The Creative Writing Center, in conjunction with various College departments, provides courses in the writing of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fictional prose, and translation. The work of the Center is interdisciplinary in that those who teach in it are located in a number of College departments. In addition to the courses offered, the Center consists in a group of faculty members engaged in creative writing, a series of readings and class visits by practicing writers and editors brought to the College for that purpose, and a place where students and faculty writers may gather to read and talk.
The faculty of the Center strongly believe that creative writing at the College should occur in the context of a liberal arts education. They hold that all students benefit from the discipline of writing out of their own and out of imagined experience, and from submitting that writing, in small classes, to the criticism of instructors and other student writers. Because they consider that creative writing is in significant part learned through creative reading, all faculty of the Center also teach courses in the reading of literature. The Center does not offer a major and does not invite students to formulate interdisciplinary majors in creative writing; it takes the most desirable education for those who may pursue careers as creative writers to be not a heavy concentration of creative writing courses, but rather a selection of such courses plus many courses in literature and other subjects that interest an individual student.
The Center does not offer courses independently: all of the courses offered are located in the various departments and count for the major requirements of the departments. In addition to the courses listed on this web page, students may arrange with any department faculty so willing - including those who are not members of the Center - to take special topics courses in creative writing and to undertake creative writing honors projects in the major departments.