Have some incredible stories, poems, or plays in your head? Studying creative writing will teach you to control language, utilize poetic forms, write convincing dialogue, develop characters, and organize plotlines with both vision and precision. Workshop your ideas with other writers, and see the products of your imagination come to life.

Why study Creative Writing at Sewanee?

Whatever style of writing you like, the literary offerings here at Sewanee will foster your craft and teach you to communicate with grace and clarity—all while finding relevance between the pages.

Building upon the great literary tradition of Sewanee, the University now offers a major in creative writing with three different tracks (Fiction, Playwriting, or Poetry). In addition to the major, there is a certificate program in creative writing. Using existing creative works to help you understand styles and elements, workshops focus on critiquing your original work with a group of your peers.

A Sampling of Courses

Creative Writing: Poetry
Creative Writing

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style.

WRIT 205
Creative Writing: Playwriting
Creative Writing

Discussions center on students' plays. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style.

WRIT 207
Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction
Creative Writing

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. Writing intensive.

WRIT 306
View All

Creative Writing

Programs of Study & Related Programs

Requirements for the Major in Creative Writing

Requirements for the Certificate in Creative Writing 

Requirements for the Major in English | Website

Requirements for the Minor in Shakespeare Studies | Website

Meet Some professors

Stephanie Choi
slchoi@sewanee.edu

Stephanie Choi’s poems appear in Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, PANK, Blackbird, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the University of Utah. She serves as the senior poetry editor for Quarterly West. Her debut collection, The Lengest Neoi, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in 2024. Links to some of her published work can be found at xostephchoi.com. 

Poet-in-Residence
David George Haskell
dhaskell@sewanee.edu

David Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. At Sewanee he teaches courses in nonfiction writing, biodiversity, evolution, and conservation His latest book, The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (Viking, 2017), examines the many ways that trees and humans are connected. His first book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking, 2012), was winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award for 2013, finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, and many other awards. A profile by James Gorman in The New York Times said of Haskell that he “thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist.”

Professor of Biology
Misha Rai
mirai@sewanee.edu

Misha Rai is a Shirley Jackson Award nominated writer whose work has received support from the Kenyon Review Fellowship Program, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Whiting Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Dana Award in the Novel Category. Her short story, “Twenty Years Ago” is a Distinguished story in the 2021 Best American Short Story anthology. In 2022 her fiction was longlisted for the Disquiet Prize. She is the first-ever and only fiction writer to be awarded a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies for creative work. An Edward H. and Mary C. Kingsbury Fellow, she is the recipient of the George M. Harper Award. Her essay, “To Learn About Smoke One Must First Light a Fire,” winner of the Dogwood Literary Prize in Nonfiction is listed as a Notable Essay in the 2019 Best American Essays anthology. Her prose appears in a number of journals and anthologies. She currently serves as Contributing Editor for the Kenyon Review, where she curated Art and The Moment and co-curated On Books and Their Harbors as well as Proof Casts a Shadow.

Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing
Elyzabeth G. Wilder
egwilder@sewanee.edu

Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s plays include Gee's Bend, Fresh Kills, Provenance, The Flagmaker of Market Street, The Furniture of Home, White Lightning and Everything That’s Beautiful. Her plays have been produced at the Royal Court (London), Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, Cleveland Play House, KC Rep, Northlight, the Arden, B Street Theatre, and Hartford Stage, among others. She was the recipient of the Osborn Award given by the American Theatre Critics Association. She recently completed a short play commission from Baltimore Center Stage as part of their acclaimed My America, Too project. Her play, Everything That’s Beautiful will premier at the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco in the spring of 2017. Elyzabeth is a graduate of the dramatic writing program at New York University, where she was a Tisch Dramatic Writing Fellow. She is a proud alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York. Elyzabeth also worked as a staff writer on the CBS show, Love Monkey.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Kevin Wilson
kewilson@sewanee.edu

Kevin Wilson is the author of the collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and two novels, The Family Fang (Ecco, 2011) and Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017). His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Rivendell, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He has a B.A. from Vanderbilt and an M.F.A from the University of Florida.

Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Certificate in Creative Writing

Contact

Kevin Wilson
Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing
kewilson@sewanee.edu

Gailor Hall 24, Ext. 1236

Sewanee Review
Flip through the pages of our storied tradition

Founded in 1892, the Sewanee Review is America’s oldest continuously published literary quarterly. Many of the 20th century’s great writers, including T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Ezra Pound, have appeared in the magazine. The Sewanee Review also has a long tradition of cultivating emerging talent—like publishing some Flannery O’Connor’s first work.

Explore the collection
The Sewanee Writers' Conference
Collaboration and Composition

The Sewanee Writers' Conference is where writers, agents, and participants gather to be creative and collaborate. Attend writing workshops, readings, panel presentations, lectures on the craft of poetry, fiction, and playwriting, and numerous social gatherings. Come connect with fellow writers. This conference is sure to ignite your muse.

Join us
Writing Center
Sharpen you pencils, sharpen your skills

Need help with a paper? The Writing Center provides you with objective peer support and instruction for writing projects. The student tutors represent a wide range of majors, and they can help you at any stage in the writing process—topic development, rough drafts, final drafts, revisions, etc. They’re basically your cheerleader from brainstorming to final draft.

Write on