Berry College
Georgia, United States
Residential programBerry offers an ideal environment for the undergraduate creative writer. While Berry's beautiful and extensive rural setting - at 26,000 acres, the world's largest campus - offers a rare opportunity for solitude and retreat, its small community of highly dedicated student and faculty writers offers unusual opportunities for support and dialogue.
The Creative Writing BA fuses academic literary study and creative studio work with opportunities for service and experiential learning focusing on nature and culture, cultivating an awareness of how writing emerges from the intersection of self and place. Creative Writing majors have opportunities to interact one-on-one with writers of national and international renown; this feature, in addition to the extensive rural setting of the campus and special courses that combine an immersion in place, literature, and creative writing, all serve to make Berry’s creative writing program unique.
A major in Creative Writing requires 39 semester hours plus a final portfolio of work completed for the major and participation in a senior reading. The department offers a 200-level course to introduce students to general principles of craft in creative writing. Courses at the 300 and 400 levels concentrate on reading, drafting, and revision of creative work in a variety of genres in a workshop format. Creative Writing majors must also complete 15 hours of study in literature courses.
Students have the opportunity to edit and publish their creative work as well. Ramifications, an award-winning literature and arts magazine edited by students, showcases original poetry and fiction by Berry students. The editors also organize a student and faculty poetry reading each semester. During their final semester at Berry, creative writing students give a public reading of their work and are honored with a reception. Recent Berry graduates have been accepted into a variety of prestigious graduate programs in Creative Writing, including Washington University, Hollins College, The University of Utah, The University of Georgia, and others. The English department gives a number of annual awards in creative writing, including The Academy of American Poets, Gordon Barber, Eleanor B. North, and Hammond awards.
For more than a century, Berry College has emphasized the importance of a comprehensive and balanced education that unites a challenging academic program with opportunities for meaningful work experience, spiritual and moral growth, and significant service to others. This commitment to providing a firsthand educational experience – expressed as “Head, Heart and Hands” by college founder Martha Berry – remains just as relevant today as it was when the institution was founded in 1902.
Nationally recognized for both quality and value, Berry is an independent, coeducational college of approximately 2,100 students that offers exceptional undergraduate degree programs in the sciences, humanities, arts and social sciences, as well as undergraduate and master’s level opportunities in business and teacher education. Students are encouraged to enrich their academic studies through participation in one of the nation’s premier on-campus work experience program, and more than 90 percent take advantage of this unique opportunity to gain valuable real-world experience prior to graduation.
Contact Information
Dept of English, Box 350
2277 Martha Berry Hwy NW
Mount Berry
Georgia, United States
30149-0350
Phone: (706) 802-6723
Email: smeek@berry.edu
http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/english/
Undergraduate Program Director
Sandra MeekDana Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing
Dept of English, Box 350
2277 Martha Berry Hwy NW
Mount Berry
Georgia, United States
30149-0350
Email: smeek@berry.edu
URL: http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/english/
The Creative Writing BA fuses academic literary study and creative studio work with opportunities for service and experiential learning focusing on nature and culture, cultivating an awareness of how writing emerges from the intersection of self and place. Creative Writing majors have opportunities to interact one-on-one with writers of national and international renown; this feature, in addition to the extensive rural setting of the campus and special courses that combine an immersion in place, literature, and creative writing, all serve to make Berry’s creative writing program unique.
A major in Creative Writing requires 39 semester hours plus a final portfolio of work completed for the major and participation in a senior reading. The department offers a 200-level course to introduce students to general principles of craft in creative writing. Courses at the 300 and 400 levels concentrate on reading, drafting, and revision of creative work in a variety of genres in a workshop format. Creative Writing majors must also complete 15 hours of study in literature courses.
Requirements:
Creative Writing Core (18 hours)
ENG 240 Introduction to Literary Studies 3-0-3
ENG 250 Introduction to Creative Writing, Prose and Poetry 3-0-3
ENG 301 Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry 3-0-3
ENG 302 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction 3-0-3
ENG 475 Writing and Community 3-0-3
ENG 495 Writing about Place: Nature, Culture, Environment 3-0-3
Senior Reading 0-0-0
Two Additional Upper Division Creative Writing Courses (6 hours):
ENG 470 Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry 3-0-3
OR ENG 471 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction 3-0-3
AND one of the following:
ENG 300 Writing for Online Environments 3-0-3
ENG 303 Advanced Expository Writing 3-0-3
ENG 304 Introduction to Playwriting 3-0-3
ENG 305 Creative Writing: Creative Nonfiction 3-0-3
ENG 306 Principles of Writing Pedagogy 3-0-3
ENG 470 Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry 3-0-3
ENG 471 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction 3-0-3
Five Additional Upper Division Literature Courses (15 hours)
Type of Program: Studio/ResearchLargest Class Size: 15
Smallest Class Size: 6
Genres: Fiction, Playwriting, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry
Tuition $28,890
Duration of Study: 4 years
Unit of Measure: Hours
Will Donnelly
Will Donnelly is the newest addition the English, Rhetoric & Writing department and comes to Berry College from Houston, Texas, where he studied and taught literature and creative writing as well as film and journalism classes. He started out in the field of international relations, however, in which he has a BA from the College of William and Mary. He worked for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and in the insurance industry for several years before returning to graduate school for an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston.
He played drums for many years in jazz and rock bands as well as orchestras and wind ensembles. He enjoys cycling, hiking, great films, and, of course, great books. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in numerous literary journals, including Hobart, Pebble Lake Review, Quick Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, Fiction Southeast, Dragnet Magazine, Punchnel's, Five Chapters, PANK Magazine, Green Mountains Review and elsewhere.
When asked about why he came to Berry, Dr. Donnelly replied: "I love how much Berry College cherishes and respects its natural environment. The enormous campus is beautiful in large part because of how much of it has been kept in its natural state. I also think that the size of the student body and of the classes is ideal for anyone seeking a high-quality liberal arts education. Professors at Berry really get to know their students and work with them one-on-one, and that's something that a lot of schools just can't offer. Finally, through its work program, Berry offers its students a chance to get involved directly in the day-to-day operations of the school, which not only helps them pay for their education, but also provides the kind of work experience that will help them start a career after they graduate."
Sandra Meek
Sandra Meek is the author of four books of poems, Road Scatter (Persea Books, September 25, 2012), Biogeography, winner of the Dorset Prize (Tupelo 2008), Burn (2005), and Nomadic Foundations (2002), as well as a chapbook, The Circumference of Arrival (2001). She is also the editor of an anthology, Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad (Ninebark 2007), which was awarded a 2008 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Agni, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Conjunctions, and The Iowa Review, among others. A recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she has twice been awarded Georgia Author of the Year, in 2006 for Burn, and in 2003 for Nomadic Foundations, which also was awarded the Peace Corps Writers Award in Poetry. Meek served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Manyana, Botswana, 1989-1991, where she taught English at Boswelakgosi Junior Secondary School. She is Co-founding Editor of Ninebark Press, Director of the Georgia Poetry Circuit, Poetry Editor of the Phi Kappa Phi Forum, and Dana Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry College. Born in El Paso, Texas, she grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado. She received her BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University, and a PhD in English, Creative Writing, from the University of Denver. Since 1996, she has lived in Rome, Georgia.
Recent visiting writers include Michael Martone, Marianne Boruch, Kevin Prufer, Charles Wright, Kim Addonizio, Dorothy Allison, Robert Pinsky, Albert Goldbarth, Allison Joseph, Brian Turner, Eula Biss, Cleopatra Mathis, Harryette Mullen, Dave Smith, E. Ethelbert Miller, Alice Friman, Larissa Szporluk, Arthur Sze, Rikki Ducornet, Bob Hicok, and Barbara Hamby.
The Georgia Poetry Circuit (http://www.berry.edu/gpc/)
