Creative Writing

The Creative Writing Department offers a range of combined workshop/literatures courses in a wide variety of literary genres, from Novel Writing and Poetry, to Screenwriting, Young Adult Literature and Writing for Radio and Podcast, all in the interest of developing the skills necessary to becoming accomplished emerging writers. In addition to these curricular offerings, students will be guided by working, publishing poets, novelists and practitioners who will help teach students negotiate their lives as writers. Students will also be exposed to many paths this life might take them down– from publishing to careers in magazine editorial work, book publishing and work in radio and podcasting.

Students will develop their own paths through the Department, experimenting with genres that might be unfamiliar while also developing expertise in areas of specific interest to them. Through these courses, students will learn to edit and revise their work, edit the work of others, and will leave the Department with a strong sense of the opportunities available to them in the literary, journalistic and film-writing worlds. They will become not just better creative writers, but more informed citizens of the world they will enter upon graduation.

In addition, each CW Major will plan to take three (3) Allied Courses under the advisement of their advisor in the Department. While the student’s seven and a half CW courses will allow them to focus deeply on their craft, their larger project will be informed by the empirical and academic study they’ll undertake in these courses. The Major in CW at the College will focus directly on the idea that good writing is informed not only by the writer’s own experience of the world, but also by how they undertake study in the humanities and sciences to deepen and broaden their knowledge base, their experience in researching and engaging with history, languages, science and beyond.

The CW Department stresses a combination of creative work, literary studies and empirical study throughout the College curriculum. Creative Writing majors will design a personalized program of study that deepens their understanding of diverse genres, textual traditions, and study in other fields. The Major culminates, in the Major’s senior year, in an independently written Capstone Project of a minimum of 50 pages of creative work, developed and individually mentored by accomplished working writers. Students are encouraged to take at least two CW courses at Bryn Mawr or Haverford before signing up for the Major or Minor.

Academic Opportunities

Study Abroad

Students should complete both the Sentence Workshop/Prosody Workshop and one 300-level course before leaving for a semester or year abroad. Up to two courses from study abroad may count toward the CW major, provided they get departmental approval. Send your request, and full syllabuses of the courses you took/will take, to the CW Chair.

Major Requirements

The Creative Writing Major requires a total of 13 units. Students must take eight CW units which must include: at least one course in each of our core genres, Fiction and Poetry; the Sentence Workshop/Prosody Workshop and the Writing Practice course, taken during the student’s junior or senior year; and two 300-level courses taken at BMC or HC, a one-semester Capstone course of one-on-one study with an assigned member of the CW faculty during their senior year, and one elective. Students will take three (3) Allied Courses in order to have a clear, empirical academic course of study to complement their literature and writing courses. These courses must come from multiple departments at the College, all related to each other through connections the student will make to inform their Capstone experience their Senior year. The Allied Courses will be chosen under advisement from the student’s Major Advisor at the time of their declaring their Major.

Finally, to complete the Major, Creative Writing students must take two (2) courses within the Literatures in English Department. These courses can be taken at any level.
Students will meet with their advisers by the end of their sophomore year to create a written proposal, describing the logic of their Allied Course choices, and their intended Capstone project.

The Creative Writing Major requires a minimum of 13 units:

• 1 unit fiction writing
• 1 unit poetry writing
• 1 unit sentence / prosody workshop
• 2 units 300-level work (completed at Bryn Mawr or Haverford)
• 1 unit senior capstone course
• 1 unit creative writing elective at any level
• 1 unit writing practice
• 2 units from Literatures in English
• 3 units allied courses

Writing in the Major

Creative Writing majors will complete one Writing Intensive course. Most Creative Writing courses meet the requirement as Writing Intensive courses.

Minor Requirements

Requirements for the minor in CW are six (6) units of course work, generally including three beginning/intermediate courses in at least three different genres of creative writing and three electives, including at least one course at the 300 level allowing for advanced work in one or more genres of creative writing which are of particular interest to the student. The objective of the minor in CW is to provide both depth and range, through exposure to several genres of creative writing. Students should consult with the CW Chair by the end of their sophomore year to submit a plan for the minor in order to ensure admission to the appropriate range of courses.

CRWT B159 Introduction to Creative Writing (1 Unit)

This course is for students who wish to experiment with three genres of creative writing: short fiction, poetry and drama, and techniques specific to each of them. Priority will be given to interested first- and second-year students; additional spaces will be made available to upper-year students with little or no experience in creative writing. Students will write or revise work every week; roughly four weeks each will be devoted to short fiction, poetry, and drama. There will be individual conferences with the instructor to discuss their progress and interests. Half of class time will be spent discussing student work and half will be spent discussing syllabus readings.

CRWT B165 The Writing Practice (0.5 Unit)

This course is designed for students who are pursuing—or contemplating—a major in Creative Writing. Throughout the semester, we will explore what it means to live a life rooted in writing: how to build a sustainable practice, how to navigate the rhythms of inspiration and discipline, and how to shape raw material into resonant work. Just as importantly, we’ll read and discuss published pieces that align with and challenge students’ own creative directions, helping to deepen individual projects-in-progress. At its heart, this course is about cultivating a creative community. We’ll share work, struggles, breakthroughs, and strategies, learning how to support one another as artists committed to growth. By semester’s end, students will be more grounded in their own voices and better equipped to take the next steps in their writing journey.

CRWT B220 Political Journalism: Reporting, Analysis and Influence (1 Unit)

This course examines the role of journalism in shaping political discourse, public opinion, and governance. Students will analyze how journalists cover elections, policy, and political movements by studying historical and contemporary political reporting. The course will explore ethical considerations, media bias, investigative reporting, and the impact of digital media on political journalism. Students will develop their political reporting skills through news writing, op-eds, and multimedia projects while discussing press freedom, misinformation, and the evolving relationship between the media and democracy.

CRWT B233 Writing for Radio and Podcast (1 Unit)

In this course students will learn the foundations of journalism, audio storytelling, and radio/podcast production. We will break free of academic writing to find our authentic voices, and write for the ear. The course centers on two main projects: A short reported piece and a longer produced podcast episode. While the writing in and of itself is creative, this course will focus on of nonfiction writing as an audio medium. For half of the course meetings esteemed professionals from the current radio/podcast landscape will visit to share their career stories, teach us writing and production skills, and give us audio to analyze. Students will learn the basics of audio editing and produce their own pieces in Audacity or the software of their choice and workshop with classmates.

CRWT B250 Monument Writing: Poetry, Public Memory and The Art of Ackno (0.5 Unit)

This course, led by former Philadelphia poets laureate and community arts practitioners Trapeta B. Mayson and Yolanda Wisher, is an exploration of the themes and stories that inspired Don’t Forget to Remember (Me), Nekisha Durrett’s monumental artwork on Bryn Mawr’s campus uplifting the names and lives of Black caretakers whose work was critical to building and operating the College, particularly in its early decades, but whose contributions were historically unrecognized. Through readings and film, guest speakers, poetry writing prompts, visits to the artwork, interactive tours of related campus sites, and the creation of a group public art project, students will intimately and collaboratively explore the truth-telling, healing, and ongoing acknowledgment at the center of Durrett’s installation as well as the question: What stories are missing from Bryn Mawr College?

CRWT B260 Writing Short Fiction I (1 Unit)

An introduction to fiction writing, focusing on the short story. Students will consider fundamental elements of fiction and the relationship of narrative structure, style, and content, exploring these elements in their own work and in the assigned readings in order to develop an understanding of the range of possibilities open to the fiction writer. Weekly readings and writing exercises are designed to encourage students to explore the material and styles that most interest them, and to push their fiction to a new level of craft, so that over the semester their writing becomes clearer, more controlled, and more absorbing.

CRWT B261 Writing Poetry I (1 Unit)

In this course students will learn to "read like a writer," while grappling with the work of accomplished poets, and providing substantive commentary on peers' work. Through diverse readings, students will examine craft strategies at work in both formal and free verse poems, such as diction, metaphor, imagery, lineation, metrical patterns, irony, and syntax. The course will cover shaping forms (such as elegy and pastoral) as well as given forms, such as the sonnet, ghazal, villanelle, etc. Students will discuss strategies for conveying the literal meaning of a poem (e.g., through sensory description and clear, compelling language) and the concealed meaning of a text (e.g., through metaphor, imagery, meter, irony, and shifts in diction and syntax). By the end of the course, students will have generated new material, shaped and revised draft poems, and significantly grown as writers by experimenting with various aspects of craft.

CRWT B263 Writing Memoir I (1 Unit)

This course offers students a hands-on, reflective engagement with the art of memoir—the act of shaping lived experience into narrative form. We’ll explore how memory, language, and identity intersect as students write about the people, places, and pivotal moments that have shaped their lives. Through an open-ended inquiry into what we think we know—about ourselves and the world—and how we’ve come to know it, students will grapple with the slipperiness of truth and the complexity of self-representation. While the course does not center on the canonical tropes of American memoir—redemption, confession, captivity, and slavery—it remains critically attuned to their enduring influence. Throughout, we will challenge and reimagine the legacy of these narrative frameworks in order to make space for new voices and forms of life writing.

CRWT B264 News and Feature Writing (1 Unit)

Students in this class will learn how to develop, report, write, edit and revise a variety of news stories, beginning with the basics of reporting and writing the news and advancing to longer-form stories, including personality profiles, news features and trend stories, and concluding with point-of-view journalism (columns, criticism, reported essays). The course will focus heavily on work published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. Several working journalists will participate as guest speakers to explain their craft. Students will write stories that will be posted on the class blog, the English House Gazette.

CRWT B265 Creative Nonfiction (1 Unit)

This course will explore the literary expressions of nonfiction writing by focusing on the skills, process and craft techniques necessary to the generation and revision of literary nonfiction. Using the information-gathering tools of a journalist, the analytical tools of an essayist and the technical tools of a fiction writer, students will produce pieces that will incorporate both factual information and first person experience. Readings will include a broad group of writers ranging from E.B. White to Anne Carson, George Orwell to David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion to James Baldwin, among many others.

CRWT B266 Screenwriting (1 Unit)

An introduction to screenwriting. Issues basic to the art of storytelling in film will be addressed and analyzed: character, dramatic structure, theme, setting, image, sound. The course focuses on the film adaptation; readings include novels, screenplays, and short stories. Films adapted from the readings will be screened. In the course of the semester, students will be expected to outline and complete the first act of an adapted screenplay of their own.

CRWT B267 Sentence Workshop (1 Unit)

This topics-based course alternates each semester between a focus on sentence-level writing and prosody.

CRWT B268 Literary Editing (0.5 Unit)

This course will examine the tools that literary writers bring to factual reporting and how these tools enhance the stories they tell. Readings will include reportage, polemical writing and literary reviewing. The issues of point-of-view and subjectivity, the uses of irony, forms of persuasion, clarity of expression and logic of construction will be discussed. The importance of context—the role of the editor and the magazine, the expectations of the audience, censorship and self-censorship—will be considered.

CRWT B355 The Art of Prose Poetry (1 Unit)

This course explores the rich and hybrid form of prose poetry, a genre that defies the boundaries between poetry and prose. Through close readings, writing exercises, and workshops, students will investigate how prose poetry functions as a unique mode of expression—combining the lyricism, intensity, and compression of poetry with the expansiveness and narrative possibilities of prose. We will examine works by contemporary and historical prose poets, analyze craft elements such as rhythm, voice, image, and structure, and create our prose poems through generative writing exercises. By the end of the course, students will have produced a portfolio of original work and developed a critical understanding of prose poetry’s place in literary tradition.

CRWT B360 Writing Short Fiction II (1 Unit)

An exploration of approaches to writing short fiction designed to strengthen skills of experienced student writers as practitioners and critics. Requires writing at least five pages each week, workshopping student pieces, and reading texts ranging from realist stories to metafictional experiments and one-page stories to the short novella, to explore how writers can work within tight confines. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B260 or work demonstrating equivalent expertise in writing short fiction. Students without the ARTW B260, must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (prose fiction) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

CRWT B361 Writing Poetry II (1 Unit)

This course assumes that reading and writing are inextricably linked, and that the only way to write intelligent and interesting poetry is to read as much of it as possible. Writing assignments will be closely connected to syllabus reading, including an anthology prepared by the instructor, and may include working in forms such as ekphrastic poems (i.e. poems about works of visual art or sculpture), dramatic monologues, prose poems, translations, imitations and parodies. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B261 or work demonstrating equivalent familiarity with the basic forms of poetry in English. For students without ARTW B261, a writing sample of 5-7 poems must be submitted to the instructor to be considered for this course.

CRWT B362 Playwriting II (1 Unit)

This course challenges students of playwriting to further develop their unique voices and improve their technical skills in writing for the stage. We will examine how great playwrights captivate a live audience through their mastery of character, story and structure. Through a combination of weekly reading assignments, playwriting exercises, theater explorations, artist-driven feedback, and discussions of craft, this class will facilitate each student’s completion of an original, full-length play. Prerequisite: ARTW 262; or suitable experience in directing, acting or playwriting; or submission of a work sample of 10 pages of dialogue. All students must complete the Creative Writing preregistration questionnaire during preregistration to be considered for the course.

CRWT B364 Longer Fictional Forms (1 Unit)

An advanced workshop for students with a strong background in fiction writing who want to write longer works: the long short story, novella and novel. Students will write intensively, and complete a long story, novel or novella (or combination thereof) totaling up to 20,000 words. Students will examine the craft of their work and of published prose. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B260 or proof of interest and ability. For students without ARTW B260, students must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (prose fiction) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

CRWT B365 Creative Nonfiction II (1 Unit)

An exploration of approaches to writing personal essays and lyric essays designed to strengthen skills of experienced student essayists as practitioners and critics. Requires writing at least five pages each week, workshopping student essays, and reading texts ranging from long personal essays to book-length essays, to explore how writers can work within the broader parameters of the long essay. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B265 or work demonstrating equivalent expertise in writing personal and lyric essays. Students without the ARTW B265, must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (nonfiction prose) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

CRWT B367 Visual Poetics (1 Unit)

Visual Poetics is an advanced poetry workshop in which we will discuss and write poetry that privileges the visual field as an essential element. The class will examine the development of experimental literary forms from visual to multimedia poetics. We will utilize avant-garde techniques and consider the different representations of the visual poetic from Russian futurism to cinéma verité to digital poetry practices. Observation and practice of the various visual mediums will allow critical thinking around topics of hybridity, collaboration, form and innovation in poetic craft.

CRWT B400 Senior Thesis (1 Unit)

CRWT B403 Supervised Work (1 Unit)

The Department may offer special topics based on faculty and student interests. Special Topic for Spring 2018: Students with approved portfolios, who have taken Poetry 1 and 2, will work with a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty on a semester-long chapbook project. As needed in the Spring semester students who have had a Creative Writing Major approved through the Independent Major Program will work with a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty on a semester-long 403 (Independent Study) as a final project their senior year. Highly qualified Creative Writing minors and concentrators may petition the program to complete an independent study, subject to the availability of faculty to supervise such projects.

CRWT B999 Creating Writing Course - REGISTER FOR THE PLACEHOLDER (0.5-1 Unit)

This is a placeholder course for students intending to register for a Bryn Mawr Creative Writing class. To complete your registration, register for this placeholder course and then complete the Creative Writing Questionnaire. Students must complete both the placeholder registration and the questionnaire to be considered for a Creative Writing course.

Academic Catalog