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The creative writing program at Colby offers students the opportunity to exercise their imaginations through disciplined work in the craft of writing. We aim to serve the novice writer as well as the more experienced student, with two options for pursuing the discipline. The concentration in creative writing within the English major structures a rigorous program for the serious writing student who wishes to develop sophisticated writing skills in fiction or poetry along with a broad background in literature in English. The minor in creative writing, open to non-English majors, requires students to take writing workshops in beginning and advanced poetry , fiction, creative nonfiction or fiction. Additional workshops are offered (on a rotating basis) in screenwriting, playwriting, environmental writing, and feature writing. Special topics classes are also offered, and all advanced students are eligible for the Projects in Creative Writing class, through wich they may pursue independent work, a service learning project or an honors thesis. In addition to the creative writing courses, non-English majors must take three allied English courses, mutually agreeable to the student and his or her creative writing adviser. The English Department offers a sizable number of courses and seminars in all literary genres and periods, providing students a variety of courses to fill the requirements.
All members of the writing faculty are dedicated, practicing, published writers committed to teaching creative writing as a craft and an art, and to teaching technique as a way of seeing as well as a way of saying. All classes are run, at least in part, as workshops in which students critique each other's work. Students experiment in class and out with forms of prose and poetry, while reading the work of professional writers to develop a critical vocabulary and heighten editing and revising skills. Classes are limited to fifteen students, a size that promotes discussion, allows for individual attention, and helps develop a writing community in class and on campus. Writing teachers encourage frequent conferences to focus on individual writing programs and to suggest direction for student writing and reading. The faculty also sponsors and works closely with exceptionally talented student writers in Senior Scholar projects, year-long independent work geared toward a final portfolio of poetry or fiction.
Colby has a lively writing community. THE PEQUOD, the Colby student literary and arts magazine, gives students the opportunity to improve critical skills, to edit, to learn layout and design, and to work closely with other student writers. THE PEQUOD also sponsors a number of student poetry readings during the school year. Additionally, through the Colby Visiting Writers Series, students meet with nationally known poets, novelists and creative non-fiction writers who come to Colby to read from their current work and visit student writing classes. Among the visiting writers who have come to Colby in recent years are Lorrie Moore, Eavan Boland, Carolyn Ferrell, Linda Greenlaw, Cleopatra Mathis, Robert Pinsky, Richard Russo, Gary Snyder, Scott Russell Sanders and Elizabeth Strout. Over the years we have had half a dozen Nobel Prize winners visit our campus and work with students.
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