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Creative Writing
Why take courses in creative writing.
The Creative Writing Department prioritizes an inclusive workshop climate where creative expression, experimentation, and collaboration thrive. Our program offers an in-depth and rigorous course of study with instruction, studio training, and coursework in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and hybrid forms.
What kinds of questions does Creative Writing explore?
What are the conventions and possibilities of different genres (e.g., fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction)?
- What are the challenges of language in artfully expressing certain ideas, emotions or experiences, and how can writers push against these challenges?
- What role does feedback and criticism play in the creative writing process, and how can writers effectively incorporate feedback while maintaining their artistic vision?
What advice would you give students interested in taking courses in Creative Writing?
Our courses are open to students who may not have any prior formal creative writing training or practice. We aim to foster young writers of diverse aesthetics and backgrounds in the interrelated practices of writing, revision, close reading, constructive critique, and building an engaged, supportive community.
Taking Courses
Courses for non-majors or general interest.
- First-year students are encouraged to take any 100-level to explore their interest in creative writing. 200-level courses are open to students beginning in the student’s second semester.
Getting started in the major
Admission to the major requires an application after the completion of two 200-level courses. Alternatively, students who have taken a 100-level course can apply while enrolled in a second 200-level course.
Advanced Placement Credit
Creative Writing does not accept Advanced Placement (AP) credit toward major requirements. Refer to the AP/IB chart for complete information about AP test scores.
Majoring in Creative Writing
Provided are two examples of how a student could distribute courses required for the major over three or four years. See the catalog for additional details about major requirements.
Related Areas of Study
Africana Studies; Cinema Studies; Comparative Literature; Languages; English; Theater.
Creative Writing Major Requirements Creative Writing Department
Emily Barton , Associate Professor of Creative Writing ; chair
Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine , Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Katherine M. Berta , Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Brendan Beseth , Lecturer of Creative Writing and Screenwriting Amaryllis Chanda Feldman , Eric and Jane Nord Associate Professor of Creative Writing Juliana Goodman , Lecturer of Creative Writing Amanda Hodes , Lecturer of Creative Writing Thomas Israel Hopkins , Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing Kyle R. McCarthy , Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers , Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of Oberlin Writers-in-the-Schools Santiago J. Sanchez , Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Oberlin offers undergraduates the rare opportunity to major in creative writing–not as a concentration in another department, but as an independent discipline in its own right. The Department of Creative Writing at Oberlin College provides an intense and rigorous course of study with instruction, studio training, and coursework in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, translation, screenwriting, and hybrid forms. Our department encourages work across disciplines and prepares students for a range of careers both within and beyond the literary world.
Creative writing at Oberlin emphasizes an inclusive workshop climate where creative expression, experimentation, and collaboration thrive. Because ours is more than just a studio program, our students employ the skills of open inquiry and intellectual curiosity: their liberal arts education enriches their creative work, and their creativity inspires rigorous cross-disciplinary thinking both in the classroom and beyond.
Majors, Minors, and Integrative Concentrations
- Creative Writing Major
- Creative Writing Minor
Introductory courses acquaint aspiring majors and non-majors with the craft of writing, focusing on the differences and commonalities between multiple genres. 200-level courses, which are open to majors and non-majors, narrow the focus to topics and questions that pertain to genres and forms. 300-level workshops and 400-level courses are open to majors and minors only.
The department has designed its curriculum so that students have opportunities throughout to engage with arts and other fields at Oberlin, as well as with the broader community through, for example, practica in the local schools.
Because there is great demand for creative writing courses at all levels, and because writers at all levels have much to learn from breadth in their studies, the faculty urges all students to register for no more than one creative writing course per term. Students seeking an exception to this practice should contact the chair.
- CRWR 110 - Introduction to Writing Poetry
- CRWR 120 - Introduction to Fiction Writing
- CRWR 130 - Introduction to Screenwriting
- CRWR 140 - Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
- CRWR 195 - The Practice of Writing
- CRWR 206 - Digital Storytelling
- CRWR 207 - Literary Journalism
- CRWR 208 - Queer Futures
- CRWR 211 - Black to the Future: Speculative Young Adult Fiction
- CRWR 212 - Word and Image: Poetry in Dialogue with Visual Art
- CRWR 213 - The Prose Poem
- CRWR 214 - The Poetry of Place
- CRWR 215 - Race and Poetic Innovation
- CRWR 216 - 4x4: Studies in the Contemporary Short Story
- CRWR 217 - Climate Fiction
- CRWR 218 - The Art of the Monologue: One-Person Plays and Other Solo (Non)Fictions
- CRWR 222 - Speculative Worlds
- CRWR 224 - The Posthuman: Monsters and Beyond
- CRWR 226 - The Fairy Tale
- CRWR 229 - Dialogue and Dialect
- CRWR 230 - Form and Flexibility
- CRWR 231 - The Practice of Poetry: Rituals, Procedures, Remixes, and Constraints
- CRWR 232 - Fiction: Writing About Work
- CRWR 233 - Character and Craft
- CRWR 235 - Story and Screen
- CRWR 238 - Topics and Forms: Plot and Structure
- CRWR 241 - Queer Poetry
- CRWR 245 - Urgent Nature: Ecopoetics and Nature Poetry
- CRWR 248 - Climate Nonfiction
- CRWR 250 - Introduction to Literary Translation: Theory, History, Practice
- CRWR 251 - The Sonnet
- CRWR 252 - Poetry: Travel, Mobility, and Movement
- CRWR 254 - Poetry and the Body
- CRWR 256 - Historic(al) Fictions
- CRWR 259 - Fiction in Verse
- CRWR 268 - Ethnic American Story Cycle
- CRWR 273 - False Documents: Fiction, Fakery, and Other Falsehoods
- CRWR 279 - Weird Tales
- CRWR 280 - Small Prose Forms
- CRWR 284 - Subject and Object: Poetry as Fact and Feeling
- CRWR 285 - Strangeness and Surprise
- CRWR 286 - Who’s Afraid of Genre Fiction?
- CRWR 287 - Voice, Mood, and Tone
- CRWR 291 - Topics & Forms: The OuLiPo & Constraint
- CRWR 295 - Cinematic Storytelling Workshop
- CRWR 307 - The Art of Podcasting
- CRWR 310 - Poetry Workshop
- CRWR 311 - Advanced Poetry Workshop 2: Special Topics in Poetry
- CRWR 317 - Between Lyric and Narrative: Transitional Prose Forms
- CRWR 320 - Fiction Workshop
- CRWR 321 - Special Topics in Fiction: The Sentence
- CRWR 322 - Speculative Fiction
- CRWR 323 - Experiments in Narrative Fiction
- CRWR 324 - Young Adult Fiction Workshop
- CRWR 325 - Creating the Novel
- CRWR 332 - Song and Book
- CRWR 335 - Advanced Screenwriting Workshop
- CRWR 340 - Nonfiction Workshop
- CRWR 341 - Lyric Essay
- CRWR 350 - Advanced Translation Workshop: Poetry
- CRWR 351 - Advanced Translation Workshop: Prose and Drama
- CRWR 450 - Teaching Imaginative Writing
- CRWR 485 - Practicum
- CRWR 486 - Writers in the Schools Practicum
- CRWR 490 - Creative Writing Capstone Seminar
- CRWR 995F - Private Reading - Full
- CRWR 995H - Private Reading - Half
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Home > Arts & Sciences > Creative Writing
Creative Writing
Oberlin’s Creative Writing Program is one of a few in the country that offers a major at the undergraduate level. Established here in 1975 by poet and translator Stuart Friebert, creative writing is an intense and rigorous course of study that provides instruction, studio training, and coursework in six genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, translation, and screenwriting.
Browse the Creative Writing Collections:
Creative Writing Faculty Publications
Creative Writing Student Scholarship
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