Spring 2025 Creative Writing Course Application Information
Read all instructions before submitting your application(s):
Please submit your completed application(s) by 11:59 pm ET on Sunday, November 10. LATE APPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
There are absolutely no exceptions to this deadline; please do not contact the instructor or the department if you miss this deadline, simply apply again next term. Applications may time out if you leave them open long enough, so keep this in mind (don't click the submit button at 11:59 pm; leave adequate time to troubleshoot in case there are submission issues).
· When creating a Submittable account, please use your Harvard email address, not your personal account.
· You must submit a separate application to each course (up to 4), using the application links below. Please be sure to upload the appropriate materials for each course, and provide the same course preference order on each application. Your first choice workshop must be ranked first on each application, and so on. Any applications with inconsistent rankings will be disqualified.
· Note to students outside of FAS and HDS: if your registration timeline does not conform to that of FAS, please still follow the application instructions and timeline listed on this page, and if admitted, you will be permitted to cross-register and enroll when your registration period begins.
· You may not edit or resubmit an application once you have applied. Please be sure your application materials are finalized and accurate before submitting.
· English concentrators who are writing creative senior theses or projects may apply to workshops in any genre in which they are not writing their senior thesis/project. (If you are writing a poetry thesis, please do not apply to poetry workshops.) Students who do not have the opportunity to write these capstone projects with our faculty will be considered first, but our thesis writers are welcome to apply.
· Harvard affiliates who are unable to enroll in creative workshops for official academic credit are still welcome and encouraged to apply but will only be reviewed once degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students are considered. Non-credit seeking students are asked to indicate this status in their letter of interest, and if admitted are expected to fully engage and participate in the workshop.
· Students will be notified of application decisions by 4:00 pm on Thursday, November 14 and will receive a separate email notification for each course once decisions have been made. Each student can be admitted to only one course. The creative writing faculty meets to discuss all applications to prevent multiple acceptances. Students not admitted to a workshop on November 14 will be added to a departmental waitlist and be notified should a professor wish to offer them an open spot.
· We suggest adding notifications@email.submittable.com to your email contacts to ensure any notifications (submission confirmations and application decisions) reach your inbox.
Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm
As memoirist and author Melissa Febos puts it: “The narrator is never you, and the sooner we can start thinking of ourselves on the page that way, the better for our work. That character on the page is just this shaving off of the person that was within a very particular context, intermingled with bits of perspective from all the time since — it’s a very specific little cocktail of pieces of the self and memory and art … it’s a very weird thing. And then it’s frozen in the pages.” With each essay and work of nonfiction we produce in this workshop-based class, the character we portray, the narrator we locate, is never stagnant, instead we are developing a persona, wrought from the experience of our vast selves and our vast experiences. To that end, in this course, you will use the tools and stylistic elements of creative nonfiction, namely fragmentation, narrative, scene, point of view, speculation, and research to remix and retell all aspects of your experience and selfhood in a multiplicity of ways. I will ask that you focus on a particular time period or connected events, and through the course of the semester, you will reimagine and reify these events using different modes and techniques as modeled in the published and various works we read. We will also read, in their entireties, Melissa Febos's Body Work: The Radical Work of Personal Narrative, as well as Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which will aid our discussions and help us to better understand the difference between persona(s) and the many versions of self that inhabit us.
Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.