Creative Writing

If you are majoring in other programs, you may also earn a creative writing minor by choosing credit hours from a menu of creative writing workshops and English courses. Students who have chosen to major in natural science, philosophy, physics, theatre arts, art, computer science and digital arts have all become wonderful creative writing minors.

Donor-Endowed History

The Sullivan Creative Writing Program has been a Stetson undergraduate distinctive since 1995. Future Sullivan Scholars are chosen from first-year applications; subsequent scholarships may be awarded by faculty nomination for outstanding creative writing. The Sullivan Awards are individual prizes given each spring in a series of highly competitive contests.

Undergraduate Sullivan Scholars who are accepted into our graduate creative writing program, MFA of the Americas, may be considered for a few highly competitive partial scholarships and become Double Sullivans.

Interdisciplinary Arts

Stetson's creative writing programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels offer chances for you to make multi-disciplinary work. In the undergraduate English-Creative Writing minor, you may elect to count one class in other Creative Arts classes (art, digital art, theater). Likewise, creative arts majors can often elect to count an ENCW (English-Creative Writing) class as part of their program.

Multidisciplinary and experimental work using text is a feature of the graduate MFA of the Americas.

Learn more about the Department of English.

Touchstone

Undergraduate students have been publishing Touchstone, our annual literary and arts journal for over four decades.

Uncouth Hour

Uncouth Hour is a student-run weekly reading series and has been a Thursday night feature on campus since 1991.

Obra/Artifact

Obra/Artifact is an online national journal (plus occasional object) produced by graduate students in our MFA program. 

Prose writer Teresa Carmody is a founding editor of Les Figues, Press, now an imprint of the Los Angeles Review of Books and has published a novel, short stories and many other hybrid works. Poet Terri Witek has published six bookks of poems; she often collaborates with visual artists on performances and museum installations. Lori Snook has a robust connection to outside opportunities in dramatic writing and Dehnart is the country's top expert in reality television.

• Teresa Carmody, PhD, University of Denver
• Terri Witek, PhD, Vanderbilt University, Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing
• Lori Snook, PhD, University of Arizona
• Andy Dehnart, MFA, Bennington College

The program also includes visiting creative writing faculty on campus in the undergraduate program and affiliated national and international faculty in the graduate program.

Undergraduate

• Nancy Barber
• Michele Randall

Graduate (past and present)

• Teresa Carmody, director
• Terri Witek
• Angie Cruz
• Laurie Foos
• Cyriaco Lopes
• Urayoán Noel
• Jena Osman
• Michal Lemberger
• Juan Reyes
• Chantel Acevedo
• Mark Powell
• Veronica Gonzalez Peña
• Carlos Soto Román
• Laura Mullen

Creative writers term anything that allows them to continue to make and sustain their creative work a “success.” For some, this means international travel or acceptances to artist residencies. Some may take paying jobs that combine their skills: many have gone on to be web designers, teachers, independent consultants and publishers. Most importantly, Stetson's creative writers have become sustained practitioners, with a distinguished history of articles, novels, poetry books, hybrid image/text work and gallery shows.