Creative Writing Major

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Creative Writing

The stories you tell and how you tell them matter. As a Creative Writing Major you’ll take both introductory and advanced courses in poetry, playwriting, fiction and nonfiction. Through writing workshops, you’ll receive faculty and peer feedback on your creative texts to further refine your craft. You’ll also have opportunities to share your work with the broader community, whether on the physical page, online, or on stage. Becoming a Creative Writing Major at Wheaton could be the first chapter in your publishing career or the foreword to earning your MFA.

Major

Creative Writing and Literature Major

Sample First Jobs

Assistant, Alice Hoffman Writing
Deputy Field House Director, New Hampshire Democratic Party
Executive Project Assistant, Hachette Book Group
Public Relations, Racepoint Global
Teacher, New England Center for Children

Sample Graduate Schools

Middlebury College
New York University
Northeastern University
University of Vermont

Student-Run Literary Magazines

As a Creative Writing Major, you’ll have opportunities to write for our campus literary magazines.

Rushlight, housed in the Creative Writing Program, is one of the oldest student-run literary magazines in the country that is still in publication. The student editorial staff at Rushlight works with the Visual Arts Program to select creative work. Issues of the magazine are released at the end of every spring semester.

Smudge, run out of the Marshall Center for Intercultural Learning, started in 2021 by students who tell stories centered around the experiences of people of color. Works include poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual art.

Play Festivals

Wheaton offers a vibrant, collaborative setting for aspiring writers. As a Creative Writing Major, you’ll have the opportunity to participate in two annual play festivals, where students produce and perform one-act plays that were written by students. The week of the festival is alive with activity. It opens with a prompt that is provided to the student body. Then plays are selected from the student submissions. Rehearsals and direction then lead up to a performance at the Kresge Experimental Theatre to a packed house.