The creative writing program at Coe offers courses in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting. Students in our courses engage in creative reading and writing, with an emphasis on craft and technique. Our program focuses on the workshop method, which encourages student-centered discussion of creative works, with a focus on generative writing and revision.
The creative writing major is a nine-course collateral major, meaning it needs to be taken in conjunction with a departmental major. This ensures your writing is informed by engaged, intensive study in at least one discipline. It also allows for a richness of experience in the workshops as creative writing students study in all areas of the college.
Writing at Coe is not a solitary, lonely venture, nor is it confined to the classroom. The creative writing program emphasizes collaboration, public presentation, and participation in campus publications and the visiting writers reading series.
The major culminates in the manuscript workshop your senior year — you will thoroughly revise and polish a unified manuscript, typically a collection of short stories, a novel, a collection of poems, a collection of one-act plays, a full-length play, or a screenplay.