Undergraduate Program Director

Degree: English Major, Creative Writing Track

The Creative Writing track in the English major is designed for students who wish to explore the writing of poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction; improve their editorial skills; and examine works of literature through the lens of craft. Students take a three-class workshop sequence, culminating in a capstone that will result in a substantial body of work. In Forms of Fiction, Forms of Poetry, and Forms of Literary Nonfiction, students increase their understanding of the techniques involved in the creation of the literary arts, from meter to point of view. Literature classes in the chosen genre continue to expand students' reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, as well as their knowledge of both canonical and contemporary works.

Graduate Program Director

The MA in Creative Writing and Literature is a two-year course of study designed to prepare students for an MFA or PhD in creative writing. The two years of course work include workshop, forms classes, pedagogical training, literature, and theory, and, in the second semester of the second year, thesis hours during which students work with a faculty director on a longer manuscript. Students take three courses and teach one per semester. Recent MA graduates have gone on to MFA programs at Ohio State University, Bowling Green University, the University of South Carolina, Virginia Tech, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Wisconsin; and PhD programs at the University of North Texas, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and here at UC.

Graduate Program Director

The PhD in Creative Writing and Literature is a four-year course of study. Following two years of course work that includes workshop, forms classes, pedagogical training, literature, and theory, students take exams in two areas, one which examines texts through the lens of craft and another which examines them through the lens of literary history and theory. Recent examples of the genre area include Comic Fiction, History of the Love Lyric, and Fantasy; recent examples of the scholarly area include History of the Novel, 20th Century American Poetry, and Modern & Contemporary British Fiction. In the first two years, students take three courses per semester; the teaching load throughout the program is one class per semester.

Every PhD student has the opportunity to teach creative writing, with many also teaching literature classes. Most students are funded by teaching, with two or three at a time funded by editorial work at The Cincinnati Review, and others funded in their dissertation year by college- or university-level fellowships. Fifth-year support, while not guaranteed, has generally been available to interested students in the form of student lecturerships, which carry a 2-2 load. The Creative Writing PhD at the University of Cincinnati has maintained over the last decade more than a 75% placement rate into full-time academic jobs for its doctoral graduates. Two-thirds of these positions are tenure-track.