Pitt MFA Students
Our students come from all over the country—all over the world—and the work they produce is as singular as they are. What they have in common is a lifetime membership in the Pitt writing community. Read More >
News
Creative Writing Minor
As one of the oldest writing programs in the United States, the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh has an excellent record of not only producing talented creative writers but also developing the writing skills of undergraduates who go on to work in a variety of professions, including journalism, law, and publishing.
We created the Minor in response to a number of students saying they were passionately interested in writing but their main major required too much of a commitment for them to take on a second major. The Minor in Creative Writing fulfills a need that is different from the certificate in Public and Professional Writing, with its particular focus on writing in business, nonprofit, government, and legal environments, and the Writing Major, which requires a more substantial commitment of time and study.
We know from many different sources (CEOs, personnel and graduate school committees) that those students who write well, no matter what their major might be, are the students who get noticed by employers. The kind of self-examination that the practice of writing encourages, as well as the ability to organize information into narrative, expressive and communicative forms, will always make candidates stand out. We hope, as a side effect, to also attract students who might want to work at the intersections of, say, Neuroscience and the Humanities, or students who want to think about and articulate the kind of complex relationships a more connected world creates.
New Faculty
Come to Pitt and work with our nationally-acclaimed authors and poets, a roster that includes six outstanding writers who have recently joined our faculty and made Pitt their home.
Angie Cruz is the author of two novels, Soledad (Simon & Schuster 2001), which she has adapted into a screenplay, and Let It Rain Coffee (S & S 2005), which was also a finalist in 2007 for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has published short fiction and essays in magazines and journals, including Callaloo, a journal of African Diaspora, The New York Times, Kweli, Phatitude, and South Central Review. Currently she is finishing her third novel, In Search of Caridad. More >
Joining us in fall 2014: Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Hemming the Water (Four Way Books 2013), and the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation. Her poems can be found in jubilat, Gulf Coast, Callaloo, West Branch, and various journals and anthologies, including A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (Ed. Annie Finch).
Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Wind in a Box (2006); Hip Logic (2002), which won the 2001 National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and Muscular Music (1999), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation.
William Lychack is the author of a novel, The Wasp Eater, and a collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The American Scholar, Life Magazine, and on public radio’s This American Life. More>
Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. He first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps, and for over a decade has contributed from there to The New York Times, Time, the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Architectural Record, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, and many other outlets. Michael’s next book, In Manchuria will be published by Bloomsbury in 2014. More>
Peter Trachtenberg has written about genocide tribunals in Rwanda, funerary rituals in central Borneo, the Book of Job, and marriage and missing cats. He's the author of Another Insane Devotion, The Book of Calamities, and 7 Tattoos: A Memoir in the Flesh. His honors include Whiting and Guggenheim fellowships and a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. More>
Graduate Testimonials
John Temple (MFA 2002)
Associate Professor and Journalism Program Chair, P.I. Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University
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I spent hours in fiction workshops, soaking up Chuck Kinder’s narrative eruptions and Buddy Nordan’s elegant constructs. I deconstructed three-act structure and plot points with Carl Kurlander. I genuflected before the masters of nonfiction reportage with Bruce Dobler and Patsy Sims. But mainly I wrote.
”Books We've Written
The Drowned Girl