The Program

Studying Creative Writing at Knox

At Knox, creative writing courses, seminars, and workshops will challenge you to explore human consciousness and emotion, language and literary form, memory and imagination, and to experience the dynamics of creative engagement.

The Knox Program in Creative Writing is unparalleled in its diversity of options. Courses include fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, playwriting, screenwriting, and the possibility for independent study in a variety of fusion forms. In writing workshops, you will read and actively encounter each other's creative work under the guidance of professional writers on the faculty, as well as visiting professional writers (including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Nobel Prize and several recent United States Poet Laureates, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, and Billy Collins)—an experience both demanding and rewarding.

In addition to a variety of English, American, and world literature courses and a series of creative writing courses and workshops, you will choose at least one course in a related art field of your choice, such as studio art, theatre, music, dance, or photography, enabling you to develop more fully as an interdisciplinary artist.

Numerous off-campus programs and internships, both urban and rural, domestic and international, further enhance the range of artistic and professional opportunities available to creative writing majors.

Finally, as a creative writing major at Knox, enrolled in "Senior Writing Portfolio," you will have the opportunity, unique among American college undergraduates, to gather, select, edit, and introduce a book-length collection of your own creative work, as compiled during the four-year period of your undergraduate career. Generations of Knox writers have built upon their undergraduate accomplishments to achieve outstanding professional success.

Following graduation from Knox, many creative writing students complete MFA and Ph.D. degrees from outstanding schools such as New York University, Brown, University of Southern California, Michigan, Washington University, Arizona, Texas, Northwestern, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Indiana, university of Massachusetts, Florida International, Illinois and the acclaimed Iowa Writer's Workshop.