Writing Program
Welcome, Poets and Writers!
The Writing Program at Washington University is rigorous and challenging, requiring a full commitment from the student. Because of our selectivity and size, we are able to offer all our new students full and equal financial aid. For first year students, this has come in the form of a university fellowship which provides a complete tuition waiver plus a stipend sufficient for students to live comfortably in our relatively inexpensive city. The amount of the stipend is variable, but for our students this year it is $17,940. We also provide full and equal funding to all of our second year students in the form of a Teaching Assistantship which, again, includes a full tuition waiver, plus a stipend that at present is $17,850. To earn this assistantship, our students teach one section of an introductory creative writing workshop in their genres each semester of the second year (two sections total).
The program is a unique community of writers, scholars, and critics. While the program is designed by writers for writers, and differs significantly from a conventional academic program, it is an integral part of the English Department, and is closely associated with other graduate programs within the university. Workshops are central to our curriculum. However, we believe that a writing program must balance time for one's own work with participation in the ongoing intellectual life of the university. To that end we will recommend courses originating in the English Department, as well as courses from other departments. Our primary concern is not to make critics or, for that matter, creative writing teachers out of writers, but to challenge and broaden students' perspectives.
We are proud of the accomplishments of the students and graduates of
The Writing Program. Their fellowships and honors include The Guggenheim
Fellowship,
the
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, The Whiting Writers' Award,
The Stegner Fellowship, The University of Texas and Texas Institute
of Letters
Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, and Breadloaf Writing Conference Scholarships.
Their prizes include The National Poetry Series, Playboy's Collegiate
Fiction Writing
Award, The O. Henry, The Pushcart, The Associated Writing Programs
Award in Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, The National Society of
Arts and
Letters Fiction Award, the Drue Heinz Award for Fiction, the A.E. Hotchner
Playwrighting Competition Award, and the Missouri Writers' Biennial.
Their publications include books from Algonquin Press, University of
Wisconsin
Press, University of Massachusetts Press, Penguin Press, Viking, Anvil
Press, Ecco,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Pittsburgh Press, Heinemann Reed, and Johns
Hopkins University Press. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and translations
by students
and graduates of The Writing Program have been published in The
Southern Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Poetry, The Kenyon Review,
The
American Poetry
Review, The Antioch Review, The Yale Review, Tri-Quarterly, Boston
Review, The Writer's Chronicle, Shenandoah, River Styx, The Literary Review,
London Magazine, Ironwood, Playboy, Michigan Quarterly Review, The
Quarterly,
The Southwest Review, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, The New Orleans
Review,
Manoa, Story, Atlantic Monthly, North American Review, Critique: Studies
in Contemporary Fiction, and many other fine literary journals.