Admission & Financial Aid

Admission & Financial Aid

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Regulations & Requirements

Regulations & Requirements

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Amherst College Courses

Amherst College Courses

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Creative Writing

Advisory Committee: Writer-in-Residence Hall (Director); Professors Ciepiela, Douglas, Frank†, and Sofield‡; Visiting Writer Jackson; Visiting Lecturer Kapur.

†On leave fall semester 2016-17.

‡On leave spring semester 2016-17.

The Creative Writing Center offers courses in the writing of fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction, and translation; in addition we sponsor a reading series, as well as class visits by practicing writers and editors. The work of the Center is interdisciplinary in that those who teach creative writing are drawn from various College departments. 

The faculty of the Center strongly believes that creative writing should take place in the context of a liberal arts education. We also believe that students benefit from the discipline of writing from experience, real and imagined, and from submitting that writing, in small classes, to the criticism of instructors and other student writers. Because we believe that creative writing is in large part learned through creative reading, all faculty of the Center also teach courses in the reading of literature. We do not offer a major and do not invite students to formulate interdisciplinary majors in creative writing; instead we believe that the most desirable education for a writer is not a heavy concentration of writing courses, but rather a selection of such courses along with many others in literature and other subjects.

The Center does not offer courses independently: all of the courses listed below are located in various departments and count toward the major requirements of those departments. In addition to the courses listed here, students may arrange to take special topics courses with any faculty member willing to do so—including those who do not teach in the Center—and to undertake creative writing honors projects in their major departments. 

Generally, pre-registration for creative writing courses is not allowed. Consult the Creative Writing web page (https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/english/cwc) for information on admission procedures.

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