Creative Writing
Program Description
Enrolling more than 150 students and composed of 42 graduate faculty (including 10 in Creative Writing), the Graduate Program in English at the University of Nebraska offers an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, one of the few such advanced degree programs in the country to offer a creative dissertation option.
The Creative Writing MA consists of 24 hours of course work and a 6 credit creative thesis plus an oral examination. Students select a thesis committee consisting of a chair and two readers who guide them in their creative project.
For the Creative Writing PhD, students develop a program of course work, reading lists for the comprehensive examination, fluency in a foreign language or reading knowledge of a foreign language plus a collateral field, and a creative dissertation project. In the construction of such a degree program, students are guided by a self-selected Supervisory Committee consisting of at least four graduate faculty Fellows. The PhD program consists of 90 hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. The usual program of studies for the PhD student is 24-30 hours of course work beyond the master’s, plus a maximum of 30 hours of dissertation credit. The department accepts up to 36 hours of MA credit as part of the PhD degree.
Publications
The Prairie Schooner, founded in 1927 at the University of Nebraska, is widely recognized as one of the premiere literary quarterlies in the nation. Creative Writing graduate students often serve as interns with the magazine.
Related Events and Activities
The English Department sponsors a number of visiting writers every year. Recent visitors include: Thomas Lux, Susan Fromberg Schaffer, Eleanor Wilner, Frank Conroy, Richard Russo, Charles Fort, Sharon Solwitz, Michelle Carter, Albert Goldbarth, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Stuart Dybek, Baron Wormser, Robin Becker and Philip Lopate.
The No Name Reading Series features bi-monthly readings by creative writing students and other writers from the Lincoln community. Each year the English Department holds several student literary contests for Arts & Sciencesh prizes, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Vreeland Award, and The Mari Sandoz Fiction Prize.
The department is also the host for the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference, a yearly festival of weekend and weeklong writing workshops, readings, individual conferences, and panel discussions with nationally known, prize-winning writers.
Creative Writing Faculty
Jonis Agee Professor, PhD State University of New York-Binghamton. Fiction, American Literature, poetry. Current projects include a novel, book of stories, collection of essays on the writing life.
Grace Bauer Professor, M.F.A. University of Massachusetts. Contemporary poetry. Publications include Retreats & Recognitions (2006), Beholding Eye (2006), Field Guide to the Ineffable: Poems on Marcel Duchamp (1999), The Women At The Well (1997), Where You've Seen Her (1993), The House Where I've Never Lived (1993), and poetry in various journals and magazines including Doubletake, Georgia Review, Poetry, and Southern Poetry Review.
Stephen Behrendt University Professor and George Holmes Distinguished Professor, PhD University of Wisconsin. Poetry and Romanticism. His current projects include books on Romantic Women writers, issues of canonicity and periodization in Romanticism and William Blake. Publications include Instruments of the Bones (1992) and A Step in the Dark (1996).
Ted Kooser Visiting Professor, MA University of Nebraska. Poetry. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Hudson Review, Ohio Review and many other journals. His most recent books are Winter Morning Walks; 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (2000) and Weather Central (1994).
Greg Kuzma Professor, MA Syracuse University. Poetry. A widely published poet and reviewer of poetry, he is currently writing screenplays. His most recent books include What Poetry is All About (1997), Good News (reprint, 1994), and Wind, Rain & Stars & the Grass Growing (1993).
Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes ssistant Professor, PhD University of Denver. Fiction, Chicana/o literature and Women's Studies. Her fiction is inspired from growing up east of East L.A and shaped by her research in Chicana/o cultural production and theory. Montes' most recent short story publications are "La Guacamaya" in the anthology Culture and Society in Dialogue, "While Pilar Tobillo Sleeps" in HERS 3: Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbian Writers and "R for Ricura" in Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium. Currently, she is finishing a novel.
Hilda Raz Professor, BA Boston University, Editor-in-chief Prairie Schooner. Poetry. Current projects include a book of creative nonfiction essays on gender and new poetry. Books include: Trans (2001), The Best from Prairie Schooner: Fiction and Poetry (2001), Truly Bone (1999), Living On the Margins: Women Writers on Breast Cancer (1999), Divine Honors (1998), The Bone Dish (1989), and What is Good (1988). Poems and essays in Southern Review, Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol and many other journals.
Gerald Shapiro Professor, M.F.A. University of Massachusetts. Fiction. Author of From Hunger (stories, 1993), and Bad Jews and Other Stories (1999). His stories have been published in many journals, among them the Kenyon Review, the Southern Review, the Gettysburg Review, the Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Ploughshares, and Witness. He is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize.
Judith Slater Professor, M.F.A. University of Massachusetts. Fiction. Her short story collection The Baby Can Sing won the 1998 Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction and is published by Sarabande Press (1999). Her stories have appeared in a variety of literary and commercial magazines, including Greensboro Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Ascent.
Careers
Recent graduates in Creative Writing have won several national awards, including the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, a National Poetry Series Prize, and have been included in the AWP Intro Awards and Best American Voices.
They have published books with major presses including Dutton, Harcourt Brace, Sarabande, the University of Iowa Press, and University of Nebraska Press. Graduates and current students in the program have published stories and poetry in such magazines as Georgia Review, Doubletake, Granta, Colorado Review, Missouri Review, The Literary Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Creative Nonfiction, Other Voices, and Quarterly West, among others. They have won scholarships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers conferences.
Graduates of our PhD program have secured tenure track creative writing positions at California State University-Chico, North Texas State University, Southern Illinois University, St. Lawrence University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Hope College. Other graduates have gone on to teach in a variety of research institutions, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. Some graduates have gone into careers in publishing and others into professional fields such as journalism, law, public agencies, and business.
Application Procedures
Students may apply to the MA and PhD Creative Writing program by submitting a creative writing sample of a dozen poems or two short stories or 40-50 pages of a novel along with their other application materials: an application and the $45.00 application fee, two official copies of each college transcript, 3 letters of recommendation, a 15-20 page critical paper, a 1-3 page statement of educational goals, a vita or resume, teaching experience or evidence of teaching potential, and GRE General Scores. Deadline for applications is January 15.
