can you major in creative writing at nyu

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Creative Writing

The Creative Writing concentration is designed for beginner through experienced writers who wish to develop their craft. Through studio classes in poetry, prose, and performance, you will concentrate on generating texts and learning the conventions of particular genres and forms. You also will participate in interdisciplinary humanities seminars that bring together reading, writing, theory, and method.

Build Your Audience

Improve as a writer with practice and feedback and increase your audience through publication in our literary and arts journal, Dovetail.

Faculty Contact

Dr. Clif Hubby

(212) 992-8397

[email protected]. 

Requirements

Creative writing concentration: craft studios category.

Students select four credits from Craft Studios and four credits from Workshops and an additional eight credits from either category.

• CWRG1-UC5243 The Craft of Playwriting 4
• CWRG1-UC5242 Poetry Studio 4
• CWRG1-UC5241 Prose Studio 4

Creative Writing Concentration: Workshops Category

Students select four credits from Workshops and four credits from Craft Studios and an additional eight credits from either category.

• CWRG1-UC5277 Creative Nonfiction Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5271 Fiction Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5272 Poetry Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5280 Writing for Children & Adolescents 4
• CWRG1-UC5275 Writing for The Screen 4
• CWRG1-UC5273 Writing for The Theater 4
• MEST1-UC6050 Digital Storytelling 4
• MEST1-UC6013 Writing for Media and Communication 4

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NYU Creative Writing Program

New york, united states.

The Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University has distinguished itself for more than three decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The program enables students to develop their craft while working closely with some of today's finest poets and writers. Students also have an opportunity to enjoy America's most literary terrain, benefiting from the extensive cultural resources of the University and New York City.

Each year the faculty selects a talented group of writers and offers them rigorous and supportive teaching. Most candidates take one workshop and one other course each semester and complete the program in two years; only one writing workshop may be taken per semester. In the final semester, students present a creative thesis consisting of a substantial body of finished work in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

The NYU Creative Writing program provides an environment which enables students to work seriously at their craft and, through outreach programs, the literary journal Washington Square, and public readings, bring the art of writing to the larger community of New York City. This is a serious community of writers engaged in an exceptional program of study.

Washington Square is the literary review of New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. A biannual literary magazine, it is staffed and edited by CWP students. It includes work by established writers as well as NYU alumni. It sponsors a student reading series open to the public and enables students to experience working on a literary magazine in all phases of its production.

NYU's Creative Writing Program offers a prestigious literary reading series, free and open to the public. (Support is provided by NY Community Trust, the NY State Council on the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., Poetry Society of America, the NYU Book Center, and many more.) Guest writers are invited to meet informally with students during their visits. Recent guests have included André Aciman, Kaveh Akbar, Donald Antrim, Amy Bloom, Jericho Brown, Anne Carson, Alexander Chee, Susan Choi, Sandra Cisneros, Lydia Davis, Stuart Dybek, Mark Doty, Deborah Eisenberg, Melissa Febos, Joshua Ferris, Rivka Galchen, Jorie Graham, Terrance Hayes, Marie Howe, Etgar Keret, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rachel Kushner, Dorothea Lasky, Victor LaValle, Kiese Laymon, Jonathan Lethem, Sam Lipsyte, Patricia Lockwood, Layli Long Soldier, Carmen Maria Machado, James McBride, Dinaw Mengestu, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Eileen Myles, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Morgan Parker, Carl Phillips, Claudia Rankine, Karen Russell, Tracy K. Smith, Gary Shteyngart, Edmund White, and Colson Whitehead.

Students may apply for fellowships that involve teaching in literary outreach programs. These programs, which have become national models for excellence in literary outreach, include The Starworks Fellowship Program, The Goldwater Writing Workshop, and the Veterans Writing Workshop.

Contact Information

58 West 10th Street Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House New York New York, United States 10011 Phone: 2129988816 Email: [email protected] https://as.nyu.edu/cwp.html

Minor / Concentration in Creative Writing +

Undergraduate program director.

The Minor in Creative Writing offers undergraduates the opportunity to hone their skills while exploring the full range of literary genres including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The Minor is a sixteen-point credit load consisting of three to four creative writing courses. V39.0815 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction & Poetry (or V39.9815 Creative Writing, or equivalent) is generally the foundational course, to be followed by twelve additional points in the form of three higher-level workshops (Intermediate/Advanced/Master Class; four points each) or one higher-level workshop combined with one of our summer intensives (Writers in New York or Writers in Paris; eight points each).

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Graduate program director.

The Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University has distinguished itself for more than two decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The program enables students to develop their craft while working closely with some of today's finest poets and writers. Students also have an opportunity to enjoy America's most literary terrain, benefiting from the extensive cultural resources of the University and New York City.

Washington Square Review is the literary review of New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. A biannual literary magazine, it is staffed and edited by CWP students. It includes work by established writers as well as NYU alumni. It sponsors a student reading series open to the public and enables students to experience working on a literary magazine in all phases of its production.

NYU's Creative Writing Program offers a prestigious literary reading series, free and open to the public. (Support is provided by NY Community Trust, the NY State Council on the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., the NYU Book Center, and many more.) Guest writers are invited to meet informally with students during their visits. Recent guests have included Andre Aciman, Fred Moten, Claire Messud, Carl Phillips, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Ladan Osman, Jenny Offill, Susan Choi, Khaled Mattawa, Layli Long Soldier, Chang rae-Lee, Curtis Sittenfeld, Pamela Sneed, Patricia Lockwood, Melissa Febos, Rachel Cusk, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, Eliot Weinberger, Douglas Kearney, Kaveh Akbar, and Maggie Nelson, among many others.

Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU. Her first book of poetry, Satan Says, received the San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Her second book, The Dead and the Living, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of The Gold Cell; The Father; The Wellspring; Blood, Tin, Straw; The Unswept Room; Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980- 2002; One Secret Thing; Odes; and most recently, Arias, which was a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2012, her collection Stag's Leap was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. She received a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Grant in 1993, part of which was designated for the NYU workshop program at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island. In 1997, she received the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award. From 1998-2000 she was the New York State Poet Laureate. Professor Olds holds the Erich Maria Remarque Professorship at NYU.

https://as.nyu.edu/cwp/graduate/faculty.html

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. Her first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers' First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won The Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Award (Eurasia Section) and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Swing Time, was published in 2016. She is the editor of an anthology of short stories entitled The Book Of Other People and has published several collections of short stories including Martha and Hanwell (2005), and Grand Union (2019), as well as several collections of essays including Changing My Mind (2009), Feel Free: Essays (2018), and the most recent Intimations: Six Essays (2020). She was formerly the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine. Zadie Smith is a graduate of Cambridge University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She became a tenured professor of fiction at NYU in 2010.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestselling novel Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. His other novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am. He is also the author of the nonfiction books, Eating Animals, and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest,” and was included in The New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list of writers. He lives in Brooklyn.

Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. With Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann he wrote the secret book Gentle Reader! It is not for sale. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem They All Seemed Asleep in 2008. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994.

His poems have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many journals. He's received the Hopwood Award for poetry and a Pushcart prize, and was selected as a National Poetry Series winner, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Recently he has participated in residencies/ performances at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle).

Matthew Rohrer was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in Oklahoma, and attended universities in Ann Arbor, Dublin, and Iowa City. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.

Darin Strauss

Darin Strauss is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than it Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir, Half a Life, the comic-book series, Olivia Twist, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story (Random House, 2020). A recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Library Association Award, and numerous other prizes, Strauss has written screenplays for Disney, Gary Oldman, and Julie Taymor. His work has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries, and he is a Clinical Professor at the NYU Creative Writing Program.

Deborah Landau

Deborah Landau (Director) is the author of four collections of poetry: Soft Targets (winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award), The Uses of the Body and The Last Usable Hour, all Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her other awards include a Jacob K Javits Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition was published by Valparaiso Edici?ones in 2017. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, and The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She is a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition is forthcoming from Valparaiso Ediciones.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, selected for The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English.

Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she was a Javits Fellow and received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at New York University, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and daughter.

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander's most recent novel is kaddish.com. He is also the author of the Dinner at the Center of the Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, as well as the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases (all published by Knopf/Vintage). He was the 2012 recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for What We Talk About. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Vogue, and Esquire, among other places. His work has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous editions of The Best American Short Stories, including 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Translated into twenty-two languages, Englander was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He’s been a fellow at the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and at The American Academy of Berlin. In 2012 Englander's translation of the New American Haggadah (edited by Jonathan Safran Foer) was published by Little Brown. He also co-translated Etgar Keret's Suddenly A Knock at the Door and Fly Already, published by FSG. His play The Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at the Public Theater in 2012, and his new play, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of a 2019 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, and the 2020 Blanche and Irving Laurie Theatre Visions Fund Prize, was commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater and was supposed to be running at The Old Globe in San Diego right now—sigh. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University and lives with his family in Toronto.

Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin 2018) and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). To Float In The Space Between was winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin won the Hurston/Wright 2019 Award for Poetry and was a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, the 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Hayes is a Professor of English at New York University.

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has published numerous essays and memoirs, novellas, plays, children's and young adult fiction, and dozens of works of short fiction, poetry, and fiction, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), as well as the New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger) and The Gravedigger’s Daughter, A Book of American Martyrs, and the most recent, Hazards of Time Travel, My Life as a Rat, and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. Her most recent works, published with HarperCollins, include the poetry collection American Melancholy (2021) and a collection of stories The (Other) You (2021). Her next novel Breathe will be published in August 2021. In 2013, she received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection for Black Dahlia and White Swan. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Catherine Barnett

Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent collection, Human Hours, was published in 2018 by Graywolf Press and received the Believer Book Award in Poetry. She is also the author of Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Alice James Books, 2004), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012), which received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for an outstanding second book. Barnett has taught at Barnard, Princeton, and Hunter, and is currently a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published to major acclaim in 1993. It has been translated into thirty-four languages and made into a feature film. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Middlesex also won the WELT-Literaturpreis of Germany and the Great Lakes Book Award, and it was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, France’s Prix Medici, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His third novel, The Marriage Plot (FSG, 2011), was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and was named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Republic, Publisher's Weekly, and numerous other publications. His latest book, the story collection Fresh Complaint (FSG, 2017), was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, The Guardian, NPR, and others. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review, and Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists.” Eugenides is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. He taught creative writing at Princeton for many years before joining the NYU Creative Writing Program as a tenured full professor and the Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Professor in American Letters. Eugenides has been inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

http://as.nyu.edu/cwp/graduate/Faculty1.html

Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award, it is a Barack Obama Summer Reading selection and a New York Times Editors’ choice. Her third novel, A Separation, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori. She is also the author of Gone To The Forest and The Longshot, both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages and is being adapted for film and television. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.

Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru is a Clinical Professor in the Creative Writing Program. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. He is the author of five novels, including White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, One Book New York, the Prix du Livre Inter étranger, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His latest novel Red Pill was published in 2020 by Knopf. He is also the author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men and a short story collection, Noise. His novella Memory Palace was presented as an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, Bookforum, October and Frieze. He has written screenplays, radio drama, and experimental work using field recordings and voice-to-text software. He has taught at Hunter College and Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is a past deputy president of English PEN, a judge for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and has been a frequent presenter, interviewer and guest on television and radio.

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is a recipient of the 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, and the author of six collections including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March of 2020 at The Shed, NYC, and The White Card, and the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. She also co-produces a video series, “The Situation,” alongside John Lucas, and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. In 2016, she co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). In addition to the MacArthur, her numerous awards and honors include the Forward Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Her most recent book is Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf, 2020). A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program as a tenured Professor in Fall 2021.

Publications & Presses +

Washington Square Review

Visiting Writers Program +

Nick Laird, Nadifa Mohamed, Ocean Vuong, Marie-Helene Bertino, Kiran Desai, Alex Dimitrov, Uzodinma Iweala, David Lipsky, Leigh Newman, Idra Novey, Meghan O'Rourke, Julie Orringer, Jana Prikryl, Jess Row, Nicole Sealey, Parul Sehgal, Brandon Taylor, Hannah Tinti, Phillip B. Williams

Reading Series +

NYU Reading Series ( http://as.nyu.edu/cwp/reading-series.html )

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, where’s a good college for a creative writing major.

Hallo! I'm quite passionate about writing and I'm keen to major in creative writing when I go to college. Can anyone out there provide suggestions on which colleges offer the best programs? If anyone has personal experiences, that would be super helpful too.

There are some outstanding colleges renowned for their creative writing programs!

1. University of Iowa: Known for its unique writing workshop model, this program allows students to receive detailed feedback from their peers. They have an active literary community and reading series with various authors.

2. Johns Hopkins University: This college is great for undergraduates seeking an intensive and focused creative writing program. The Writing Seminars department offers degrees in both Writing and English, allowing students to deeply engage with literature as well as writing.

3. Stanford University: Stanford's creative writing program is part of the English department and highly regarded. It benefits from the university's location in the San Francisco Bay Area, a hub of literary activity with many readings, lectures, and other events.

4. Brown University: Brown's program is unique in that it is a writing concentration within an English literature degree, combining intensive writing with a deep grounding in literary studies.

5. New York University: NYU offers a range of writing courses within the sprawling city of New York, providing a diverse and vibrant setting for creative ambition.

Remember, the best creative writing program for you will depend on your personal writing goals and what other interests you want to explore in college. So it's also important to consider the overall fit of the university - its size, location, ethos, and so on. It may also be helpful to find out about opportunities for publishing and performance, internships, reading series, and faculty.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

List of All U.S. Colleges with a Creative Writing Major

Writing has been my passion practically since I learned to read in kindergarten. I would write stories about princesses and my family dog, Gansett. When it came time to look at colleges, I was set on attending one with a strong creative writing program. Ultimately, I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in Writing Seminars.

Today, colleges across the country offer creative writing as a major. Because writing skills are essential for a wide range of careers, and because most curricula emphasize broad liberal arts competencies, a degree in creative writing can set you up for success in numerous fields, whether you want to be an editor or a lawyer.

Interested in majoring in creative writing? Learn which schools offer the major and what to look for in a program.

Overview of the Creative Writing Major

Creative writing is about more than spinning tales. For your major, you’ll generally need to pursue a curriculum grounded in literature, history, foreign language, and other humanities courses, along with distribution courses, if the college requires them.

Most creative writing majors must participate in workshops, in which students present their work and listen to peer critiques, usually with a certain number of advanced courses in the mix. In some cases, colleges will ask you to specialize in a particular genre, such as fiction, poetry, or playwriting. 

To succeed in creative writing, you’ll need to have a tough spine, in order to open yourself up to feedback from your classmates and instructors. You may need to give readings in public — if not as an undergraduate, certainly during your career. Of course, a passion for creating is essential, too, as is a willingness to revise your work and learn from the greats and your peers.

A creative writing major opens up doors to many careers, including journalism, content marketing, copywriting, teaching, and others. Even careers that don’t center around writing often have a strong writing component: you’ll need to write reports, deliver presentations, and so on.

Some writers go on to earn an MFA, which will help you hone your craft. It’s also often a prerequisite for teaching creative writing at the college level.

What to Look for in a College as a Creative Writing Major

Published authors on faculty.

Many world-renowned authors have another claim to fame: professorships. Writers who have taught their craft include (among many others):

• Maya Angelou (Wake Forest University)
• Colson Whitehead (many colleges, including Vassar College and Columbia University)
• Stephen Dixon (Johns Hopkins University)
• Viet Thanh Nguyen (University of Southern California)
• Eula Biss (Northwestern University)
• Toni Morrison (Princeton University)

Be aware that as an undergraduate, you may not be able to learn from the greats. That’s why it’s important to look into which courses these faculty teach before you have dreams of being mentored by Salman Rushdie — who is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU.

Genres Offered

While many schools that have creative writing majors offer fiction and poetry courses and tracks, there are some niche genres that could be more difficult to find. If you’re interested in playwriting, for example, you won’t find that at every school. Before you decide on a program, be sure it includes the genres you’d like to explore further, whether that’s flash fiction, creative nonfiction, or something else.

Workshopping Opportunities

The core of most quality creative writing curriculum is workshopping. This means sharing your work in your classes and listening to your peers discuss and critique it. While this may sound intimidating, it can do a lot to help you hone your work and become a better writer. Look for colleges that make this the bedrock of their curriculum.

Showcasing Opportunities

Are there opportunities to present your work, such as college-sponsored readings where undergraduates can participate? Or, perhaps the school has a great literary journal. At my school, students could submit their plays and have them performed by fellow students. 

List of All U.S. Colleges With a Creative Writing Major

What Are Your Chances of Acceptance?

No matter what major you’re considering, the first step is ensuring you’re academically comparable to students who were previously accepted to the college or university. Most selective schools use the Academic Index to filter out applicants who aren’t up to their standards.

You’ll also want to demonstrate your fit with the school and specific major with the qualitative components of your application, like your extracurriculars and essays. For a prospective creative writing major, the essay is particularly important because this is a way to demonstrate your writing prowess. Activities might include editing your school’s newspaper or literary journal, publishing your work, and participating in pre-college writing workshops.

Want to know your chances of being accepted to top creative writing schools? Try our Chancing Engine (it’s free). Unlike other calculators, it takes your individual profile into account, including academic stats and qualitative components like your activities. Give it a try and get a jumpstart on your journey as a creative writing major!

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• Getting Published
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Contact us via email , text us at 646-265-1342, or schedule an appointment .

The NYU Creative Writing Program hosts a series of public readings by established and emerging writers at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House at 58 West 10th Street. To view the schedule for this semester's readings, visit the full NYU Creative Writing Program website .

You can also find video recordings of NYU Creative Writing Program readings on their YouTube channel and Recent Podcasts & Videos page, and listen to selected readings from 2017 and earlier on the Creative Writing Program's Classic Podcasts page .

• Authors Guild The Authors Guild advocates for the rights of writers by supporting free speech, fair contracts, and copyright. We create community and we fight for a living wage.
• AWP: Association of Writers & Writing Programs AWP provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to writers, college and university creative writing programs, and writers’ conferences and centers. As a national professional association of creative writers and writing programs, AWP brings together independent writers, academic writing programs, journals, presses, and arts organizations, and hosts the largest annual gathering of writers in North America.
• London Writers' Salon A UK-based writing community that offers free online "Writers' Hours" for quiet, focused work every weekday.
• PEN America Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of the more than 100 centers worldwide that make up the PEN International network. PEN America works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.

Poets House is a national poetry library and literary center that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry. Our poetry resources and literary events document the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, and stimulate public dialogue on issues of poetry in culture.  In the summer of 2009, Poets House moved to its permanent home at 10 River Terrace in Battery Park City and opened to the public on September 25, 2009.

Throughout its transformations, the heart of Poets House has remained its poetry collection. With over 50,000 volumes of poetry—including books, journals, chapbooks, audio and video tapes, and digital media—our collection is among the most comprehensive, open-access collections of poetry in the United States and is the foundation for all our programs and services.

Looking for award-winning books? Here are some of the websites for major literary prizes and awards, which list current and previous award winners. You can use the Libraries' Catalog to search our collection for titles and/or authors.

• Booker Prize winners The Man Booker Prize "aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland."
• Edgar Award winners An annual award for mystery and detective fiction, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. Use this link to search or browse their database of prize winners.
• Governor General's Literary Awards Each year, the Governor General’s Literary Awards (the GGs) honour the best in Canadian literature. As Canada’s national literary awards, the GGs represent the rich diversity of Canadian literature and its authors, translators and illustrators.
• Hugo Award winners The Hugo Awards, presented annually since 1955, are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention ("Worldcon"), which is also responsible for administering them.
• Lambda Literary Awards The Lambda Literary Awards, presented by the Lambda Literary Association, identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year.
• National Book Award winners Established in 1950, the National Book Award is an American literary prize administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization.
• National Book Critics Circle Awards The National Book Critics Circle awards are given each March and honor the best literature published in the United States in six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
• Nebula Award winners The Nebula Awards ® are voted on, and presented by, active members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.
• Otherwise Award The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) is an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender.
• Pulitzer Prize winners The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States.
• Shirley Jackson Award winners An award for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic."
• Stoker Awards Each year, the Horror Writers Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror work, Dracula.
• Women's Prize for Fiction Formerly known as the Orange Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman.
• World Fantasy Awards Awards for fantasy fiction, presented annually at the World Fantasy Convention.
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• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2024 4:27 PM
• URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/creative-writing

Published September 13, 2023

A Tale of Three Cities: NYU’s Summer Creative Writing Programs

Staff Writer

• Aspiring writers can spend a month honing their craft in Paris, Florence, or New York City.
• These summer programs are open to current NYU undergrads as well as visiting students.
• Writers immerse themselves in their cities and learn from leading literary and creative minds.

Writers draw inspiration from their own experiences, and for many, global cities become their muse. At NYU, aspiring poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers can enroll in a monthlong immersive summer program through the College of Arts and Science . Participants choose between Paris, Florence, and New York City, and then hone their creative writing skills against the backdrop of an iconic city. Below, three aspiring wordsmiths share their experiences living a writer’s life.

Enjoy a Moveable Feast in Paris

NYU English and American Literature major Isean Bhalla chose to study in Paris because a friend completed the program and loved it. Their endorsement? “‘It was the greatest month of my life,’ word for word,” Isean recalls. “Plus, one does not say no to Paris. Ever.” Reflecting back, Isean credits growing as a creative writer to the program’s high-quality faculty and “excellent” nightly readings from “world-class writers.” “It gave me a greater understanding of my own voice as well as things I want to write about in the future,” Isean affirms.

Most importantly, however, Writers in Paris connected Isean to an inspiring community that was rich in writing talent and friendship. “The program put me in constant contact with other writers who were better than I was. They pushed me in ways I couldn’t. Being around writers 24/7 doesn’t sound like it’s that important, but I found it more stimulating for my writing than anything else. That’s all anyone ever talked about or thought about. So we’d feed off each other and get better.” And, of course, being in Paris didn’t hurt. Isean says, “Paris is a muse; Paris has always been a muse; and I suspect Paris will always be a muse.”

Get a Room with a View in Florence

Katherine Ertman always considered writing a hobby, but after attending Writers in Florence , she realized it could be a career. The NYU Vocal Performance major is training to be an opera singer, but in Florence, she found that “writing my own stories instead of performing stories written by others was a refreshing experience.” In fact, Katherine spent the past summer completing a Creative Writing minor by enrolling in both Writers in Florence and Writers in Paris. “It seemed like an amazing opportunity to complete all 16 credits while exploring two inspiring European cities,” she explains.

In Florence Katherine drew inspiration from a day trip to Castello di Fosdinovo, a Tuscan medieval castle. In Paris she attended readings by renowned authors outside the iconic Shakespeare and Company bookstore. “The locations really influenced me, and I ended up writing a few stories set in both locations,” Katherine says. In the end, she urges anyone interested to enroll, even if they’ve never shared their creative writing with others. “Just try it!” she exclaims. “Writing was a hobby for me, and I went in without any prior workshop experience. Also, I was intimidated because I’m not an English major. However, my fears were unfounded because the faculty and students alike were so supportive. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

A Writer Grows in New York City

Esmé Warmuth grew up close to New York City, admiring the city from afar but never spending much time there. So when the English major learned that she could join NYU’s Writers in New York program as a visiting student , she jumped at the chance. “I’ve been a longtime admirer of NYU’s creative writing faculty,” she adds. Living in Greenwich Village, Esmé connected with published authors, literary agents, and magazine editors, gaining valuable professional experience. She particularly enjoyed a panel with program alumni. “It was helpful to hear from authors who had started where we were and wound up with book deals, jobs teaching creative writing, and overall successful careers,” she explains.

During her month in New York City, Esmé sharpened her skills as a writer and gained confidence in her abilities. “Receiving, giving, and listening to advice in class helped me grow my craft and gave me the opportunity to share my writing with a receptive and positive audience,” she says. All in all, the experience was better than she could have imagined. “The Writers in New York program was like nothing I ever experienced before,” she concludes. “Being among students my age who were just as passionate about books and writing as I am was wonderful. Plus, everyone came in with a great attitude and a willingness to learn. I’m very grateful.”

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