nyu creative writing house

Creative Writing (Minor)

Program description , minor declaration.

The New York University Program in Creative Writing, among the most distinguished programs in the country, is a leading national center for the study of writing and literature. The undergraduate and graduate programs provide students with an opportunity to develop their craft while working closely with some of the finest poets and novelists writing today. The creative writing program occupies a lovely townhouse on West 10th Street in the same Greenwich Village neighborhood where so many writers have lived and worked. The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House allows writers—both established and emerging—to share their work in an inspiring setting.

The program's distinguished faculty of award-winning poets and prose writers represents a wide array of contemporary aesthetics. Our instructors have been the recipients of Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur Genius, Guggenheim, and NEA fellowships, National Book and National Book Critics Circle awards, Pushcart Prizes, the Whiting Writer's Award, and more.

Undergraduates are encouraged to attend the program's reading series, which brings both established and new writers to NYU. Writing prizes, special events, and our undergraduate literary journal,  West 10th , further complement our course offerings and provide a sense of community for undergraduate writers. If you have questions about the minor in creative writing, please contact us at  [email protected] .

To request declaration of a minor, CAS students should visit the host department. To request declaration of a cross-school minor, CAS students should complete the online Minor Application available in their Albert Student Center. Students may also use the  Minor Application  in Albert to request cancellation of a CAS or cross-school minor.

Program Requirements

The minor requires the completion of 16 credits, comprised of the following:

General Information

The introductory workshop CRWRI-UA 815 Creative Writing: Intro Prose & Poetry , or the study away course CRWRI-UA 9815 Creative Writing , is generally the required foundational course, to be followed by 12 additional credits from the program's CRWRI-UA course offerings.

However, students who begin their minor by taking one of the program's 8-credit summer intensives—Writers in New York (CRWRI-UA 818, 819, or 835), Writers in Paris (CRWRI-UA 9818 or 9819), or Writers in Florence (CRWRI-UA 9828 or 9829)—are not required to take the introductory workshop (CRWRI-UA 815, CRWRI-UA 9815, or equivalent). Following completion of one of these 8-credit intensives, students may take advanced coursework in the same genre as their summer intensive and/or move directly into an intermediate workshop in an alternative genre. Students may also repeat an 8-credit summer intensive to complete the 16-credit minor. Intermediate and advanced workshops may be taken three times for credit.

Students wishing to begin the creative writing minor while studying away at an NYU site should register for CRWRI-UA 9815 Creative Writing or, if studying away in the summer, for one of the 8-credit intensives offered in Paris and Florence (CRWRI-UA 9818, 9819, 9828, or 9829). These courses are not considered outside courses and will automatically be counted toward the creative writing minor. All other creative writing courses taken away require a petition for substitution and are subject to approval by the program.

Policies Applying to the Minor

Policy on course substitutions, nyu policies, college of arts and science policies.

The creative writing minor must be completed with a minimum grade point average of 2.0 (C). No credit toward the minor is granted for grades of C- or lower, although such grades will be computed into the grade point average of the minor, as well as into the overall grade point average. No course to be counted toward the minor may be taken on a Pass/Fail basis.

Students may petition to apply a maximum of one outside course toward the minor, either as the introductory prerequisite (equivalent to CRWRI-UA 815 or 9815) or as an elective. An outside course is any NYU creative writing course without a CRWRI-UA rubric. To petition to substitute an outside course, students must complete the course substitution petition form (available on the program's website) and provide the course syllabus (as described on the petition form). The undergraduate programs manager will review the submitted syllabus to verify course level and determine substitution eligibility. Students must petition for course substitution prior to registration.

If the program pre-approves a non-NYU course for substitution, it can only be counted toward the minor if 1. the Office of the Associate Dean for Students in CAS has also approved the course credit for transfer, and 2. the student receives a grade of C or better.

University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages .

A full list of relevant academic policies can be found on the CAS Academic Policies page . 

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The Appraisal

A Literary House Keeps the Village Spirit Alive

By Matt A.V. Chaban

• March 28, 2016

Light radiated from the large, leaded front window of 58 West 10th Street on Thursday night, as it does most Thursdays and Fridays. Books and journals spanned the windowsill, and a soft yellow garland of stained glass framed the back of a man’s head. Up the stoop and inside, under another rope of vines sculpted into the ceiling, the voice of Major Jackson filled the parlor as he read poems from his collection “ Roll Deep .”

The corner store, with its faded graffiti lines, finally whitewashed, nearly expunged, doubtless like its author save for his palimpsest …

The mostly bespectacled audience was rapt, a few clutching glasses of white wine. Marilyn Hacker , a winner of the National Book Award and a former editor of The Kenyon Review, had just finished tracing the lives of “dyke vegetarians” from Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Syrian refugee children.

“Poetry is poetry,” Ms. Hacker said after the reading, “but this is certainly a very lively place for it.”

The 1836 house, officially known as the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, is one of the few places left in Greenwich Village to hear authors such as Jonathan Lethem, Sharon Olds, Junot Díaz and Zadie Smith — even the Barnes & Noble around the corner on the Avenue of the Americas has closed. And yet the building and the activities there are as much a part of the 21st-century Village as the brasseries and boutiques that fill its crooked streets. This is no down-and-out collective or impromptu salon. For the past decade, it has been the home of New York University’s Creative Writing Program.

The university moved the program there in 2007 in an effort to foster the kind of bohemian bonhomie that has been vanishing in waves since the eras when Eugene O’Neill took Broadway, Bob Dylan plugged in and Carrie Bradshaw strolled by in stilettos (not to mention Sarah Jessica Parker herself ). Over the decades, the landscape has shaped the scene as much as it has been shaped by it.

“Cheap apartments, cheap cafes, cheap bars — artists could afford to live there,” John Strausbaugh, author of “ The Village : 400 Years of Beats, Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village,” said in an interview. “It wasn’t just individual spots. The entire neighborhood was a cultural engine.”

This spot, at least, is still churning out an impressive number of works. Ms. Smith, Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Carson and Ms. Olds are among the faculty members, and recent graduates include such literary darlings as Garth Risk Hallberg , Robin Coste Lewis and Julia Pierpont .

Few of the faculty members or students live in the neighborhood, and those who do tend to be longtime residents or in university housing. Nor would their work there be possible without an institution, endowment or scholarship, like the funds provided by Lillian Vernon , the catalog magnate for whom the building is named. A regular at the readings before she died in 2015, she helped bring about the move out of a cluster of academic buildings.

“I had one class in a pizza parlor, and we’d meet with professors where we could find an empty room,” said Darin Strauss, a 1997 graduate of the program who now teaches there. His luminous top-floor office is about the closest thing left in the neighborhood to a garret.

The house was among the reasons Ms. Smith, who is British, agreed to cross the Atlantic and join the program. She now works from an office that was used by the novelist E. L. Doctorow until his death last year. “There’s a kind of American institutional space that looks like an airport waiting room,” she said on Friday, taking a moment away from her next novel (Ms. Smith is trying to finish 4,000 words a day).

“You go upstairs, and Sharon Olds is having a cup of tea, or Jonathan Safran Foer is eating a sandwich,” Ms. Smith said. “At this point in my life, I figured it would just be me, writing in the library.”

The paint on the walls is peeling in spots, and the floorboards are creaky. “It’s kind of a warren,” Meghan O’Rourke said after teaching a poetry class on Wallace Stevens on Thursday. “You never know who you might find hiding around a corner or bump into on the stairs.”

That the house is part of N.Y.U., an institution many in the neighborhood fault for diminishing the local culture as it has expanded in the Village , is not lost on those who use it.

“It’s better than another billionaire with fancy furniture and stereo equipment,” said Deborah Landau, a poet and director of the program. “Manhattan is still the center of the literary world, and we want to be at the center of that.”

The neighborhood used to be full of artistic enclaves, such as the Liberal Club, the Mad Hatter Tearoom and the Writers Room . A few still persist, like the Salmagundi Club , though there are fewer and fewer. Farther east on 10th Street, past the former residences of Mark Twain, Emma Lazarus and Edward Albee, the Pen and Brush opened its house for female artists and writers in 1923. Nearly 90 years later, it was sold, amid controversy , for $11 million, and after a gut renovation, was sold again for $32 million in November.

What is now the Writers House has a similar pedigree. Starting in 1877, its rear building was the meeting place of the Tile Club , whose members included Winslow Homer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Edwin Austin Abbey and Stanford White. White helped the owner, the stained-glass artist Maitland Armstrong, remodel in the 1880s, creating many of the windows, bas-reliefs and other details that still decorate the home. N.Y.U. acquired the building in the late 1980s, with support from the Onassis family. After surviving a fire during renovations , it served as various policy institutes until the writers moved in.

Although there are no living quarters at the Writers House, its denizens are at home there. “Is it a virtue of a place that you’re comfortable falling asleep there? To me, it is,” Mr. Foer said, noting that he often naps on the floor. (He finished his latest novel there.)

Mr. Foer is also fond of impromptu meditation sessions in Ms. Landau’s office, and many faculty members bring their children to class or readings when the babysitter falls through. Wine and beer are also common. Students and graduates can often be found mingling in the parlor, library or mahogany-lined kitchen turned classroom.

Ms. Landau said students took inspiration from all the plaques of literary luminaries dotting the neighborhood, even if these days they were more likely to bump into artists who are far from starving.

“If I don’t see Meg Ryan in Washington Square Park,” Ms. Smith said, “I know I’m running late for class.”

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @MC_NYC

Washington Square News

NYU’s creative writing department kicks off its fall 2023 reading series

NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, a vessel for artistry and imagination tucked into the West Village, houses the creative writing program’s fall 2023 reading series. It commenced on Thursday, Sept. 14, with poetry readings by Dean Rader and Nicole Sealey.

The night began with a warm welcome by Joanna Yas, readings and special programs manager for NYU’s creative writing program. Yas invited MFA poetry student Madeline Zuzevich up to the podium to introduce esteemed poet Dean Rader. Zuzevich described Rader as a poet who writes “from a tender place of abstraction while he climbs the muddy hill of grief,” as a prelude to the selected works.

Rader, an accomplished poet and professor at the University of San Francisco, has written 12 books. He also earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, among other accomplishments.

Most of the works read by Rader at the event were selections from his latest collection of poetry titled “Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly,” which was inspired by his recent grief and the introspection that followed. To supplement his reading, Rader passed out pictures of Twombly’s paintings to provide visuals for each poem, as he expressed his emotions in conversation with the art. His readings felt especially cyclical after he shared that Twombly spent his life making art inspired by poetry.

Some of the poems Rader read were “Meditation on Absolution,” a response to Twombly’s “Note I,” from the series “III Notes from Salalah,” and “Mediation on Motion,” both a response to Twombly’s “Cold Stream,” and a love poem dedicated to his wife. 

After Rader left the stage, Sealey concluded the night with a thought-provoking reading of her works. MFA poetry student Daniella Ndubuisi-Ike introduced Sealey with a testament to her talents, explaining that Sealey’s poetry moved her to tears.

Sealey, an NYU MFA creative writing graduate herself, received numerous awards for her debut collection “Ordinary Beast” and chapbook “The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named.” She was also a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University , with a lengthy list of additional awards and fellowships. 

Sealey’s selections include her most recent work, “The Ferguson Report: An Erasure,” published this past August. In this erasure poem, Sealey shapes her own voice and poetic insight by confronting the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Ferguson Police Department following the 2014 killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown . The poet read with precision, allowing the audience to take in the gravity of her work.

The evening, filled with revelations of grief, obsession and justice, culminated in applause for the poets. 

The NYU Creative Writing Program’s reading series is held at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House every Thursday and Friday. NYU students, faculty and members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend future events with RSVP.  

Contact Olivia Olson at [email protected]

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Published September 13, 2023

A Tale of Three Cities: NYU’s Summer Creative Writing Programs

Staff Writer

• Aspiring writers can spend a month honing their craft in Paris, Florence, or New York City.
• These summer programs are open to current NYU undergrads as well as visiting students.
• Writers immerse themselves in their cities and learn from leading literary and creative minds.

Writers draw inspiration from their own experiences, and for many, global cities become their muse. At NYU, aspiring poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers can enroll in a monthlong immersive summer program through the College of Arts and Science . Participants choose between Paris, Florence, and New York City, and then hone their creative writing skills against the backdrop of an iconic city. Below, three aspiring wordsmiths share their experiences living a writer’s life.

Enjoy a Moveable Feast in Paris

NYU English and American Literature major Isean Bhalla chose to study in Paris because a friend completed the program and loved it. Their endorsement? “‘It was the greatest month of my life,’ word for word,” Isean recalls. “Plus, one does not say no to Paris. Ever.” Reflecting back, Isean credits growing as a creative writer to the program’s high-quality faculty and “excellent” nightly readings from “world-class writers.” “It gave me a greater understanding of my own voice as well as things I want to write about in the future,” Isean affirms.

Most importantly, however, Writers in Paris connected Isean to an inspiring community that was rich in writing talent and friendship. “The program put me in constant contact with other writers who were better than I was. They pushed me in ways I couldn’t. Being around writers 24/7 doesn’t sound like it’s that important, but I found it more stimulating for my writing than anything else. That’s all anyone ever talked about or thought about. So we’d feed off each other and get better.” And, of course, being in Paris didn’t hurt. Isean says, “Paris is a muse; Paris has always been a muse; and I suspect Paris will always be a muse.”

Get a Room with a View in Florence

Katherine Ertman always considered writing a hobby, but after attending Writers in Florence , she realized it could be a career. The NYU Vocal Performance major is training to be an opera singer, but in Florence, she found that “writing my own stories instead of performing stories written by others was a refreshing experience.” In fact, Katherine spent the past summer completing a Creative Writing minor by enrolling in both Writers in Florence and Writers in Paris. “It seemed like an amazing opportunity to complete all 16 credits while exploring two inspiring European cities,” she explains.

In Florence Katherine drew inspiration from a day trip to Castello di Fosdinovo, a Tuscan medieval castle. In Paris she attended readings by renowned authors outside the iconic Shakespeare and Company bookstore. “The locations really influenced me, and I ended up writing a few stories set in both locations,” Katherine says. In the end, she urges anyone interested to enroll, even if they’ve never shared their creative writing with others. “Just try it!” she exclaims. “Writing was a hobby for me, and I went in without any prior workshop experience. Also, I was intimidated because I’m not an English major. However, my fears were unfounded because the faculty and students alike were so supportive. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

A Writer Grows in New York City

Esmé Warmuth grew up close to New York City, admiring the city from afar but never spending much time there. So when the English major learned that she could join NYU’s Writers in New York program as a visiting student , she jumped at the chance. “I’ve been a longtime admirer of NYU’s creative writing faculty,” she adds. Living in Greenwich Village, Esmé connected with published authors, literary agents, and magazine editors, gaining valuable professional experience. She particularly enjoyed a panel with program alumni. “It was helpful to hear from authors who had started where we were and wound up with book deals, jobs teaching creative writing, and overall successful careers,” she explains.

During her month in New York City, Esmé sharpened her skills as a writer and gained confidence in her abilities. “Receiving, giving, and listening to advice in class helped me grow my craft and gave me the opportunity to share my writing with a receptive and positive audience,” she says. All in all, the experience was better than she could have imagined. “The Writers in New York program was like nothing I ever experienced before,” she concludes. “Being among students my age who were just as passionate about books and writing as I am was wonderful. Plus, everyone came in with a great attitude and a willingness to learn. I’m very grateful.”

A Creative Writing Minor Complements Any Major

Across majors and around the world, NYU students find the value in a Creative Writing minor.

A Guide to Writing Majors at NYU

At NYU, English and creative writing aren’t the only options for aspiring writers!

Find Joie de Vivre at NYU Paris

At NYU Paris, you can practice your French, take courses at local institutions, and soak in the French capital’s storied culture.

Creative Writing

• Finding Books
• Resources by Genre

Finding literary journals and magazines

A selection of literary magazines and journals.

• Organizations and events
• Getting Published
• Citing Sources This link opens in a new window

Below is a selection of the NYU Libraries' holdings of literary journals and magazines that publish new fiction, poetry, and other writing. To see whether the library subscribes to a given journal, you can use the advanced search options in the NYU Libraries' catalog , to search for a title and limit the material type to "Journal."

• American Poetry Review The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. APR also aims to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide authors, especially poets, with a far-reaching forum in which to present their work.
• Antioch Review The Antioch Review, a small independent literary magazine founded in 1941 by the faculty of Antioch College in a small town in the cornfields of Ohio, is one of the oldest literary magazines in America. Publishing nonfiction essays, fiction, and poetry from promising and prominent authors, the Antioch Review has an international readership and reputation of publishing the “best words in the best order” for nearly 85 years.
• Ecotone: Reimagining Place Ecotone is based at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and comes out twice a year. Each issue contains new fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork. The magazine bridges the gap between science and culture, bringing together the literary and the scientific, the urban and the rural, the personal and the biological.
• Gettysburg Review The Gettysburg Review, published by Gettysburg College, is recognized as one of the country’s premier literary journals. Since its debut in 1988, work by such luminaries as E. L. Doctorow, Rita Dove, James Tate, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Wilbur, and Donald Hall has appeared alongside that of emerging artists such as JM Holmes, Lydia Conklin, Jessica Hollander, Emily Nemens, Charles Yu, and Ashley Wurzbacher, who was recently named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.
• Granta Granta magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a periodical of student politics, badinage and literary enterprise. In 1979, Bill Buford and Pete de Bolla transformed Granta from a student publication to the literary quarterly it remains today. Each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now.
• Kenyon Review One of the most vibrant and innovative literary journals in the world, the Kenyon Review maintains an international reach and significance. Founded at Kenyon College in 1939 by poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, KR remains committed to discovering, publishing, and supporting new voices from the broadest and most diverse backgrounds, as well as featuring singularly distinguished authors of this generation.
• McSweeney's McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern began in 1998 as a literary journal that published only works rejected by other magazines. That rule was soon abandoned, and since then McSweeney’s has attracted some of the finest writers in the world, from George Saunders and Lydia Davis, to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and David Foster Wallace.
• New England Review Over the past 30 years, New England Review has established itself as one of the nation's most distinguished literary journals, a publication that encourages lively artistic exchange and innovation. Presenting work in a wide variety of genres by writers both new and established, each 200-page issue ranges over an unusually comprehensive literary spectrum. You’ll find highly accomplished traditional narratives as well as challenging experiments in style and form, poetry and works of drama of the highest quality, translations of works from many languages and time periods, far-reaching essays on art and literature, and rediscoveries from our cultural past.
• New Yorker The New Yorker is a national weekly magazine that offers a signature mix of reporting and commentary on politics, foreign affairs, business, technology, popular culture and the arts, along with humor, fiction, poetry and cartoons. Founded in 1925, The New Yorker publishes the best writers of its time and has received more National Magazine Awards than any other magazine
• Paris Review The Paris Review is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953. It is known for known for presenting quality fiction and poetry by both established authors and new or relatively unknown writers.
• Ploughshares Ploughshares is an American literary journal established in 1971. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in Boston. Ploughshares publishes issues four times a year, two of which are guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
• Poetry Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s Open Door policy, set forth in volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best contemporary poetry, of any style, genre, or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of H.D., T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and other now-classic authors.
• Prairie Schooner Prairie Schooner, a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Press, is home to the best fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews being published today by beginning, mid-career, and established writers.
• Sewanee Review Founded in 1892, the Sewanee Review is America’s oldest continuously published literary quarterly. Many of the twentieth century’s great writers, including T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Wallace Stevens, Saul Bellow, Katherine Anne Porter, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound, have appeared in the magazine.
• Southern Review The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. Hailed by Time as "superior to any other journal in the English language," we have made literary history since our founding in 1935. We publish a diverse array of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the country’s—and the world’s—most respected contemporary writers.
• Tin House The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. During its 20-year print run, the magazine established Tin House as a vital and vibrant part of the American literary landscape, a showcase for not only established, prize-winning authors, but undiscovered writers as well.
• TriQuarterly TriQuarterly is the literary magazine of Northwestern University. It is edited by students in the Litowitz MFA+MA Graduate Creative Writing Program and the MFA in Prose and Poetry in the School of Professional Studies. Alumni of these programs and other readers also serve as editorial staff. Available around the world, TriQuarterly has remained "an international journal of writing, art, and cultural inquiry."
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• Last Updated: Apr 2, 2024 1:13 AM
• URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/creative-writing

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Creative Writing

The Creative Writing concentration is designed for beginner through experienced writers who wish to develop their craft. Through studio classes in poetry, prose, and performance, you will concentrate on generating texts and learning the conventions of particular genres and forms. You also will participate in interdisciplinary humanities seminars that bring together reading, writing, theory, and method.

Build Your Audience

Improve as a writer with practice and feedback and increase your audience through publication in our literary and arts journal, Dovetail.

Faculty Contact

Dr. Clif Hubby

(212) 992-8397

[email protected]. 

Requirements

Creative writing concentration: craft studios category.

Students select four credits from Craft Studios and four credits from Workshops and an additional eight credits from either category.

• CWRG1-UC5243 The Craft of Playwriting 4
• CWRG1-UC5242 Poetry Studio 4
• CWRG1-UC5241 Prose Studio 4

Creative Writing Concentration: Workshops Category

Students select four credits from Workshops and four credits from Craft Studios and an additional eight credits from either category.

• CWRG1-UC5277 Creative Nonfiction Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5271 Fiction Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5272 Poetry Workshop 4
• CWRG1-UC5280 Writing for Children & Adolescents 4
• CWRG1-UC5275 Writing for The Screen 4
• CWRG1-UC5273 Writing for The Theater 4
• MEST1-UC6050 Digital Storytelling 4
• MEST1-UC6013 Writing for Media and Communication 4

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Creative Writing Courses and the Creative Writing Minor

Find out more about our  Spring 2022 courses and the Creative Writing Minor .

Creative Writing at NYU Shanghai: Worlds within worlds

Crafting a compelling narrative or poem is not only deeply satisfying in and of itself. We tell stories, memorize our favorite lyrics, and share lines from our favorite films because the right words in the right order create deep connections between and among us that resonate not only with our times, but with our pasts and our hoped-for futures. 

Sharpening and refining your skills as a writer and as a reader also makes enormous practical sense. Whatever your career path, the better you are at communication, persuasion and at reading people and situations, the greater your success will be. Careful, sustained practice in reading, writing and discussing fiction, poetry, drama, screenplays, games, films, creative nonfiction and today's emerging digital storytelling forms transfers directly to skills essential to success in business, marketing, journalism, game development, interactive media arts, the sciences — you name it. 

And at NYU Shanghai, we focus not only only writing in English, but on ways in which multilingual writing and literary translation can further enhance and deepen both your creativity and practical communication, analytic, and persuasion skills.

You can also gain valuable experience by working with fellow students and faculty on print and digital publication projects, whether it‘s our annual print journal,  The Poplar Review 杨高 , our student-run online journal Bright Lines 青 思 , or our BackLit video interviews with renowned visiting writers and translators who appear in our NYU Shanghai Literary Reading Series .

At NYU Shanghai, creative writing is not just about you and your words alone — it's also about community, events, connection, learning new skills, and growth.

Finally, if you're a Humanities or Interactive Media Arts major at NYU Shanghai, many of our courses can both fulfill elective credits and enrich and inform your studies in your major. 

Creative Writing Minor requirements 

You can complete the Creative Writing Minor with 16 credits:

• Introduction to Creative Writing (4 credits)
• 8 credits of intermediate or advanced level Creative Writing craft courses
• 4 credits of an additional Creative Writing craft course (of any level) or a designated elective (usually in literature, theater, or film).
• Note: There are 2-credit options both within the Creative Writing area as well as 2-credit electives in other areas that count towards the Creative Writing minor.

You can also take creative writing courses at a number of NYU’s global academic centers. Those looking for intensive summer course have opportunities to enroll in three engaging summer programs: Writers in Paris, Writers in Florence, and Writers in New York.

Humanities majors may take creative writing courses to fulfill some of the major requirements. Please see your academic advisor for more details, or contact the Creative Writing Coordinator .

2021-22 Creative Writing courses

CRWR-SHU 245 | 4 credits | Instructor: David Perry

In this new version of our introductory course, students will focus on writing their own stories, poems, and dramatic dialogues, as in any Intro to Creative Writing course. However, instead of working with a more conventional creative writing textbook, students will study craft through the lens of literary translation, getting “inside” exemplary works of literature by producing their own translations among and between Chinese, English and other languages. Translation will serve as a prompt for student’s own works, providing models and patterns for close study that students can then experiment with, take inspiration from, and adapt (or depart from) in creating their own work. This class recognizes and celebrates the global nature of reading and writing literature in the 21st century, and encourages students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds to draw on their native tongues, traditions, and techniques in creating compelling work in English — but not just in English (or in one variety of English).   This course fulfills the Introduction to Creative Writing requirement for Creative Writing minors or a Humanities Survey requirement, with approval.

CRWR-SHU 200A | 4 credits | Instructor: Claire Whitenack

Science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, alternative histories—all fall under the heading of speculative fiction. In this class, students will study and practice worldbuilding, combining imaginative writing with research to create compelling, believable worlds, characters and stories—whether they are situated on other planets, in other dimensions, in magical realms, in super-high-tech futures, or wherever else the imagination can take us.

This course satisfies IMA Seminar and Creative Writing Minor. It is cross-listed with INTM-SHU 295. This course counts for an elective in Creative Writing, IMA and the Humanities major. 

CRWR-SHU 209 | 4 credits | Instructor: Genevieve Leone

In this intermediate creative writing workshop, students will write with the “I.” They will explore narrative possibilities across genres and modes, working at times from direct observation: observation of the self, of the world, and of the shifting relationships between and among all of us and it in its and our countless points and moments. At times, students will draw upon memory, at other times they will pay close attention to that which presents itself to us (as we present ourselves) “in the moment,” and at yet others upon research and reading. Throughout, students will experiment using techniques associated with fiction and poetry to push the “personal essay” in the direction of inspired creative nonfiction, memoir, autofiction, lyric and experimental poetry, and cross- genre hybrids. Along the way, they will develop a richer and more nuanced critical vocabulary to help us talk and think about what they are reading and writing.

This course counts for an elective in Creative Writing, IMA and the Humanities major.   

CRWR-SHU 159 | 4 credits | Instructor: Frances Hwang  | Tue/Thu  1:45-03:00pm,

This workshop course offers a broad introduction to the art of capturing the world around you in your own original fiction and poetry. Through close readings of classic and contemporary examples, intensive in-class workshops, and vigorous revision, students will learn to make their stories and poems live on the page through attention to plot, character, dialogue, language, heartbreaking images and the mystery of the perfect line break.

Pre-requisites: None Equivalency: This course counts for CRWRI-UA 815 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction and Poetry Introduction to Creative Writing is a requirement for all intermediate/advanced workshop classes. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course.

CRWR-SHU 217 | 4 credits | Instructor: Frances Hwang | Mon 4:15-6:45 pm

This course explores the art of writing short fiction with a focus on linked stories. In discussing what compelled him to write two linked short story collections, Junot Díaz muses, “Maybe I could have written conventional novels from both sets of material but I’m not convinced I could have gotten the same jagged punch, the same longing and silences that rise up from the gaps in and between the linked stories. I guess I’m just hopelessly fascinated by the realities that you can assemble out of connected fragments.” In this course, geared toward intermediate and advanced fiction writers, we explore the jagged power of the linked story collection and what can be gained from the points of connection as well as the narrative gaps between stories. Students will read linked collections by such writers as Junot Díaz, Denis Johnson, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Jenny Zhang and will complete several linked stories of their own, gaining appreciation for a form Sonya Chung aptly characterizes as “compression and vast heterogeneity in one!”

Prerequisite: CRWR-SHU 159 Intro to Creative Writing or CRWR-SHU 161 Intro to Literary Translation or Junior/ Senior standing.

Fulfillment: This course will fulfill one of the two the Intermediate Workshop components for the creative writing minor. Humanities other Advanced course.

CRWR-SHU 221 | 4 credts | Instructor: Daniel Woody |  Wed 4:15-6:45 pm

In this intermediate creative writing workshop, students will explore the possibilities of poetry by writing and sharing their own work while also engaging with exemplary works by great poets from a range of traditions, background and times, with a practical emphasis on contemporary poetry and its many vibrant modes and methods. At times, students will experiment with age-old forms such as the sonnet, haiku and sestina; at other times students will pursue the possibilities of contemporary performance poetry and spoken word, Modernist collage and pastiche, postmodern hybrid poetries, and emergent digital poetics. The goal for each student will be to create a body of work that draws on knowledge of traditional forms while also speaking directly to the unique circumstances of our times -- and each individual poet's experience.

Prerequisites: Students must have either 1) completed an Introduction to Creative Writing Course (CRWR-SHU 159 or CRWR-SHU 161) or 2) be of junior or senior standing.

CRWR-SHU 260 | 4 credits | Instructor: Amy Goldman | Tue 3:15-5:45 pm

The premise of this course is that gifted writers highly conscious of their craft teach us more pointedly about creative writing when, juxtaposed to the creative work of each, we hear, see and experience what each identifies as fundamental to his or her writing practice — whether technique, discipline, recurrent battle, avenue of inspiration, self-imposed rule or other. This course looks to such writers as guides from whom we may learn by studying the steps they have taken over time to develop and hone their craft. The course typically (but not always) pairs, each week, one or two pieces of an author’s creative work with another that reflects critically on some aspects of their writing practice, and on the craft of writing. In essence, this is a hybrid course that blends study of creative work with that of writers' critical self-reflection. Students also pursue their own creative writing projects, reflecting critically on their own process along the way. The course readings draw from multiple cultures, literary traditions, and genres including the short story, flash fiction, the novella, the essay, memoir, diary, children’s literature and poetry.

Prerequisite: Writing as Inquiry WRIT-SHU 101/102 OR CRWR-SHU 159 Introduction to Creative Writing OR CRWR-SHU 161 Introduction to Creative Writing: Literary Translation Focus

Fulfillment: This course counts as one of the three intermediate/advanced creative writing workshops required for completion of the Creative Writing Minor. 

WRIT-SHU 245 | 4 credits | Instructor:  Don Belt  |  4:45-6:00pm Tue-Th u

In this seminar and workshop, students use digital storytelling techniques and technologies to capture and make sense of the world around them. Students will use the affordances of various technologies to enhance the impact of their stories. In addition to attending to traditional elements of storytelling, such as language, structure, and style, students will incorporate image, sound, haptics, and design of various media interfaces. Different semesters will focus on different themes or story topics

Prerequisite: A final grade of C or higher in Writing as Inquiry

Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective; designated elective for Creative Writing.

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