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 such as novels, story cycles, and 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 can also minor in Creative Writing and/or Professional Writing through our Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing. Our Creative Writing Minor is accessible to students in any major. Some of these pairings are familiar, as many of our students have majored in Theatre, Philosophy, Psychology, or Art. But some of these successful pairings have been unexpected. Some of our students have majored in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, for example, and minored in Creative Writing and/or Professional Writing. 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 Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing is comprised of three main entities: The Writing Program, the Writing Center (tutoring and assistance), and the Kratz Center for Creative Writing.
The Kratz Center for 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. Qualified students may apply in early February of every year.
Additionally, each year, the Kratz Center brings a visiting writer to Goucher to teach a semester-long course. The Kratz Center also hosts nationally and regionally known writers throughout the academic year. Please visit our website for more information: http://blogs.goucher.edu/kratz/
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
The Writing Center provides writing support for all students at every stage of a writing project. The Writing Center is located on the 3rd floor of the Athenaeum in the Learning Commons. All students are encouraged to make appointments with the peer tutors. For free, face-to-face 30-minute or 60-minute sessions, please visit our schedule page to register. https://goucher.mywconline.com/
The Writing Program
The Writing Program’s academic offices are located in the Writing Program Suite in Van Meter. Most of our writing faculty have offices in the suite - VM 120 - or nearby. There is also a drop-in studio for writing and reflection in the back of the Writing Program suite, VM 126A.
With a creative, process-driven, imaginative approach, the Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing prepares students for a life of writing.
