Creative Writing
Department of English
Master of Arts Degree Program
The Creative Writing Program at The University of Texas at Austin offers two-year Master of Arts degrees in poetry and fiction. Our program is complemented by a nationally-renowned department of literature, the UT English Department, and one of the world's largest archives for twentieth-century literature, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
Recent M.A. graduates of our program have published novels with W. W. Norton and Scribners, have won the Bakeless Prize both in poetry and fiction, and have won the John Graves Essay Prize and Phillis Smart Young Prize in Poetry. All of our students receive funding for their studies through teaching assistantships, fellowships, and funding. These funding opportunities are intended to complement the academic and scholarly training that students receive in graduate courses, and is thus an important means by which the graduate program is able to produce scholarly teachers and writers.
Recent Visiting Faculty
James Hynes• Frank Moorhouse• Mylene Dressler
Kent Nelson • Ana Menendez • Lisa Sandlin
Hayan Charara • Karen M. Olsson • Patrick McGrath
Fiction Faculty
Michael Adams • Oscar Casares • Laura Furman
• Elizabeth Harris •
Peter LaSalle
James Magnuson • Elizabeth McCracken
Poetry Faculty
Kurt Heinzelman • Judith Kroll
Thomas Whitbread • Dean Young
Creative Writing News
Fiction Reading: Nam Le, "The Boat"
Nam Le will read from his debut short story collection The Boat. The collection, which author Junot Diaz describes as "wonderful stories that snarl and pant across our crazed world ... An extraordinary performance," is the winner of the 2009 Dylan Thomas Prize. [More]
Creative Writing Alum Susan Somers-Willett Publishes Quiver
The Creative Writing Program congratulates MA graduate Susan Somers-Willett, who has had her most recent book of poetry, Quiver, published by the University of Georgia Press. [More]
"Poetry, Voice, and Performance: A Symposium"
The Creative Writing Program kicks off April's National Poetry Month with a symposium considering the communities and mediums of live poetry. The event is March 31, 2009 in the Texas Union Asian Culture Room 4.224. [More]
Bat City Review Issue 4 Release Party
This Friday November 7th from 7-9:30 is the official release party for Bat City Review issue four at Domy Books in east Austin. Refreshments are provided, as well as music from DJ Stephanie Rosen, typewriters and postcards, with monster-themed art exhibition. [More]
November Reading by Visiting Writer Elizabeth Crane
On November 18, 2008, visiting writer Elizabeth Crane will read from her collection of short stories You Must Be This Happy to Enter. The reading will be held at Follett’s Intellectual Property at 5:30 p.m.
Crane visits the UT Creative Writing Program from the University of Chicago, where she teaches creative writing. She will be in Austin through the fall semester.
More information can be found at the Creative Writing news page.
The Blanton Poetry Project
On Sunday April 6th the exhibition "If These Walls Could Speak: The Blanton Poetry Project" opened at the Blanton Museum. Organized by D'Arcy Randall, lecturer in the Chemical Engineering Department, and Kurt Heinzelman, professor of English and director of its Creative Writing Program, working in conjunction with the Blanton staff, the exhibition showcases over thirty poems written in response to artworks in the Blanton's permanent collection.
More than fifty poets from Texas and around the country contributed to the Project over one hundred poems about sixty different pieces of art. On April 6th, twenty of those poets, including such award-winning authors as Wendy Barker, Susan B. A. Somers-Willett, Kathleen Peirce, and Stephen Kellman, read their poems alongside projections of the art work, and then the audience of about 150 were invited to take a tour of the galleries where the poems are wall-mounted next to the artwork.
The exhibition will remain on view for at least a year, and it will be joined in due course by a web-centered exhibition featuring discussions of the artworks and commentary on the poetry as well as videos of the poets reading their work.