Undergraduate Program

Beginning Academic Year 2008-2009

The English Department’s major in Creative Writing-Nonfiction introduces students to a variety of forms in nonfiction and helps them explore the history of the genre and find a way of creating nonfiction that is individual and original. By graduation students will have a clear sense of how open creative nonfiction is to new modes of expression, and will be well-versed in some major aspects of the history of its genres, such as the essay, memoir, autobiography, and diary. Students will also acquire the writing and editing skills that will help them to find employment when they graduate, or to enter graduate programs in nonfiction at schools such as Iowa, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, or George Mason Universities.

What classes will I take?

The foundation of the concentration are the workshops in creative nonfiction:

• Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Beginning
• Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Intermediate
• Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Advanced
• Thesis Workshop

You will also take courses focused on reading various genres of creative nonfiction and major nonfiction authors, and will encounter a wide variety of forms such as autobiography, essay, graphic comics, memoir, aphorism, and travel writing:

• Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
• Readings in Creative Nonfiction
• Nonfiction Film as Literature
• Form and Theory of Nonfiction

To broaden your experience in the major, we also require electives in genre writing such as:

• Journal Writing
• Memoir
• Writing for New Media
• Writing Comedy
• Reviewing the Arts

Additionally, our majors take:

• Poetry Workshop: Beginning
• Literature electives in the English Department
• Electives from other departments, including Journalism, Fiction, and Humanities, History, and Social Sciences 
• A capstone experience to assemble a portfolio representing their best work.