THE Writers Institute

The Writers Institute, directed by Associate Professor Gary Fincke, oversees a variety of activities which support the development of opportunities for students interested in writing.

The Institute offers a Visiting Writers Series, which brings four to six writers per year to campus to conduct workshops, meet with students, and give readings from their work. Recent visitors have included nationally prominent writers such as Tobias Wolff, David Bradley, Frederick Busch, Nancy Willard, June Jordan, Shelby Hearon, Robert Creeley, Larry Heinemann, Joy Harjo, Stephen Dunn, Madison Smartt Bell, Robert Olmstead, and William Matthews. In addition, annual long-term residencies (one or more weeks) provide extended contact with professional writers.

FOCUS, a literary magazine featuring poems, stories, and personal essays, is edited and produced by students; The Apprentice Writer, which publishes work by high school students from a ten-state area, has a circulation of 12,000 copies and is edited, in part, by student interns.

In addition, the Writers Institute offers summer writing workshops in fiction, poetry, and journalism for talented high school students, as well as a Writing-in-Action Day, which attracts nearly two hundred high school juniors and seniors to workshops staffed primarily by members of the English & Creative Writing Dept..

THE WRITING MINOR

The English & Creative Writing Dept. offers a self-designed writing major and a writing minor which allows students to choose introductory courses in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, journalism, and business writing as well as to select advanced workshop courses in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and journalism. Students can also pursue independent writing projects for academic credit and gain professional work experience through credit-earning internships.

Students minoring in writing must complete at least 18 semester hours beyond EN 100, one of which must be EN 300. The remaining courses are to be chosen from the following list, in consultation with and with the approval of the department minor advisor: EN 280, 310, 380, 540, 580, and CT 231 (Newswriting and Reporting). Any course applying to a major or minor program must be completed with the grade of C - or better.