The Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing offers courses in Academic, Professional, and Creative Writing. Our Center concentrates on fostering the power of written expression for both practical and artistic purposes. We build relationships with every student, beginning with their first moments on campus and continuing throughout their four years at Goucher.
Our four-year vertical curriculum for Academic Writing supports students in their development as writers and scholars, in order to improve their engagement in scholarship across disciplines. In our Center, we see all forms of written expression as creative, and a close partnership with faculty teaching traditional forms of imaginative written expression (fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting) helps us bring that idea home to our students.
Creative Writing at Goucher is also a four-year program. Students may begin taking Creative Writing courses in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting during their first year. Our offerings at the 100 and 200-levels are devoted to basic craft training, but with considerable freedom for students to choose their own subjects and approaches. At the 300-level, students are encouraged to work on longer projects: novels, story cycles, poetry collections, as well as to refine individual poems, essays, and short stories. Goucher’s faculty is unusually generous with independent study opportunities for advanced students - these one-on-one relationships are likely to be editorial as much as tutorial and usually involve professional counseling as well as advice on publication. The bar for thesis is set high: a creative writing thesis director must be reasonably confident that a book of publishable quality will be completed.
Students Minor in Creative Writing and/or Professional Writing through our Center. Our Creative Writing Minor makes the entire four-year program accessible to students in any major (not only Theatre, Philosophy, Psychology, and Art, but also Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, for example). The program is also easily adaptable for interdisciplinary programs of study. Working across two Centers, students may major in English (Humanities Center) with a Concentration in Creative Writing (Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing).
The Kratz Center for Creative Writing offers paid fellowships to students so they can pursue their own writing projects during the summer, and brings established and emerging writers to campus for readings. Every year, the Kratz Center brings a visiting writer to Goucher to teach a semester-long course. The Kratz Center’s Soper Room, located on the 2nd floor of the Julia Rogers Building, provides a quiet place for writing and reflection.
The Writing Center (currently housed on the 4th floor of the Athenaeum) provides writing support for all students, at every stage of a writing project.
With a creative, process-driven, imaginative approach, the Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing prepares students for a life of writing.
