DO YOU HAVE THE FIRST FOUR CHAPTERS of the Great American Novel hidden on your computer desktop? Are you scribbling free verse in the margins of your literary anthology? Do you sense a connection between that rap or rock you’re doing on weekends and the experience of reading Maya Angelou or Billy Collins or even Walt Whitman? Consider the possibility that you’re a creative writer as well as a literary scholar. Hamilton is one of a small number of undergraduate liberal arts colleges that offer not only courses but a full major or minor in creative writing. More ...
Academic Program
RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES
Many English majors spend a semester or a year studying abroad, typically in England, Ireland or Australia. Hamilton-affiliated programs offer a chance to explore first-hand the historical roots and cultural settings of many of our most important authors and works. While study abroad is an integral part of the liberal arts curriculum, it has special resonance for students of English and creative writing as they learn to analyze not only traditional texts but the larger cultural and creative interactions that produce them.
THE SENIOR PROGRAM
The progression of workshops in the creative writing program culminates in the senior seminar, where students compose and revise a major collection of poetry or short fiction or a novella. Senior creative writing students seeking honors present their work in a public reading. For all students, the aim of the senior program is to achieve the maturity of vision and technical control developed in earlier workshops.
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RESOURCES
While nearly every campus has a writing center, Hamilton’s Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center is regarded as one of the nation’s best — a model for other colleges and universities. Here students learn the fine points of researching, developing and organizing essays. All students have access to — and most make use of — the center’s student tutors, who are drawn from the best writers in every discipline across campus.
Hamilton's Burke Library has among its substantial literary holdings an important collection related to the American modernist poet and Hamilton alumnus Ezra Pound. It also offers a wide selection of Caribbean literature and a remarkable handwritten, hand-decorated manuscript from 1465 that students in medieval courses may examine and handle.
Outside the classroom, creative writing majors at Hamilton support each other's efforts through a series of funded organizations and events. They include Rhyme Lab, open-microphone coffee shops, the student-run literary journals, Red Weather and Byte Sized.
Active Scholars
All creative writing faculty members are active writers with current publishing credits. In addition to full-length novels and poetry collections, we have recently appeared in Best American Short Stories as well as in noted journals such as The Malahat Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, Southern Poetry Review and Black Warrior Review.
Guest Writers
The English Department sponsors a writer in residence each February, during which a nationally recognized author visits, talks and works closely with student writers. The department also sponsors a regular reading series that draws leading writers to campus, as do other departments. Recent visitors include Nobel Prize winners J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka; Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ha Jin, Bret Lott and Anne Carson.
Honoring Excellence
The College and English Department offer a number of writing prizes, including the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize, awarded to a winning portfolio of poetry, prose fiction or drama by a graduating senior.
Outside the classroom, creative writing majors at Hamilton support each other's efforts through a series of funded organizations and events. They include Rhyme Lab, open-microphone coffee shops, the student-run literary journals, Red Weather and Byte Sized.
Active Scholars
All creative writing faculty members are active writers with current publishing credits. In addition to full-length novels and poetry collections, we have recently appeared in Best American Short Stories as well as in noted journals such as The Malahat Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, Southern Poetry Review and Black Warrior Review.
Guest Writers
The English Department sponsors a writer in residence each February, during which a nationally recognized author visits, talks and works closely with student writers. The department also sponsors a regular reading series that draws leading writers to campus, as do other departments. Recent visitors include Nobel Prize winners J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka; Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ha Jin, Bret Lott and Anne Carson.
Honoring Excellence
The College and English Department offer a number of writing prizes, including the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize, awarded to a winning portfolio of poetry, prose fiction or drama by a graduating senior.
Outside the classroom, creative writing majors at Hamilton support each other's efforts through a series of funded organizations and events. They include Rhyme Lab, open-microphone coffee shops, the student-run literary journals, Red Weather and Byte Sized.
Active Scholars
All creative writing faculty members are active writers with current publishing credits. In addition to full-length novels and poetry collections, we have recently appeared in Best American Short Stories as well as in noted journals such as The Malahat Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, Southern Poetry Review and Black Warrior Review.
Guest Writers
The English Department sponsors a writer in residence each February, during which a nationally recognized author visits, talks and works closely with student writers. The department also sponsors a regular reading series that draws leading writers to campus, as do other departments. Recent visitors include Nobel Prize winners J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka; Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ha Jin, Bret Lott and Anne Carson.
Honoring Excellence
The College and English Department offer a number of writing prizes, including the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize, awarded to a winning portfolio of poetry, prose fiction or drama by a graduating senior.
Outside the classroom, creative writing majors at Hamilton support each other's efforts through a series of funded organizations and events. They include Rhyme Lab, open-microphone coffee shops, the student-run literary journals, Red Weather and Byte Sized.
Active Scholars
All creative writing faculty members are active writers with current publishing credits. In addition to full-length novels and poetry collections, we have recently appeared in Best American Short Stories as well as in noted journals such as The Malahat Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, Southern Poetry Review and Black Warrior Review.
Guest Writers
The English Department sponsors a writer in residence each February, during which a nationally recognized author visits, talks and works closely with student writers. The department also sponsors a regular reading series that draws leading writers to campus, as do other departments. Recent visitors include Nobel Prize winners J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka; Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ha Jin, Bret Lott and Anne Carson.
Honoring Excellence
The College and English Department offer a number of writing prizes, including the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize, awarded to a winning portfolio of poetry, prose fiction or drama by a graduating senior.
AFTER HAMILTON
Hamilton graduates who concentrated in Creative Writing are pursuing careers in a variety of fields, including:
Assistant Editor, Bloomsbury Children's Books
Associate Producer and Writer, Nickelodeon
Associate Professor of English, Ithaca College
Chief of Communication, UNICEF Phillipines
High School Librarian, Dresden School District
President, Auto Club Speedway of Southern California
Producer, CBS News
Research Psychologist, University of California, Los Angeles
Staff Archaeologist, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Web Strategy & Information Manager, Lucent Technologies
