in The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Up Magazine , and Lucid News , among other publications.

Originally from New York City, Noah’s love for science was nurtured by watching MythBusters and Steve Irwin: Crocodile Hunter as a kid. After graduating from CUNY Brooklyn College, his love of journalism inspired him to get as close as possible to people telling true stories that change minds and hold truth to power, first as an intern at Foreign Affairs Magazine  and then as a graduate administrative aide at New York University’s journalism school.  

At MIT, Noah will investigate the therapeutic convergences of trauma, violence, and substances that alter our states of consciousness. Outside of the classroom, Noah is an avid reader, a novice guitar strummer, a better-than-average chef, and a Purple Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Gregor Gracie.

Sophie Hartley

Class of 2024 Conservation

The woodlands of eastern Vermont sparked Sophie Hartley ‘s early interest in forest ecosystems. She studied human development and creative writing at the University of Chicago, where she wrote about wild boar, rewilding, and rural Montana’s pushback against bison conservation.

Her work with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the New Hampshire State Parks helped Sophie find her footing as a photojournalist. Since graduating, she has been writing fauna and flora identification guides for hikers in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.  

At MIT, Sophie wants to keep investigating how culture and science clash in conservation efforts. When she’s not writing or taking pictures, you can usually find her trying to redecorate her apartment.

Sarah Hopkins

Class of 2024 Climate change, migration, public health, science and the law, social justice

Sarah Hopkins holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in literature from the University of Oxford and Sarah Lawrence College. She has worked as a writer, editor, and communicator for social justice organizations, including the ACLU, where she translated complex legal concepts to non-expert audiences and to the media. In these roles, she saw how the law relies on experts trained in scientific fields to move people in power toward informed decisions. She also witnessed how people in power seek to suppress the truth from the public and from the people most impacted by their decisions or policies.

At MIT, Sarah is excited to expand her storytelling across different mediums. She is interested in researching the use of junk science within the criminal justice system and the complex ways in which the law intersects with science—two disciplines that seek the truth but operate in contradictory ways. She also plans to explore other intersections between science and social justice, such as climate change and public health.

Class of 2024 Climate change, environmental justice, urban studies

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Alex Ip graduated with a bachelor’s in environmental engineering from Georgia Tech. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Xylom , a student-led nonprofit newsroom exploring how communities are influenced and shaped by science. Alex is also leading a team to translate the KSJ Science Editing Handbook into Chinese (Traditional and Simplified).

At MIT, Alex aims to cover the future of cities and environmental justice in the American South, in addition to the often contentious dynamic between evangelical Christianity and climate change. When he’s not writing, you could see Alex zipping around town on his bike, watching a lot of basketball, and cuddling his cat.

Hannah Richter

Class of 2024 Astrophysics, environmental science

The moment Hannah Richter learned about science writing, she was hooked: it combined her lifelong loves of nature and storytelling.

Hannah holds a bachelor’s in environmental science and a minor in creative writing from the University of Chicago. In the lab, she studied bivalves and ocean acidification before interning at Circle of Blue, where she covered East Coast saltwater intrusion, and at the  Living on Earth  radio show and podcast, where she produced segments from methane-filled cow burps to cryptocurrency and energy use. Hannah also took her sights from Earth to the stars, interning in communications at NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope team and writing an ebook for the Fermi Space Telescope.

At MIT, Hannah aims to cover more stories about the environment and humans’ role in shaping it.

Lily Stewart

Class of 2024 Climate change, reproductive health

Lily Stewart is a writer from Northeast Ohio. She attended the University of Cincinnati, where she studied writing, literature, and biology. She has explored multimedia storytelling and science writing through her varied experiences as an interpretive writer for local parks, a science communication intern at environmental organizations, a strategic foresight researcher focused on the future of misinformation, and an organizer in the reproductive justice movement.

At MIT, Lily plans to write about reproductive health and medicine. She is especially interested in the intermingling of climate change and reproductive health. When Lily isn’t writing, she loves to bind books, garden, and practice her plant identification skills.

Alex Viveros

Class of 2024 Biotechnology, health, medicine

Alex Viveros stumbled into journalism as a college freshman when he spontaneously joined his student newspaper, The Tufts Daily , and signed up for the first section he could think of: “Sports!” He went on to lead The Tufts Daily as its managing editor and editor-in-chief during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alex majored in biology and community health at Tufts, and was a member of the Politico Journalism Institute’s 2021 class. He has interned at Science Magazine and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he wrote about biological sciences, gene therapy, machine learning, and chimpanzees.  

At MIT, he hopes to cultivate long-form stories on chronic disease and advancements in biotechnology. When he’s not writing, you can find Alex practicing martial arts, playing competitive video games, building Legos, and supporting his favorite Premier League football club.

Please note: The admissions office is closed Tuesday, May 14, from 10:30 AM–1:30 PM.

First-year applicants: Creative portfolios

Researchers, performing artists, visual artists, and makers may submit optional portfolios for review by MIT staff or faculty through SlideRoom .
 For more information on each type of portfolio, please review the descriptions below. Creative portfolios are truly optional, and should only be submitted if they feature work that is both significant to you and relevant to your MIT application.

Portfolios must be submitted by the same deadline as your corresponding application cycle—Early Action or Regular Action.

Students who have worked on a significant research project outside of high school classes are welcome to submit the Research Supplement via SlideRoom . If you have worked on more than one research project, focus on one project that is most significant to you.

• Please answer a brief questionnaire about your research experience.
• Include a PDF of your abstract or research poster, if available. If the work being submitted has been published, provide a citation.
• Nominate your research advisor, mentor, or Principal Investigator to submit a letter of recommendation directly through the SlideRoom portfolio.

Note: only one Research Supplement is permitted per applicant.

Music & Theater Arts

Students with exceptional musical, theater arts, or performing arts talent who would like their work to be reviewed by professional faculty from the MIT Music & Theater Arts department may submit a portfolio via SlideRoom .

• All Music & Theater Arts submissions: We require one letter of recommendation from a current or recent music or theater arts teacher, requested directly through the SlideRoom portfolio. We also ask that you upload a performing arts résumé.
• If you play two instruments equally well, you may optionally choose to submit a separate music portfolio for each instrument. Please create a second SlideRoom account using a different email address to submit a separate portfolio for your second instrument.
• The composition portfolio is currently designed for musicians who compose music using Western musical notation. If possible, we ask that submissions that feature music production or electronic beats provide some musical notation, scores, or arrangements.
• Actors, dancers, directors, and designers: Submit up to three videos or images. 10 minutes maximum total combined video time.
• This portfolio option is meant for screenwriters/playwrights only. While MIT values creative writing, we do not currently offer a portfolio to review creative writing, essays, poetry, etc.

Visual Art & Architecture

The Visual Art & Architecture portfolio is designed for students with exceptional creative talent who would like their work to be reviewed by professional faculty and staff at MIT. You should consider submitting work via SlideRoom if your work is a significant part of your application and demonstrates strong creative talent for a young artist.

• We encourage all types of media art, including design, drawing, painting, mixed media, digital media, photography, sculpture, and architectural work.
• You may submit a portfolio of up to 10 images of your work for review. Include the title, medium, a brief description, date completed, and a brief description of each work’s concept or inspiration.

Note: only one Visual Art & Architecture portfolio is permitted per applicant.

The Maker Portfolio is an opportunity for students to showcase their technical creativity—from carpentry to coding to cosplay. Your submission will be evaluated by the Engineering Advisory Board, a group of MIT faculty, staff, and alumni with notable technical expertise in different modes of making. If you make the kind of thing(s) you might exhibit at a Maker Faire, demo at a hackathon, or just do for yourself and friends, then the Maker Portfolio in SlideRoom is a way to show us.

• Please answer a brief questionnaire about what you make, how you make, and why you make. Provide clarity on relevant goals, issues, setbacks, and lessons learned. We want to know about your problem-solving process and motivations, not just your visible end result.
• Sometimes, less is more! If you’re particularly prolific, consider focusing on the details for a few of your favorite projects.

Note: only one Maker Portfolio is permitted per applicant.

Portfolio fee or waivers

The fee to submit each portfolio is $10. However, we understand that paying college application fees presents a hardship for some families. If the submission fee presents a hardship for you and your family, you may qualify for a fee waiver. To request a fee waiver, send a brief email to our SlideRoom portfolio team with the subject line “SlideRoom Fee Waiver” by the deadlines listed below. Include your full name and date of birth in the body of the email. Your SlideRoom portfolio must be in progress to receive a fee waiver; we cannot proactively grant fee waivers for portfolios that have not been started.

Fee Waiver Deadlines

Early Action: October 27 (Portfolios must be submitted by November 1)

Regular Action: December 28 (Portfolios must be submitted by January 4)

Allow 3–5 days for your request to be processed. You will receive an email once your fee has been waived; you must then submit your portfolio by the submission deadline.

The Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) supports the development of creative projects, artist residencies, cross-disciplinary classes, and research that integrate the arts across the Institute and have significant student engagement or impact on campus.

CAST offers several categories of funding for MIT faculty and principal or senior research staff from all departments, labs, and centers. Two new types of grants were established in 2016, the Mellon Faculty Grant and the Fay Chandler Creativity Grant . In 2018, the International Exhibition and Performance Fund was introduced to defray the costs of a faculty member’s performance, exhibition, installation, or other creative project that will appear by invitation in a major international venue.

How to apply

For more information, contact  [email protected]

Azra Akšamija’s Displaced Empire

The MIT Future Heritage Lab, in collaboration with displaced Syrian refugees, humanitarian workers, and host communities in Jordan, presents Displaced Empire at the Co-habits section of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia curated by Hashim Sarkis.

Focused on the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, one of the region’s largest camps sheltering more than 35,000 displaced Syrians, the large-scale installation speculates a near-future world in which the majority of people have been forcibly displaced. In this scenario, the Azraq Camp has become the capital of the global Displaced Empire .

2020-21 International Exhibition and Performance Grant

Azra Akšamija’s Lightweaver

Azra Akšamija’s Lightweaver prototypes are playful kinetic lighting machines and educational devices developed in collaboration with artists, engineers and inventors from the Al Azraq refugee camp. The Lightweaver translates stories from textiles into a sensory play of light, aiming to preserve cultural memory and inspire hope.

2017 CAST Faculty Grant

Xavi Laida Aguirre's Proofing: Resistant and Ready

Assistant Professor Xavi Laida Aguirre’s project  Proofing: Resistant and Ready  features at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture in a pavilion curated around the theme of “Everlasting Plastics.” Incorporating a built environment and an immersive video experience,  Proofing: Resistant and Ready  explores the contradictory nature of plastics in architecture as they help us create more robust and durable environments while also being partially responsible for the climate disaster. The project offers a series of prototypes and building techniques to intervene subversively in the built environment with the intention of reintroducing the lost promises of plastic’s longevity through both material and digital tactics.

2023 CAST Mellon Faculty Grant

Judith Barry's All the light that is ours to see

Judith Barry ‘s exhibition at Lumiar Cité constitutes the international premiere of her two-channel immersive installation All the light that’s ours to see , for which the artist appropriates the story of a New York video rental chain store, the infamous Mondo Kim’s, and the quest to find a home for 55,000 video tapes and films after it closed.

2019 International Exhibition and Performance Grant

Judith Barry's HA®DCELL

First exhibited in  Crash: Nostalgia for the Absence of Cyberspace  at Thread Waxing Space in 1994, and included in MoMA’s 1995 landmark exhibition,  Video Spaces: Eight Installations , Judith Barry’s  HA®DCELL  explores the life, death, and afterlife of technology. With support from CAST and a team of MIT artists, technologists, and tinkerers, Barry is reimagining and reanimating  HA®DCELL  for the present. As society grapples with Artificial Intelligence and ubiquitous “smart” technology, the dead tech of  HA®DCELL  reawakens.

2023 Mellon Faculty Grant

Joshua Bennett's The People’s Poetry Archive

Joshua Bennett’s  The People’s Poetry Archive  is a public humanities project to digitally preserve canonical and contemporary poems from across the African diaspora, as well as historically under-theorized works in the realm of spoken word performance.

2023-24 Mellon Faculty Grant

Charlotte Brathwaite's Bee Boy

Charlotte Brathwaite’s Bee Boy is an interdisciplinary artistic response to the violent murders of black men and women around the country, to bee colony collapse disorder, to #Blacklivesmatter, to an unjust prison/industrial complex, to human-animal-technological hybridization, to life in urban streets, and the emotional toil it takes to turn hate to love. It is a meditation on struggle and change in a world of chaos.

2021 CAST Faculty Grant

Charlotte Brathwaite and The Future is Present

The Future is Present (TFP) is a high-impact, liberatory media project that engages a core group of Black and Indigenous youth activists and art makers working in tandem with students, adult movement leaders, artists, and researchers.

Brandon Clifford’s Filament: Megaphones at the New York Philharmonic

Brandon Clifford and Ashley Fure, Dartmouth College Assistant Professor of Music, designed and fabricated megaphones to distribute the visceral power of sound to the far reaches of a concert hall in a project titled  Filament: Megaphones at the New York Philharmonic .

2018 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Ian Condry’s Dissolve Music

Ian Condry ‘s “Dissolve Music @ MIT” was a two-and-a-half-day conference, workshop and sound festival held on March 7-9, 2018. Combining art and scholarship in a spirit of experimentation, the conference aimed to dissolve boundaries between different arenas of sonic engagement to identify paths towards alternative, more inclusive futures.

Ian Condry’s Sound, Learning, and Democracy

Ian Condry ‘s “Sound, Learning, and Democracy” is a collaborative project aimed at developing works and performances for the MIT Spatial Sound Lab, an initiative led by Condry, a cultural anthropologist and professor in Global Studies and Languages with joint appointments in Comparative Media Studies/Writing and Anthropology at MIT. Working with the d&b soundscape, a new technology that enables high-resolution, precise localization of sound objects in 360-degree space, the Spatial Sound Lab is housed in the START Studio (W20-429).

2019 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Delia Duong Ba Wendel's A Memory Atlas for Racial Justice

The  Memory Atlas for Repair is an exhibition that attempts to reckon with the historical persistence of racialized dispossession in cities. Located in the MIT Student Center Plaza, it evokes a place of memory as the site of the 1968 exhibition that commemorated the civil rights work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination. Exhibition opening spring 2023.

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu's Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism

As a CAST Mellon Faculty Fellow, McMillan-Stewart Associate Professor of History Lerna Ekmekçioğlu is creating an exhibition and digital archive, “Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism, 1860s to 1960s.” The project, based on research conducted by Ekmekçioğlu and Dr. Melissa Bilal (Visiting Scholar at MIT 2017–18), highlights 12 pioneering Armenian women writers and activists who produced work from the 1860s to 1960s.

2019 CAST Faculty Grant

Stephanie Frampton’s ARTificial Intelligence

Stephanie Frampton’s ARTificial Intelligence is a collaborative project between MIT and the Cambridge Public Library. The project is a multifaceted ongoing program fostering public dialogue about the emerging ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence (AI) through art and design.  ARTificial Intelligence radically draws on the university and the public sphere as sites of critical engagement and embodies the spirit of public-facing scholarship.

Christian Frederickson’s The Hammer and the Feather

The Hammer and the Feather, an immersive audio and visual installation, takes its name from the experiment performed on Earth’s moon by U.S. astronaut David Scott, which proved Galileo’s assertion that gravity exerts equal force on all objects. Developed at MIT by technical instructor Christian Frederickson and visual artist and filmmaker Greg King, The Hammer and the Feather uses the architecture of the liturgical mass as a structural and conceptual framework to create a contemplative and spiritual environment where audience participants can connect with large questions and pursue their own inquiries into the nature of existence. Bridging humanistic and scientific inquiry, the piece uses gravity as a poetic and conceptual departure point for musical, visual, and sonic material.

2020-21 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Deborah Garcia's A SEAT AT THE TABLE

A project by MIT Department of Architecture’s 20-22 Marion Mahony Emerging Practitioner Fellow Deborah Garcia, A SEAT AT THE TABLE  is a two-story table set on the MIT campus, serving as both a physical and virtual platform for performances and dialogue. The  TABLE , an architectonic platform scaled to the dimensions of the theatrical, serves the double task of interiorizing its activities within its constructed environment, while communicating outwardly by recording and broadcasting itself.

2021 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Rania Ghosn’s Blue Marble Circus

Rania Ghosn’s Blue Marble Circus is a monument to industrial humanity’s plastic footprint, which—although at a planetary scale—remains outside our geographical imagination.

2017 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Rania Ghosn's The Planet After Geoengineering

Commissioned for the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale and responding to the theme, “How will we live together?,”  The Planet After Geoengineering  tracks five geoengineering technologies in a series of 25 large-scale drawings that make visible geographies of deployments—sites, forms, externalities, the color of the sky, the smell of the air—and situates future promises within the genealogies of modern climate control technologies ranging from 19th-century rainmaking machines to Cold War weather modification schemes. In drawings and narratives,  The Planet After Geoengineering  makes geoengineering and its controversies public, inviting the viewer to interrogate the expansion of engineering (and by extension, design) to the scale of the planet.

Ekene Ijeoma's Deconstructed Anthems Boston

Deconstructed Anthems is a series of compositions, instruments, performances, and installations that portray black incarceration in the US using data from the US Department of Justice.

Assistant Professor in Media Arts and Sciences Ekene Ijeoma programmed an algorithmic composition that sonifies the over 1.5 million people who were removed from their communities from 1925 to today by repeating The Star-Spangled Banner while removing notes at the increasing incarceration rates. 

2024 Fay Chandler Faculty Creativity Grant

Mikael Jakobsson’s Maria: Voicing Counter Colonialism Through Board Game Creation

Mikael Jakobsson and his collaborators are designing a counter colonialist board game to establish networks for social impact through creative practices.

2018 Fay Chandler Faculty Creativity Grant

Anna Kohler’s Immense Joy/ Hots

Senior Lecturer Anna Kohler’s latest devised work Immense Joy/ Hots  is based on the writing of Clarice Lispector, a revolutionary Brazilian author (1920-67). The project was performed at MIT on September 10 as a work-in-progress presentation, and will have a full premiere at The Tank NYC  in winter 2022

Anna Kohler’s Mytho? Lure of Wildness

Anna Kohler’s Mytho? Lure of Wildness is a surround-sensorial theatrical experience/experiment, conceived and performed by MIT faculty member Anna Kohler and directed by lecturer Caleb Hammond. It is an experiment, a study of the beast within, of beauty and its transformation from young and fresh to old and worn, but not resigned.

2016 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Kent Larson and the Media Lab City Science Group's Two Mobility Futures 0∞

Two Mobility Futures  0∞ , exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, presents a dichotomy of divergent possibilities for mobility in the future. The 2020 pandemic instantly halted most human travel while products, food, information, and experiences were delivered to each household. At the same time, fantastic new land, air, and space mobility modes may enable humans to move frictionlessly to wherever they desire.

2022 CAST International Exhibition Grant

Tod Machover and Jay Scheib's VALIS

VALIS , composed by Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media and director of the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future Group Tod Machover, was commissioned for the 10th anniversary of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, premiered there in December 1987, and then toured the U.S. (including performances in the MIT Media Lab’s Cube) and Asia through the early 1990s. A recording of the opera is still a best-seller for Bridge Records and various voice-instrument-electronics versions have been presented over the past years, but a full production of VALIS has not been mounted for almost 30 years. A new production will be directed by Jay Scheib and developed in MIT’s Theater Arts performance space (W97). Technology will be created at the MIT Media Lab, under the direction of Tod Machover, marking the first collaboration between the Media Lab and the Theater Arts program.

Keeril Makan and Jay Scheib’s Person a

Persona , a chamber opera based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic film, composed by Keeril Makan , with direction and libretto by Jay Scheib , previewed in a workshop performance at MIT on October 17, 2015.

The fully staged production premiered at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY on October 23-24, 2015. Persona starred soprano Amanda Crider, was produced by Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and conducted by Evan Ziporyn.

2016 CAST Faculty Grant

Ana Miljački's Critical Broadcasting Lab

Through a series of interventions including workshops and public lectures,  Critical Broadcasting Lab  performs as a curatorial entity at MIT and beyond. In a series of Agit Arch Experiments in fall 2018, Miljački and participants of  Critical Broadcasting Lab  investigate contemporary media and methods of broadcasting architectural discourse and criticism. The lab simultaneously conducts an oral history, presented in the form of an exhibition, about two forms of refusal by architects to engage—refusal to accept commissions and refusal to sue for copyright infringement.

2018 CAST Faculty Grant

Ana Miljački's See Us Seesaw Together

Critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT Ana Milja​​čki’s  See Us Seesaw Together  is a network of inflatable seesaws that allow for an embodied comprehension of another’s presence and cooperation, all at a six-foot distance. As one player sits, the others bob up and down as the structure responds to their movement. The installation opens in fall 2021.

Richard Milner's Visualizing the Proton

Richard Milner , in collaboration with physicist colleagues Rolf Ent and Rik Yoshida at Jefferson Lab and video artists C hris Boebel and Joe McMaster at MIT, have taken inspiration from the colorized Hubble images of the large-scale structure of the universe from original black-and-white exposures. The creators of these images describe them as “equal parts art and science.” This project’s goal is to create similarly scientifically authentic, visually inspiring images of the microcosm and explore the creative process, the challenge of scientific “accuracy,” evidence, and the very concept of “understanding.” Milner and his colleagues are motivated by new and planned electron accelerators that aim to deliver snapshots of the fundamental structure of matter with unprecedented clarity.

Joseph Paradiso's Diversifying Space

Diversifying Space centers on two classes: STS.058 Space Exploration and Interplanetary Habitation (Boucher, spring 2019) and MAS.S64 Prototyping our Sci-Fi Space Future: designing & deploying projects for zero gravity flights (Paradiso, fall 2019), as well as a series of workshops and presentations by visiting artists. Topics range from parabolic flight research to the social impact of science and technology at an interplanetary level.

Cristina Parreño Alonso's Tectonics of Wisdom

Tectonics of Wisdom is an art installation that aims to expand architecture’s temporal sensibilities by examining the physical and material space of the library building.

In response to the question of the future of public architecture raised in an exhibition organized by the Schusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, Tectonics of Wisdom situates the building of the library within the temporal scales of the Earth.

Elena Ruehr’s Songs from Extrasolar Spaces

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) , launched in April 2018, aims to survey 85 percent of the sky in the search for new planets. Songs from Extrasolar Spaces sets this mission to music during the MIT TESS Science Conference , the first academic gathering dedicated to TESS mission science, including exoplanets, asteroseismology, stellar binaries, variable stars, Solar System science, and extragalactic astronomy.

Rafi Segal and Marisa Jahn's Architecture for New Collectives

Architecture for New Collectives is an immersive installation featuring digital, urban, and architectural platforms seeking to leverage the power of solidarity to strengthen economic sovereignty, housing affordability, communal self-determination, and mutual aid. Led by MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, founded and directed by architect Rafi Segal and artist Marisa Morán Jahn with MIT Civic Data Design Lab Director Sarah Williams, Architecture for New Collectives asks how communities can be formed, organized, and strengthened through both the digital and physical design of space.

2020-21 International Exhibition and Performance Fund

Pawan Sinha’s Vision in Art and Neuroscience

Pawan Sinha’s 9.S52/9.S916 Vision in Art and Neuroscience introduces students to core concepts in visual perception through the lenses of art and neuroscience. Students engage with these concepts through hands-on studio practice. The material has been selected both to expose students to the study of brain and cognitive sciences and to engage those already within the neuroscience community in art production as a means to explore and visualize the principles of perception.

2017 and 2018 CAST Faculty Grants

Jay Scheib's The Silence

As an MIT CAST Mellon Faculty Fellow, Jay Scheib is reinventing Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence (1963). The film, described both as a “landmark of modernist cinema” (Lloyd Michaels) and a “tangle of brooding confusions and despairs” ( The New York Times ), exposes the tense and uncomfortable relationship of two sisters at a hotel in an unfriendly, unknown city.

Anne Whiston Spirn's Making Change: In Place Over Time

Anne Whiston Spirn, Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, and filmmaker John Moody collaborate on a 60-minute film featuring personal and collective reflections on the  West Philadelphia Landscape Project , an award-winning action research project founded by Spirn in 1987. The project engages MIT faculty and students in exploring how to restore the urban natural environment and rebuild low-income communities of color, simultaneously and synergistically. More than six years in the making, the film depicts the struggle to envision and implement an integrated approach to wicked problems of pollution, poverty, and race. Design as research is featured, including the role of design thinking and design experiments, and how real-world successes and failures test and generate ideas, prompt pivots, and forge deep relationships among university and community partners.

2022 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

Hans Tursack and Viola Ago's Understorey: University Design Research Fellowship Pavilion For Exhibit Columbus

The pavilion design, titled “Understorey,” is a large open-air vivarium built from a combination of off-the-shelf agricultural products, and custom, digitally fabricated structural elements.

Ken Urban’s The Immortals

The Immortals , a work in progress by playwright Ken Urban, draws from the strange and troubling case of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose “immortal” cancer cells (HeLa cells) continue to be used in biological research over 65 years after her death. The idea for The Immortals stems from interviews with scientists who work in biological research labs, exploring the issues surrounding HeLa cells and the acquiring of cellular material for research purposes.

Gediminas Urbonas’s The Swamp School

For the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas curate the Swamp Pavilion, which represents their native Lithuania. It is a networked effort to create new imaginary space for exercises in architectural and artistic practices, theory and pedagogy through events including public interventions, field trips, workshops, lectures, discussions, chat channels and printed publications.

Christine Walley's Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project

The  Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project  highlights a remarkable collection of objects, gathered and preserved by residents of a steel mill community as its industrial base was collapsing, and “storylines” that explore their meaning by weaving together artifacts, documentary film, and online storytelling.

Christine Walley, Chris Boebel, and Jeff Soyk collaborate on a new documentary storyline on post-industrial environmental activism spearheaded by Latina leaders. Tentatively titled “From Wetlands to Waste,” the storyline begins with the artifact of a jar of “petcoke,” an industrial pollutant that community activists successfully fought against.

2022–23 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant

J. Meejin Yoon’s FloatLab

J. Meejin Yoon’s FloatLab project is an educational platform to study and observe the transforming urban waterway and is sited within the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Professor Yoon leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and environmental scientists to explore how cities like Philadelphia are revitalizing their riverfronts and learning from urban river ecologies.

• Utility Menu

• Creative Writing

The vital presence of creative writing in the English Department is reflected by our many distinguished authors who teach our workshops. We offer courses each term in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, and television writing. Our workshops are small, usually no more than twelve students, and offer writers an opportunity to focus intensively on one genre. 

Apply to Creative Writing Workshops

Workshops are open by application to Harvard College undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and students from other institutions eligible for cross registration. Submission guidelines for workshops can be found under individual course listings; please do not query instructors.  Review all departmental rules and application instructions before applying.  

Fall 2024 Application Deadline: 11:59 pm ET on Sunday, April 7, 2024. Spring 2025 Application Deadline: TBD

Please visit our course listings for all the Fall 2024 workshops.

Our online submission manager (link below) will open for Fall 2024 applications on Friday, March 22 , 2024.

Students who have questions about the creative writing workshop application process should contact Case Q. Kerns at [email protected] .

Featured Faculty

Teju Cole  is a novelist, critic, and essayist, and is the first Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice. "Among other works, the boundary-crossing author is known for his debut novel “Open City” (2011), whose early admirers included Harvard professor and New Yorker critic James Wood." 

Faculty Bookshelf

Known and strange things by teju cole (2016).

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (2008)

The Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg (2013)

Find Me by Laura van den Berg (2015)

Creative Writing Workshops

• Spring 2024

English CACD. The Art of Criticism

Instructor: Maggie Doherty Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

This course will consider critical writing about art–literary, visual, cinematic, musical, etc.—as an art in its own right. We will read and discuss criticism from a wide variety of publications, paying attention to the ways outlets and audience shape critical work. The majority of our readings will be from the last few years and will include pieces by Joan Acocella, Andrea Long Chu, Jason Farago, and Carina del Valle Schorske. Students will write several short writing assignments (500-1000 words), including a straight review, during the first half of the semester and share them with peers. During the second half of the semester, each student will write and workshop a longer piece of criticism about a work of art or an artist of their choosing. Students will be expected to read and provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. Students will revise their longer pieces based on workshop feedback and submit them for the final assignment of the class. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. Please also describe your relationship to the art forms and/or genres you're interested in engaging in the course. You may also list any writers or publications whose criticism you enjoy reading. Please also include a 3-5-page writing sample of any kind of prose writing. This could be an academic paper or it could be creative fiction or nonfiction.

English CACW. Advanced Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Paul Yoon TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Advanced fiction workshop for students who have already taken a workshop at Harvard or elsewhere. The goal of the class is to continue your journey as a writer. You will be responsible for participating in discussions on the assigned texts, the workshop, engaging with the work of your colleagues, and revising your work. Supplemental Application Information:   * Please note: previous creative writing workshop experience required. * Please submit ONLY a cover letter telling me your previous creative writing workshop experience, either at Harvard or elsewhere; then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Again, please no writing samples.

English CBBR. Intermediate Poetry: Workshop

Instructor:  Josh Bell   Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.

English CCEP. Ekphrastic Poetry: Workshop

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site What can a poem achieve when it contemplates or even emulates a work of art in another medium? In this workshop, we'll read and write poems that engage with other art forms--and we'll test out what a foray into another artistic practice allows us to carry back over into the formal methods and behaviors of poetry. With poems by Keats, Rilke, Auden, Hughes, and Brooks, as well as Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, Ama Codjoe and other contemporary voices. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a writing sample of 5-10 poems and an application letter explaining your interest in this course.

English CCFC. Poetry Workshop: Form & Content

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Sever 112 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this workshop, we’ll look closely at the craft-based choices poets make, and track the effects they have upon what we as readers are made to think and feel. How can implementing similar strategies better prepare us to engage the questions making up our own poetic material? We’ll also talk about content. What can poetry reveal about the ways our interior selves are shaped by public realities like race, class, sexuality, injustice and more? Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26)   

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a writing sample of 5-10 poems and an application letter explaining your interest in this course.

English CCIJ. Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 269 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This is an intermediate course in the art of writing literary fiction. Previous experience with workshopping writing is encouraged but not required. The emphasis of the course will be learning how to read literature as a writer, with special attention given to the short story, novella, or short novel. We will read these works from the perspective of the writer as craftsperson and of the critic seeking in good faith to understand and describe a new aesthetic experience. We will be concerned foremost with how literary language works, with describing the effects of different kinds of sentences, different uses of genre, tone, and other rhetorical strategies. Together, we will explore our responses to examples of literature from around the world and from all periods, as well as to the writing you will produce and share with the class. As a member of a writing community, you should be prepared to respectfully read and respond to the work of others—both the work of your peers and that of the published writers that we will explore together. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  This course is by application only but there are no prerequisites for this course and previous experience in a writing workshop is not required . In your application please submit a short letter explaining why you are interested in this class. You might tell me a bit about your relationship to literature, your encounter with a specific author, book, or even a scene or character from a story or novel. Please also include a writing sample of 2-5 pages (5 pages max!) of narrative prose fiction.

English CCFS. Fiction Workshop

Instructor: Teju Cole Spring 2024: Tuesday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD This reading and writing intensive workshop is for students who want to learn to write literary fiction. The goal of the course would be for each student to produce two polished short stories. Authors on the syllabus will probably include James Joyce, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Diane Williams.

Supplemental Application Information:   Please submit a cover letter saying what you hope to get out of the workshop. In the cover letter, mention three works of fiction that matter to you and why. In addition, submit a 400–500 word sample of your fiction; the sample can be self-contained or a section of a longer work.

English CLPG. Art of Sportswriting

Instructor: Louisa Thomas Spring 2024: Tuesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

In newsrooms, the sports section is sometimes referred to as the “toy department” -- frivolous and unserious, unlike the stuff of politics, business, and war. In this course, we will take the toys seriously. After all, for millions of people, sports and other so-called trivial pursuits (video games, chess, children’s games, and so on) are a source of endless fascination. For us, they will be a source of stories about human achievements and frustrations. These stories can involve economic, social, and political issues. They can draw upon history, statistics, psychology, and philosophy. They can be reported or ruminative, formally experimental or straightforward, richly descriptive or tense and spare. They can be fun. Over the course of the semester, students will read and discuss exemplary profiles, essays, articles, and blog posts, while also writing and discussing their own. While much (but not all) of the reading will come from the world of sports, no interest in or knowledge about sports is required; our focus will be on writing for a broad audience.  Supplemental Application Information:  To apply, please write a letter describing why you want to take the course and what you hope to get out of it. Include a few examples of websites or magazines you like to read, and tell me briefly about one pursuit -- football, chess, basketball, ballet, Othello, crosswords, soccer, whatever -- that interests you and why.

English CALR. Advanced Screenwriting: Workshop

Instructor: Musa Syeed Spring 2024: Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBA Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

The feature-length script is an opportunity to tell a story on a larger scale, and, therefore, requires additional preparation. In this class, we will move from writing a pitch, to a synopsis, to a treatment/outline, to the first 10 pages, to the first act of a feature screenplay. We will analyze produced scripts and discuss various elements of craft, including research, writing layered dialogue, world-building, creating an engaging cast of characters. As an advanced class, we will also look at ways both mainstream and independent films attempt to subvert genre and structure. Students will end the semester with a first act (20-30 pages) of their feature, an outline, and strategy to complete the full script.

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a 3-5 page writing sample. Screenplays are preferred, but fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and plays are acceptable as well. Also, please write a short note to introduce yourself. Include a couple films/filmmakers that have inspired you, your goals for the class, as well as any themes/subject matter/ideas you might be interested in exploring in your writing for film.

English CNFR. Creative Nonfiction: Workshop

Instructor: Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

Whether it takes the form of literary journalism, essay, memoir, or environmental writing, creative nonfiction is a powerful genre that allows writers to break free from the constraints commonly associated with nonfiction prose and reach for the breadth of thought and feeling usually accomplished only in fiction: the narration of a vivid story, the probing of a complex character, the argument of an idea, or the evocation of a place. Students will work on several short assignments to hone their mastery of the craft, then write a longer piece that will be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from published authors such as Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, and Virginia Woolf. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:   Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with creative/literary nonfiction; what excites you about nonfiction in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of creative/literary nonfiction (essay, memoir, narrative journalism, etc, but NOT academic writing) or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

English CKR. Introduction to Playwriting: Workshop

Instructor: Sam Marks TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students This workshop is an introduction to writing for the stage through intensive reading and in-depth written exercises. Each student will explore the fundamentals and possibilities of playwriting by generating short scripts and completing a one act play with an eye towards both experimental and traditional narrative styles. Readings will examine various ways of creating dramatic art and include work from contemporary playwrights such as Ayad Aktar, Clare Barron, Aleshea Harris, Young Jean Lee, and Taylor Mac, as well established work from Edward Albbe, Caryl Churchill, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Harold Pinter. Supplemental Application Information:  No experience in writing the dramatic form is necessary. Please submit a 5-10 page writing sample (preferably a play or screenplay, but all genres are acceptable and encouraged). Also, please write a few sentences about a significant theatrical experience (a play read or seen) and how it affected you.

English CACF. Get Real: The Art of Community-Based Film

Instructor: Musa Syeed Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 student Course Site

“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us,” the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami said, “unless it’s inside a frame.” For our communities confronting invisibility and erasure, there’s an urgent need for new frames. In this workshop, we’ll explore a community-engaged approach to documentary and fiction filmmaking, as we seek to see our world more deeply. We’ll begin with screenings, craft exercises, and discussions around authorship and social impact. Then we each will write, develop, and shoot a short film over the rest of the semester, building off of intentional community engagement. Students will end the class with written and recorded materials for a rough cut. Basic equipment and technical training will be provided.

Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. Please also discuss what participants/communities you might be interested in engaging with for your filmmaking projects. For your writing sample, please submit 3-5 pages of your creative work from any genre (screenwriting, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc.)

English CAFR. Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing this Present Life

Instructor: Claire Messud Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Intended for students with prior fiction-writing and workshop experience, this course will concentrate on structure, execution and revision. Exploring various strands of contemporary and recent literary fiction – writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Chimamanda Adichie, Douglas Stuart, Ocean Vuong, etc – we will consider how fiction works in our present moment, with emphasis on a craft perspective. Each student will present to the class a published fiction that has influenced them. The course is primarily focused on the discussion of original student work, with the aim of improving both writerly skills and critical analysis. Revision is an important component of this class: students will workshop two stories and a revision of one of these. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Sunday, April 7)

Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit 3-5 pages of prose fiction, along with a substantive letter of introduction. I’d like to know why you’re interested in the course; what experience you’ve had writing, both in previous workshops and independently; what your literary goals and ambitions are. Please tell me about some of your favorite narratives – fiction, non-fiction, film, etc: why they move you, and what you learn from them.

English CAKV. Fiction Workshop: Writing from the First-Person Point of View

Instructor:  Andrew Krivak Tuesday, 9:00-11:45 1m | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This course is a workshop intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any novel poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable. We will read from roughly twelve novels written in the first-person, from Marilynne Robinson and W.G. Sebald, to Valeria Luiselli and Teju Cole, and ask questions (among others) of why this form, why this style? And, as a result, what is lost and what is realized in the telling? Primarily, however, students will write. Our goal will be to have a student’s work read and discussed twice in class during the semester. I am hoping to see at least 35-40 pages of a project —at any level of completion—at the end of term.  Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a substantive letter telling me why you’re interested in taking this class, what writers (classical and contemporary) you admire and why, and if there’s a book you have read more than once, a movie you have seen more than once, a piece of music you listen to over and over, not because you have to but because you want to. Students of creative nonfiction are also welcome to apply.

English CCSS. Fiction Workshop: The Art of the Short Story

Instructor: Laura van den Berg Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This course will serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of writing fiction, with an emphasis on the contemporary short story. How can we set about creating “big” worlds in compact spaces? What unique doors can the form of the short story open? The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Ted Chiang, Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and Octavia Butler. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Sunday, April 7) Supplemental Application Information:  Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. Please also include a very brief writing sample (2-3 pages). The sample can be in any genre (it does not have to be from a work of fiction). 

Write an Honors Creative Thesis

Students may apply to write a senior thesis or senior project in creative writing, although only English concentrators can be considered. Students submit applications in early March of their junior year, including first-term juniors who are out of phase. The creative writing faculty considers the proposal, along with the student's overall performance in creative writing and other English courses, and notifies students about its decision in early mid-late March. Those applications are due, this coming year, on TBA . 

Students applying for a creative writing thesis or project must have completed at least one course in creative writing at Harvard before they apply. No student is guaranteed acceptance. It is strongly suggested that students acquaint themselves with the requirements and guidelines well before the thesis application is due. The creative writing director must approve any exceptions to the requirements, which must be made in writing by Monday, February 7, 2022. Since the creative writing thesis and project are part of the English honors program, acceptance to write a creative thesis is conditional upon the student continuing to maintain a 3.40 concentration GPA. If a student’s concentration GPA drops below 3.40 after the spring of the junior year, the student may not be permitted to continue in the honors program.

Joint concentrators may apply to write creative theses, but we suggest students discuss the feasibility of the project well before applications are due. Not all departments are open to joint creative theses.

Students who have questions about the creative writing thesis should contact the program’s Director, Sam Marks .

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Yale Creative Writing

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‘The program of no’: Creative writing program faces lecturer shortages

Two creative writing lecturers requested anonymity due to fears of professional retaliation. Pseudonyms and gender neutral pronouns were used to protect sources’ identities and improve readability.

Rose Whitmore, a former Jones lecturer, was one of Kathaleen Mallard’s ’25 favorite teachers and mentors. She received the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize — the same year she was let go. When another student asked her to be their advisor that year, Whitmore had to decline.

“I advised her for the rest of that year and then she had to go find somebody, and I think that was a bummer for her,” Whitmore said. 

Whitmore’s dismissal was necessitated by a four-year cap on lectureships, implemented by the creative writing program last year, which meant that those hired after the cap would be terminated at the end of their four years. But despite the policy, Stanford’s creative writing program — which claims to be “one of the best-known in the country” — continues to struggle to meet student demand, with high-volume waitlists for capped workshop classes.

For some students and lecturers, this tension between the program’s hiring limits and student demand means that creative writing students are not receiving the resources they need.

“Students are having a harder time getting into the classes,” said Charlie, a lecturer who requested anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation. “That’s why we’re disappointed at the faculty’s decision to reduce the number of lectureships — we feel like it’s wrong and it’s exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, considering the demand.”

This academic year is the first that current Stegner fellows, from whom Jones lectureships are usually hired, are not being offered the opportunity to apply for the lectureship. In an email obtained by The Daily, Nicholas Jenkins, the co-director of the creative writing program, and Elizabeth Tallent, the former co-director of the program, wrote that the program lacked the funds to support new positions. Following advocacy to increase compensation to allow lecturers to afford Bay Area rent, the program recently increased salaries for Jones lectures.

Some students who face limited resources and teaching staff say they are being discouraged from the program. 

Natalie Rodriguez ’25, who said she applied to Stanford because of its creative writing program, said that despite being a declared English major, there has not been a quarter where she has not been stressed about enrollment. 

During her frosh winter, Rodriguez said she struggled to get into ENGLISH 90: “Fiction Writing” and eventually got off the waitlist after classes had already started. She considered herself lucky — if she had not gotten into the class, she said she likely would have been turned off by the program and probably would not have become an English major with a concentration in creative writing.

“That is the whole reason that I wanted to come here and it probably would have been incredibly stressful to have to figure out a whole plan and to feel like I had been lied to,” she said.

Even students who brave the enrollment process say the challenges are making them hesitant about pursuing a creative writing career.

Mallard said she can feel a sense of discouragement in the classroom from seeing lecturers get let go and experiencing the difficulty of getting into classes, which both make it seem like Stanford does not think creative writing is a “valid pathway.”  

According to Mallard, Whitmore is “one of the best short story writers [in the] nation.”

“If she was let go, what hope do the rest of us have for finding a job in creative writing?” Mallard asked. 

Sam, a lecturer who requested anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation, wrote that they found it strange that Stanford does not have the funds for additional creative writing classes when other departments and classes, like engineering, require more expensive resources. If there was a lack of instructors in the computer science department, they wrote, Stanford would immediately address the issue. 

Hiring caps mean that creative writing instructors also often have to turn down students looking for advisors.

Natalie Rodriguez ’25, who applied for an honors in the arts, said she reached out to several lecturers to advise her creative writing project. But none had the capacity to help her, because they were at capacity for the number of other students who had asked to do independent work. Eventually, Rodriguez found someone in a different department to advise her. 

Sam wrote that since the passing of the last program director, Eavan Boland, the new co-directors have implemented a policy of two independent studies students per year, per lecturer. Though many lecturers, like Charlie, say they take this maximum amount of two independent studies students per year, they are unable to fully meet student demand.

Capped workshops, which Rodriguez said are some of the program’s most popular and demanded classes, are also affected by teaching staff shortages. The most popular introductory creative writing classes, ENGLISH 9CE: “Creative Expression in Writing,” ENGLISH 90: “Fiction Writing” and ENGLISH 91: “Creative Nonfiction” are all workshops. 

“It’s important that workshops are kept to a class of 15 students, so that each student’s work gets the attention it deserves,” Sam wrote. “Most introductory courses have waitlists of 10 students or more.”

Whitmore said she used to receive many emails from students, especially from seniors who really needed to take a specific class to fulfill their minor. She would occasionally take more students than the cap, but such a decision is up to the discretion of each particular lecturer. 

“If there’s too many students in the class, people just don’t get the same experience,” Whitmore said. “Creative writing classes should be small because it’s an intimate excavator process and it’s meant to be.”

Workshops typically begin with a few weeks dedicated to studying the works of other authors, before students take turns sharing their personal work. Class sessions are then spent providing feedback to individual students — Rodriguez said these are her favorite classes to be in because she enjoys reading her classmates’ work and getting feedback from them and lecturers.

Since the introduction of enrollment groups, though, Sam wrote the composition of their introductory creative writing classes has been affected, with more seniors and juniors than before. “Of course we want seniors and juniors in our classes, but we’d especially like for freshmen and sophomores to have access to these introductory classes,” they wrote. 

“This is a failure of vision and attention at all levels of upper administration at Stanford. If I was a parent of a Stanford student who could not take a Creative Writing class, I would be astonished and angry,” Sam wrote.

Mallard said this was a huge problem for creative writing students, because it is hard to get into the classes they need. She said that it feels like there are more creative writing minors and English majors with a creative writing concentration now, “but they’re not hiring any new lecturers and a lot of really, really famous lecturers, like famous writers, are let go.” 

Sam wrote that when the creative writing program was under former director Eavan Boland, the culture and priority of the program was centered around the students. However, since her passing in 2020, the leadership and direction of the program has changed. Sam wrote that critical needs are not addressed, even when expressed by lecturers and students.

“Every email from our directors detail all the things that can’t be done. It’s become the Program of No. The culture and morale that was built by Eavan in partnership with the Jones lecturers and generations of undergraduates is falling apart in front of our eyes,” Sam wrote. 

In an email to The Daily, Gabriella Safran, senior associate dean of humanities and arts, wrote that she and the faculty in the program were aware of the high demand for creative writing classes, and that she could not speak to personnel and hiring issues. 

“We hope to provide more opportunities for students in the future once the restructuring of the program is complete,” she wrote. 

According to Charlie, under the co-directorship of Jenkins and Tallent, a process to restructure the creative writing program began with the formation of a working group comprised of creative writing faculty members. There was no Jones lecturer representation in the group. 

“I think if Stanford wants to claim that they have a great creative writing program, they need to offer the same funding and the same support that they offer to other programs,” said Rodriguez.

Mallard said she recently attended a poetry reading held by a Stegner Fellow. It was a packed event, which surprised her.

“So I think the problem isn’t with engagement or the lack of people who are passionate about creative writing … I think there are lots of students who want to make creative writing their livelihood after college,” she said. “It’s like, truthfully, Stanford is just, ignoring the students and what they want.”

Judy N. Liu '26 is the Academics desk editor for News and staff writer at The Daily.

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Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing The Write Stuff for Writers

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Grow Your Writing Passion into a Career with Liberty’s Online MFA in Creative Writing

Many people write creatively, but few hone their skills to develop their writing craft to its highest form. Even fewer learn the other skills it takes to become a successful writer, such as the steps needed to get a book published and into the hands of readers. Liberty’s 100% online Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing can help you develop your writing passion into a career so you can set your works free to impact culture and the world.

Employers in every industry need professionals who have strong writing skills, so you can be confident that your ability to write effectively can also help set you apart in your current career. With in-demand writing expertise and the ability to customize your degree with electives in literature or writing practice, Liberty’s online MFA in Creative Writing can help you achieve your professional writing goals.

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is designed to help you build on your writing skills with specific workshops dedicated to the craft of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or screenwriting. With a work-in-progress approach to writing practice and mentorship from our faculty of experienced writers and scholars, you can learn the specific skills you need to make your writing stand out.

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Why Choose Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing?

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is mainly offered in an 8-week course format, and our tuition rate for graduate programs hasn’t increased in 9 years. Through our program, you can study the writing process and develop your creative skills through workshops with experienced writing professionals. With our flexible format, you can grow in your creative writing while continuing to do what is important to you.

As a terminal degree, the online MFA in Creative Writing can also help you pursue opportunities to teach writing at the K-12 or college level. You will gain comprehensive and in-depth exposure to writing, literature, publishing, and many other professional writing skills that you can pass on to students. Partner with the Liberty family and learn under faculty who have spent years in the field you love. Your career in professional writing starts here.

What Will You Study in Our MFA in Creative Writing?

The MFA in Creative Writing program is designed to help you become an excellent creative writer across the genres of creative fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and poetry. You can learn how to produce aesthetically and culturally engaged creative works while gaining professional knowledge and practice. You will also study foundational contemporary literature so that you have a background in studying important works to draw on for your writing.

To help you in your professional writing, you will also study many essential skills in editing, layout, and the business of publishing so that you can best position yourself for success in the market. Through your creative writing courses and workshops, you can develop your craft so that you will be ready for your thesis project.

Here are a few examples of the skills Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing can help you master:

• Marketing your projects and pursuing new writing opportunities
• Organizing writing and adapting it to different types of writing
• Tailoring writing to specific audiences and markets
• Understanding what makes art effective, compelling, and impactful
• Writing compelling stories that engage readers

Potential Career Opportunities

• Book and magazine writer
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• ENGL 600 – Editing, Layout, and Publishing
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Admission Information for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Admission requirements.

• A non-refundable, non-transferable $50 application fee will be posted on the current application upon enrollment (waived for qualifying service members, veterans, and military spouses – documentation verifying military status is required) .
• Unofficial transcripts can be used for acceptance purposes with the submission of a Transcript Request Form .
• Creative Writing Sample – A creative writing sample of one creative writing work of at least 2,500 words or a culmination of creative writing samples totaling 2,500 words.*
• Applicants whose native language is other than English must submit official scores for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or an approved alternative assessment. For information on alternative assessments or TOEFL waivers, please call Admissions or view the official International Admissions policy .

*A sample of one or more poems totaling a minimum of 750 words may also be submitted. Song lyrics are not accepted at this time as writing samples.

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• Be in your final term and planning to start your master’s degree after the last day of class for your bachelor’s degree.
• Complete a Bachelor’s Self-Certification Form confirming your completion date. You may download the form from the Forms and Downloads page or contact an admissions counselor to submit the form on your behalf.
• Submit an official/unofficial transcript to confirm that you are in your final term. The preliminary transcript must show a minimum of 105 completed credit hours.
• If you are a current Liberty University student completing your undergraduate degree, you will need to submit a Degree/Certificate Completion Application .
• Send in an additional, final official transcript with a conferral date on it by the end of your first semester of enrollment in the new master’s degree.

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Please see the Online Dual Enrollment page for information about starting graduate courses while finishing your bachelor’s degree.

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Unofficial transcripts combined with a Transcript Request Form can be used for admission. Official transcripts are required within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first, and will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

Before sending unofficial college transcripts, please make sure they include the following:

• Your previous school’s name or logo printed on the document
• Cumulative GPA
• A list of completed courses and earned credit broken down by semester
• Degree and date conferred (if applicable)

Official College Transcript Policy

An acceptable official college transcript is one that has been issued directly from the institution and is in a sealed envelope. If you have one in your possession, it must meet the same requirements. If your previous institution offers electronic official transcript processing, they can send the document directly to [email protected] .

If the student uses unofficial transcripts with a Transcript Request Form to gain acceptance, all official transcripts must be received within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first. Failure to send all official transcripts within the 60-day period will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is an mfa in creative writing.

A Master of Fine Arts degree, or MFA, is a terminal degree in an artistic craft that demonstrates that you have achieved the highest level of training and skill in your discipline. Like a doctorate, an MFA often allows you to teach courses at the graduate level while also providing many opportunities for scholarship and leadership in education. If you want to grow your creative writing skills to become the best writer you can be, then the Master of Fine Arts can help you get there.

How will students work towards developing their writing skills?

With creative writing workshops and a thesis project, you will receive support and guidance to help you become the best writer you can be.

How long will it take to complete the MFA in Creative Writing?

You can complete the MFA in Creative Writing in just 48 credit hours!

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