Creative Writing (Minor)

The Creative Writing Minor is a course of study tailored to the interests of individual creative writers, with an additional focus, in all classes, on oral and written persuasion, imaginative and critical thinking, and collaboration with creative peers. The aim of the Minor is to help students develop a unique approach to language that results in memorable, publishable work. Students are free to author work in any of 36 genres of creative writing, and are encouraged to innovate, experiment, and cross genre lines at will. Because our program is especially focused on interdisciplinarity and multimedia literary art, it is well-suited to those wishing to become “creatives” in the digital age. Even students who do not intend to publish their work will find that the skills developed through the Minor—including literacies in everything from print to virtual reality, from visual narrative to augmented virtuality—are useful in any profession where creativity and entrepreneurial ingenuity are valued.

Classes in the Creative Writing Minor prize innovation, experimentation, individuality, and creative daring across genres and media, and emphasize collaboration and conceptual reasoning far more than is common in many creative writing courses. A central presumption of the Creative Writing Minor is that the most engaging literary art is reflexive—meaning that not only is there a philosophy of language animating it, but also that its author has drawn from all his or her non-literary interests in developing that philosophy. For this reason, undergraduates in STEM programs are particularly encouraged to study in the Minor; they bring the way they speak, write, and reason in their non-creative writing courses into all of the workshops and theory seminars in this plan of study as well.

The director of the Creative Writing minor, Professor Seth Abramson, is the author of many books of cross-genre creative writing and the series editor for Best American Experimental Writing, an annual anthology of experimental poetry and prose published annually by Wesleyan University Press and sponsored by the Digital Language Arts program at University of New Hampshire.