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Vanderbilt University MA in Creative Writing

Creative Writing is a concentration offered under the writing studies major at Vanderbilt University. We’ve gathered data and other essential information about the master’s degree program in creative writing, such as diversity of students, how many students graduated in recent times, and more.

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• Graduate Cost
• Online Learning
• Student Diversity

Featured Programs

Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

MFA in Creative Writing - Online

Embrace your passion for storytelling and learn the professional writing skills you'll need to succeed with our online MFA in Creative Writing. Write your novel or short story collection while earning a certificate in the Online Teaching of Writing or Professional Writing, with no residency requirement.

MA in English & Creative Writing

Refine your writing skills and take a step toward furthering your career with this online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.

Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction

Harness your passion for storytelling with SNHU's Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. In this small, two-year creative writing program, students work one-on-one with our distinguished faculty remotely for most of the semester but convene for weeklong intensive residencies in June and January. At residencies, students critique each other's work face-to-face, meet with major authors, agents and editors and learn how to teach at the college level.

How Much Does a Master’s in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt Cost?

Vanderbilt graduate tuition and fees.

Part-time graduates at Vanderbilt paid an average of $2,087 per credit hour in 2019-2020. This tuition was the same for both in-state and out-of-state students. Information about average full-time graduate student tuition and fees is shown in the table below.

Does Vanderbilt Offer an Online MA in Creative Writing?

Online degrees for the Vanderbilt creative writing master’s degree program are not available at this time. To see if the school offers distance learning options in other areas, visit the Vanderbilt Online Learning page.

Vanderbilt Master’s Student Diversity for Creative Writing

Male-to-female ratio.

Of the students who received their master’s degree in creative writing in 2019-2020, 85.7% of them were women. This is higher than the nationwide number of 66.6%.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

Around 42.9% of creative writing master’s degree recipients at Vanderbilt in 2019-2020 were awarded to racial-ethnic minorities*. This is higher than the nationwide number of 24%.

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

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• O*NET Online

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Vanderbilt University

Tennessee, united states.

Creative Writing has been a vital part of the Vanderbilt English Department for nearly a century, since the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom's famous class which he called "a practical course in writing various types of prose, including the short story." Notable writers who have studied at Vanderbilt include Robert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, Ellen Gilchrist, and James Dickey. Vanderbilt's writing tradition continues today with the English Department's Master of Fine Arts Program.

The M.F.A. at Vanderbilt is a three-year program requiring four semesters of graduate work in writing workshops and seminars. Students enroll in a workshop and two seminars during each of their first three semesters. Then during the final semester, they work intensively on a creative thesis. The thesis is a substantial piece of creative writing: a novel, a collection of short stories or creative non-fiction, or a collection of poems. Second-year students may teach an introductory creative writing workshop in their genre. Every student in the MFA program receives full-tuition remission, health insurance, and a stipend. Students are also eligible to receive travel grants to attend the AWP Conference (and other academic conferences).

Each semester the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series brings writers to campus to read from their work and visit classes. We’re proud of our readings series, an extraordinary program that gives our students, faculty, and the Nashville community a chance to meet and talk with some of the best writers of our day. A survey of some of our visiting writers in recent years shows the depth and reach of Vanderbilt’s reading series, a source of inspiration and delight for our creative writing students in particular and area residents in general. From 2017 to 2021, visitors included:

*in 2020-2021, poets Kiki Petrosino, Monica Youn, Toi Derricotte, Timothy Donnelly, Destiny Birdsong, and Edward Hirsch

fiction writers Alexander Chee, Quan Barry, Dana Johnson, Simon Han, and Lee Conell

*In 2019-2020, poets Nicole Sealey, Chad Abushanab, and Melissa Range; fiction writers Samantha Hunt, Charles D’Ambrosio, and Lysley Tenorio.

*In 2018-2019, poets Danez Smith, Carl Dennis, Blas Falconer, Marie Howe, Mary Szybist, Tiana Clark, Anders Carlson-Wee, and Edgar Kunz; fiction writers Akhil Sharma, Leopoldine Coret, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Carmen Maria Machado, Nayomi Munaweera, and Margot Livesey.

* In 2017-2018, poets Camille Dungy, Molly McCully Brown, Robert Hass, and Brenda Hillman; fiction writers Kevin Brockmeier, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Daniel Alarcon, and Amy Hempel; and nonfiction writers Joy Castro.

The inaugural issue of Nashville Review, a literary journal edited by students in the MFA program, appeared in Spring 2010. The online journal pays contributors to publish fiction and nonfiction, poetry and comics, music (lyrics and tunes) and paintings, drawings, and photography as cover art. The Review also publishes interviews with established writers, artists, and musicians, along with essays, reviews, and translations. www.vanderbilt.edu/english/nashvillereview.

Contact Information

2301 Vanderbilt Place VU Station B # 351654, English Nashville Tennessee, United States 37235 Phone: (615) 856-0156 Email: [email protected] https://as.vanderbilt.edu/english/

Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing +

Undergraduate program director.

We have a vital undergraduate program in creative writing, which is part of the English major.

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Graduate program director.

Each semester, the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series brings to campus distinguished writers who read from their work and discuss writing with students. In some years, a distinguished writer in residence visits for a semester and teaches a workshop in his or her genre.

The inaugural issue of Nashville Review, a literary journal edited by students in the MFA program, appeared in Spring 2010. The online journal pays contributors to publish fiction and nonfiction, poetry and comics, music (lyrics and tunes) and paintings, drawings, and photography as cover art. The Review also publishes interviews with established writers, artists, and musicians, along with essays, reviews, and translations. It appears three times a year and can be found at www.vanderbilt.edu/english/nashvillereview.

Kate Daniels

Kate Daniels received her MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She is the author of six collections of poetry: The White Wave, The Niobe Poems, Four Testimonies, A Walk in Victoria’s Secret, Three Syllables Describing Addiction (2018) and In the Months of My Son’s Recovery (2019). The White Wave received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. Among her honors are the Bunting Fellowship at Harvard (now known as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study); the Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry; two Best American Poetry selections; the Pushcart Prize; and election to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her poems have been anthologized in more than seventy five volumes, and have appeared individually in journals such as American Poetry Review, Critical Quarterly, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, and the Southern Review. She has also edited a volume of poems by Muriel Rukeyser and co-edited Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly. She is the Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt. An affiliate faculty member in Medicine, Health, and Society, she also teaches writing at the Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis, and conducts community workshops on Writing for Recovery for people whose lives have been affected by addiction.

Tony Earley

Tony Earley is the Samuel Milton Fleming Chair in English at Vanderbilt. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and has taught at Vanderbilt since 1997. He has been named one of the "twenty best young fiction writers in America" by The New Yorker and one of the "Best of Young American Novelists" by Granta.

His books include a collection of short stores, Here We Are in Paradise: Stories (1994); a novel, Jim the Boy (2002); and a collection of personal essays, Somehow Form a Family: Stories That Are Mostly True (2001). His stories have also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Best American Short Stores. His work has been widely anthologized as well as translated into a number of different languages.

At Vanderbilt, he teaches beginning, intermediate, and advanced fiction workshops as well as a seminar on Hemingway and American fiction.

Rick Hilles

Rick Hilles is the author of Brother Salvage (winner of the 2005 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and named 2006 Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine) and A Map of the Lost World (February 2012), listed as a “Top Pick” on Library Journal’s website; both with the University of Pittsburgh Press. Among his honors are a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), the Stegner Program at Stanford, the Institute for Creative Writing at U.W.-Madison, and the Fulbright Program. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Boston Review, Field, Harper’s, Literary Imagination, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, and Salmagundi. He is currently working on two poetry manuscripts: a book-length poem called, The Invisible Thread, substantial portions of which have appeared in Hudson Review, Literary Imagination, and Missouri Review; and The Empathy Machine, individual poems from this collection have appeared in American Literary Review, Connotations Press: an Online Artifact, Five Points, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and have accompanied performances by the Nashville Sinfonietta, conducted by Dean Whiteside.

Nancy Reisman

Reisman is the author of the novels Trompe L’Oeil and The First Desire, a NY Times notable book and winner of the Goldberg prize from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the story collection House Fires, an Iowa Short Fiction Award winner. Her stories have appeared in many journals and anthologies, among them Tin House, SubTropics, Narrative, Yale Review, Glimmer Train, Five Points, Best American Short Stories, O’Henry Award Stories, and Jewish in America. She has received fellowships and awards from the Tennessee Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Bogliasco Foundation.

Sandy Solomon

Sandy Solomon’s book, Pears, Lake, Sun, which received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, was published simultaneously in the UK by Peterloo Poets. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and journals in the US and the UK, including, most recently, The New Yorker, Plume, Vox Populi, and Southampton Review. In the past, other poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Partisan Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, Chelsea, Seneca Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Magazine, Antioch Review, Poetry East, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Pained Bride Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, among others. Solomon’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies including Women’s Work, Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology, and A Breathless Hush, The MCC Anthology of Cricket Verse.

Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is the author of the short story collections Self- Help, Like Life, Birds of America, and Bark; three novels, Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, and A Gate at the Stairs; and a children’s novel, The Forgotten Helper. She has won the O. Henry Award, The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and the Finn Zinklar Award for the Short Story given by the Karen Blixen Society in Copenhagen. She has been a finalist for the Orange Prize, The PEN Faulkner Award, The National Book Critics' Circle Award, The Story Prize, and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her reviews and essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, and The Atlantic, and a collection of her non-fiction was published in 2018. Her collected short fiction was also published in the Everyman's Library series in 2020 with an introduction by Lauren Groff. A recipient of an NEA, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006, where she is currently a member of the Board of Directors. Her work has been published in over a dozen languages.

Major Jackson

Major Jackson is the author of five volumes of poetry, most recently The Absurd Man (Norton: 2020). His other books include Roll Deep, Holding Company, Hoops and Leaving Saturn, recipient of a Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry London, Orion Magazine, Yale Review, among other fine publications. His poetry has received critical attention in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Major Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Didi Jackson

Didi Jackson is the author of MOON JAR (Red Hen Press, 2020), a finalist for Alice James Book Award, Lexi Rudnitsky Book Award, and Autumn House Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New England Review, Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares among other journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly (2013). She has had poems in Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and most recently Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She serves as a contributing editor for Green Mountains Review and currently teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.

Publications & Presses +

The Vanderbilt Review

The Nashville Review

Visiting Writers Program +

Carl Phillips, Deb Olin Unferth, Sonia Sanchez, Carlina Duan, Tommy Orange, Shane McCrae, Brandon Taylor, Margaret Renkl, Claire Jimenez, Cara Dees, Aimee Bender, Vievee Francis, Nicole Sealey, Samantha Hunt, Charles D'Ambrosio, Chad Abushanab, Melissa Range, Lesley Tenorio, Daisy Hernandez, Danez Smith, Akhil Sharma, Leopoldine Core, Blas Falconer, Nafissa Thompson- Spires, Cathy Hong, Carmen Maria Machado, Marie Howe, Nayomi Munaweera, Mary Szybist, Margot Livesey, Tiana Clark, Anders Carlson-Wee, Edgar Kunz, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Kevin Brockmeier, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Ada Limón, Jenny Offill, Ocean Vuong, Meg Wolitzer, Ann Patchett, Ross Gay, Natalie Diaz, Terri Witek, Danielle Evans

Reading Series +

Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series ( www.vanderbilt.edu/creativewriting )

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Writing Studio

Undergraduate creative writing symposium: submissions and self-nominations.

We’ve reorganized our website! To submit your creative writing to be considered for the Undergraduate Creative Writing Symposium , please visit the “ Creative Writing: Call for Submissions and Submission Form Link ” section of our consolidated Symposium submissions page.

Critical Deadlines and Dates (Spring 2024)

• Friday, January 12: Deadline for Faculty Nominations
• Friday, January 19 (noon): Deadline for Submissions (applies to faculty- and self-nominated works)
• Wednesday, April 10: Undergraduate Creative Writing Symposium* and Creative Expression Showcase

(* Please note that you must be available to present in person in order to participate. )

Questions or technical issues?

Please contact John Bradley, Director of the Writing Studio and Tutoring Services .

Minors are offered by all four Vanderbilt undergraduate schools. Students may pursue any minor outside of their major. Minor descriptions and requirements can be found on the school websites or the Undergraduate Catalog .

Learn more at vu.edu/as-minors

• African American and Diaspora Studies
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• English: Creative Writing
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Learn more at vu.edu/blair-minors

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Learn more at vu.edu/engineering-minors

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(Jointly administered by the four undergraduate schools and the Owen Graduate School of Management)

Learn more at vanderbilt.edu/undergraduatebusinessminor .

The undergraduate business minor, developed in collaboration with the Owen Graduate School of Management, is a program of study designed to expose students to the concepts and theories of management through five fundamentals courses and a range of business-related electives provided by the four undergraduate schools.

The data science minor is trans-institutional and interdisciplinary, combining resources across the four undergraduate schools and colleges, and the minor can be paired with any major at Vanderbilt. It allows students to learn various data analysis techniques, including machine learning and data visualization, as well as gain scientific computing, programming and data management skills.

Learn more about the minor at the data science program homepage .

Vanderbilt University announces inaugural literary prize

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Oct 23, 2023, 8:00 AM

Vanderbilt University is pleased to announce the Vanderbilt University Literary Prize .   

  The Vanderbilt University Literary Prize will be awarded annually to the sole author of a full-length collection of poetry that demonstrates great poignancy combined with rigor in form, language and artistic vision. The new prize comes as Vanderbilt University marks its Sesquicentennial by honoring its strong connection to the arts.  

  “Elevating the humanities and the profound mastery of the written craft is part of Vanderbilt’s vibrant academic mission,” Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said. “Free expression through art, poetry or other means is one of our foundational values, and we are excited to celebrate it in this new and impactful way.”  

  In addition to publication of their poetry volume in print, e-book and audio formats by Vanderbilt University Press, the prize recipient will receive $10,000, an invitation to read in the esteemed Gertrude C. and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series at Vanderbilt University and a one-week residency on campus to engage students and writers in the Nashville community.   

  Spearheaded by Professor Major Jackson , Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, professor of English and director of Creative Writing, this prize continues the university’s legacy and ongoing commitments to amplifying new voices and to supporting the arts as transformative and essential to our community.   

  “This prize recognizes and celebrates today’s foremost literary talent and is one of several initiatives that represent Vanderbilt’s ever-increasing investment in the arts. We value the news that poetry brings, especially as a democratic monument to the self and community. With the help of esteemed colleagues, we are excited to contribute to the global culture of arts and letters,” Jackson said.  

  An advisory board of award-winning poets and editors will promote the prize and provide helpful perspectives and feedback on the jurying process, impact and goals of the annual publication:   

  Victoria Chang, Bourne Chair in Poetry , Georgia Institute of Technology    

Kate Daniels , Emerita Professor, Vanderbilt University  

Rick Hilles , Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University   

Garrett Hongo , Poet and Professor, University of Oregon

Didi Jackson , Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University  

Major Jackson , Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, Vanderbilt University   

Mark Jarman , Emeritus Professor, Vanderbilt University  

Dana Levin , Distinguished Writer in Residence, Maryville University in St. Louis  

Nate Marshall , Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin  

Gregory Pardlo , Visiting Associate Professor, New York University Abu Dhabi  

Matthew Zapruder , Olivia Filippi Chair in Creative Writing, St. Mary College of California  

For more information, email [email protected] .  

About the Vanderbilt University Literary Prize Jurists 

The Vanderbilt University Literary Prize will be selected by jurists, who include:

Dana Levin is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Now Do You Know Where You Are (2022), a New York Times Notable Book and NPR “Book We Love.” Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre , was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day , in 2005, and in 2011 Sky Burial , which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Banana Palace , published in 2016, was a finalist for the Rilke Prize. Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry , The New York Times , the Los Angeles Review of Books , the American Poetry Review , The Nation and Poetry . Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as the Lannan, Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim foundations. With Adele Elise Williams, she co-edited Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master (2023) for the Unsung Masters Series. A teacher of poetry for more than 30 years, Levin has served as the Russo Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico (2009–11), as well as faculty and chair of the Creative Writing and Literature Department at College of Santa Fe (1998–2009) and Santa Fe University of Art and Design (2011–15). She has taught for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 2002. Levin currently serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis, where she lives.  

Gregory Pardlo is the author of Digest , winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Totem , winner of the 2007 American Poetry Review / Honickman Prize, and translator from the Danish of Niels Lyngsø’s Pencil of Rays and Spiked Mace . His poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker , Playboy , American Poetry Review , Boston Review , The Nation , The New York Times , Ploughshares , Tin House , and two editions of Best American Poetry , as well as anthologies including Angles of Ascent , the Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry . He is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a fellowship for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, MacDowell, the Lotos Foundation and Cave Canem. He is poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and co-director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-Camden. His most recent book is Air Traffic , a memoir in essays published by Knopf in 2018. His third poetry collection, Spectral Evidence , is forthcoming in 2024.  

Victoria Chang ’s forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World , will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair Books in the U.K. Her most recent book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything was published by Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books in the U.K. in 2022; it was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker and The Guardian . Her nonfiction book, Dear Memory (Milkweed Editions), was published in 2021 and was named a favorite nonfiction book of 2021 by Electric Literature and Kirkus. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), her most recent poetry book, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read Book, and it received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also longlisted for a National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Chowdhury Prize in Literature. She serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech.  

Keep Reading

Vanderbilt authors, works highlighted at 2023 Southern Festival of Books

Major Jackson wins 2023 Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement

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• Nashville and Community
• Society and Culture
• Chancellor Daniel Diermeier
• Didi Jackson
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• Gregory Pardlo
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• literary arts
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• Matthew Zapruder
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Major Jackson

Poet Major Jackson is professor of English, director of creative writing, and holder of the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023), The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won a Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. He is the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli.

His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems .

Jackson is a recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writers’ Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.

Jackson’s poems and essays have been published in American Poetry Review , The New Yorker , Orion Magazine , Paris Review , Ploughshares , Poetry London and many distinguished journals. He also serves as the poetry editor of The Harvard Review and host of the poetry podcast, The Slowdown .

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies

Fall 2024 – open enrollment. check our courses.

Posted by mattosl on Monday, April 8, 2024 in Uncategorized .

Hello VU students,

TODAY is open enrollment, we wanted to circulate the list of all courses across campus that are eligible for Latin American and Latino and Latina Studies programs (major/minor/graduate/certificate). There are a total of 116 courses, representing 23 different departments so, no matter your area of interest, there is definitely something here for you! CLACX’s DGS and DUS Gretchen Selcke, will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

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English major elected to National Humanities Center Leadership Council

• Leslie King

11 Apr 2024

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Adventuresome notions of zookeeping, law enforcing, firefighting, doctoring humans or pets, driving a bus, or owning a shop tantalize many 5-year-olds’ minds. Then adulthood sets in, and people often find themselves pursuing passions different from what they imagined during childhood.

But this is not the case with Julie Deacon.

Why it matters

Since her early childhood, the Virginia Tech junior who is majoring in creative writing and minoring in international studies hoped her path would involve writing. That lifelong dream is finding new validation. The National Humanities Center Leadership Council in November accepted Deacon into its membership.

“Julie is a great example of a dedicated student who knows where she wants to go,” said Laura Belmonte, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, “and with her love of writing and journalism, she is the perfect ambassador for the humanities when it comes to representing Virginia Tech in this highly competitive role on the leadership council.”

The leadership council, housed in the nonprofit National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, helps prepare select students with humanities-based leadership skills. These young scholars are from institutions that are center sponsors. Universities nominate them to the council ranks.

Elected students participate in round tables and discussion sessions about the importance of humanistic perspectives in addressing the concerns of contemporary society. They then embark on a semester-long research project, which they will present at a symposium later in the year. After this, they work on other initiatives and career development.

War zone research

Deacon’s focus with her research project involves the extent to which journalism is justifiable in war zones, examining different perspectives on peace coverage and its benefits and detriments.

She will interview journalists and spend time in historical collections.

“In terms of the main focus for the research project, I’ll be able to utilize a lot of past information in archives for firsthand accounts. The American Red Cross archive database has a lot of information on war journalists and peace coverage, as does the National Archives,” she said. “I can use these archives to help build my research project with information from United States wars and worldwide conflicts that involved journalists living on assignment in war zones, and hopefully I’ll be able to get first-hand references from different established journalists. There are so many more resources than I ever thought there would be about such a focused topic.”

Although she is not sure she will pursue this avenue of journalism, she became intrigued with the idea after talking to editor Michael Marshall at the Crozet Gazette, a community newspaper in Virginia where Deacon works as a freelance writer. When she first met him, he mentioned wanting to be a foreign correspondent at the start of his career. Deacon thought that sounded fascinating.

“It’s such an interesting perspective,” she said. “When we think about war, of course our minds naturally go to those directly involved in the fighting, but there are also those who report news and development to the general public. Media and communication are so influenced by how events are reported, where they’re reported, and who’s reporting them. I thought that’d be an interesting topic to dive into, and everything came together to make the role of journalism in war zones the focus of this research project. I’m thankful and excited that the National Humanities Center is giving me the resources to pursue it.”

Early career writing

The realities of a war zone are different from the types of journalism prevalent in Deacon’s writing experience. Currently, she is a digital media intern for the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Prior to this, when she first started at Virginia Tech, she wrote for the Collegiate Times and then segued to the newspaper in Crozet, Virginia.

Deacon also completed a bridge experience internship with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Virginia Tech. A bridge experience offers students an experiential learning opportunity, such as an internship, in exchange for credit toward graduation. For this, Deacon revised and edited content for student access and career development.

After deciding to pursue journalism, she began working for the Crozet Gazette in the summer of 2023 and continues to freelance for the publication.

The latter experience is one she finds fulfilling, delighting in opportunities to interact with a wide variety of people. These include  athletes who overcome personal challenges,  business owners, and an 85-year-old who was once a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press who reported on the American entertainment industry for predominantly foreign media markets. With the paper’s small team of seven employees, Deacon considers herself fortunate to be able to write alongside these more seasoned writers and that she can continue working for what started as a summer dream job.

“It’s been such a great experience working for a local paper,” she said. “You find out there’s always something to write and talk about, and interesting people to talk to everywhere you go.”

Humanities forward

Deacon finds her peers on the leadership council just as interesting. From Vanderbilt to Yale, there is a vast, diverse group of majors. These include neuroscience, engineering, the arts, and liberal arts, all engaged in propelling the humanities forward. In an age when STEM fields can dominate discussions of education and career prospects, Deacon’s experience at Virginia Tech and her work with the leadership council have made her optimistic about the enduring value of the humanities.

“I completely understand the desire to major in a discipline with guaranteed high pay and job security, but I don’t think those should be the sole reasons to earn your degree in something,” she said. “In my eyes, I think having the opportunity to come to college and choose how you might want to spend your future is an incredibly fortunate thing that we get to do, and it’s important that you focus on what you enjoy and what truly interests you.”

For Deacon, that career is writing. Her journey is one that bridges the divide between STEM and the humanities and speaks to the role of young leaders shaping a more empathetic and understanding world. 

Jenny Kincaid Boone

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2024 creative writing award winners, april 11, 2024.

Quantá Holden | Duke English | Digital Communication Specialist

The English Department at Duke University is honored to announce the winners of the 2024 Creative Writing Contests and Creative Writing Scholarships. Annually, the department administers creative writing contests to recognize fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry works by English majors and non-major undergraduates. 

The English Department is honored to announce the winners of its 2024 writing contests. The department administers writing contests to recognize fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and critical writing by English majors and non-major undergraduates. 

Congratulations to all of this year's winners! 

Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Fiction Family members and friends of former English student Anne Flexner (1945) established the Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Creative Writing to recognize undergraduates for their work in fiction and poetry. 

Makee Gonzalez Anderson ’24  -  “Here, in the Past Tense” Second Prize: Emma Huang, ’25  -  "ABEL’S PLACE"

Reynolds Price Award for Fiction The Reynolds Price Fiction Award was established in memory of the distinguished novelist, essayist, poet, and public intellectual Reynolds Price, a graduate of Duke and professor in the English Department for over 50 years.  Tomas Esber, ’24  -  “Ridgewood” Second Prize: Matthew Chen, ’26  -  “ABC” & “Chair"

CREATIVE NONFICTION

George P. Lucaci Award for Creative NonFiction This award was created to encourage creative nonfiction writing and honor George P. Lucaci, a former Duke student who has actively supported undergraduate creative writing in the English Department for many years. 

Ruby Wang, ’24  -  “Blood Orison” Second Prize: Rowan Huang, ’24  -  “Arms Outstretched"

Academy of American Poets Prize Founded in 1934 in New York City, the Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization advocating for American poets and poetry.  Its mission is to support American poets at all stages of their careers and foster contemporary poetry appreciation.  Nima Babajani-Feremi, ’24  -  “Dreams to Persepolis” Honorable Mention: Tyler King, ’25  -  "NO QUARTER"

Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Poetry   Family members and friends of former English student Anne Flexner (1945) established the Anne Flexner Memorial Award for Creative Writing to recognize undergraduates for their work in fiction and poetry.   Jocelyn Chin, 24 -   “Endurance” Second Prize:   Arielle Stern, ’25  -  "The Poem as Event"

Terry Welby Tyler, Jr. Award for Poetry This award was established by the family of Terry Welby Tyler, Jr., who would have graduated with the class of 1997 to recognize and honor outstanding undergraduate poetry.  Arim Lim, ’26  -  "Archeopteryx"

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