Undergraduate Creative Writing

Penn State’s English Department offers undergraduate courses in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as playwriting and TV script writing.  There are also opportunities for undergraduates to work on-staff at student-run literary magazines, enter University-wide creative writing contests, and attend The Mary E. Rolling Reading series.

Career paths: Creative writing courses place a particular emphasis on the craft of language and original thinking, skills that have propelled alumni to careers as a publicist (Metropolitan Opera), copywriter (Brooks Brothers), reporter (Washington Post), or any of the myriad of marketing, teaching, and publishing professions that seek clear, original approaches to communication.  PSU CW alumni span the globe—one is a consulate at the New School in Madrid, Spain, another, a supply station supervisor in Antarctica, a third, a small business owner in Alabama.

Notable alumni: Then there's the alumni whose work still centers on creative writing: young adult novelist Jill Cantor and poet, Stegner fellow and NEA grantee Ryan Teitman, to name a few.  Writers Jane Ackerman, Jane Miller, Ruth Ellen Kocher have also passed through PSU’s CW courses.  And you?

Core creative writing faculty: In poetry: Robin Becker and Julia Kasdorf; in prose, William J. Cobb, Charlotte Holmes, Toni Jensen, Elizabeth Kadetsky, and Toby Thompson.

Read about our Creative Writing Emphasis, a 15-credit, genre-specific focus for English majors.