Creative Writing

Emily Barton, Associate Professor of Creative Writing; chair

Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Brendan Beseth, Lecturer of Creative Writing and Screenwriting
Jonathan Conley, Lecturer of Creative Writing
Amaryllis Chanda Feldman, Eric and Jane Nord Associate Professor of Creative Writing
Amanda Hodes, Lecturer of Creative Writing
Thomas Israel Hopkins, Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing
Uchechukwu (Uche) A. Okonkwo, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Angela (Cleo) F. Qian, Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Community-Based Learning and Director of Oberlin Writers-in-the-Schools
Clara E. Rosarius, Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Lauren A. Tess, Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing

Visit the department web page for up-to-date information on department faculty, visiting lecturers, and special events.

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 Creative Writing Department 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- and interdisciplinary thinking both in the classroom and beyond.

Majors, Minors, and Integrative Concentrations

Curriculum

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, with occasional exceptions. For example, CRWR 450 , which brings its students into the local schools to teach poetry, has at times admitted non-majors who are completing the education studies integrative concentration .

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. Oberlin creative writing students who wish to pursue the BA/BFA degree program will be well prepared for such interdisciplinary collaboration.

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.

Creative Writing

Majors, Minors, and Integrative Concentrations

Curriculum

Courses