Undergraduate Program
Letter from the Director
Undergraduate Program Menu
Welcome. This is Eric Goodman, Director of Creative Writing. I’m glad you’ve found our website. Here are a few facts about our undergraduate creative program that may interest you.
We are a thriving program, one of the largest in the United States. With eight full-time, creative writing faculty, and more than 250 undergraduate majors (as well as 20-25 graduate students) there’s a creative writing buzz at Miami. We’d like to think that part of the excitement at the undergraduate level is the new, improved and completely revised major that recently went into effect. We continue to require fourteen courses (many of which focus on reading literature rather than writing it), making creative writing one of the more comprehensive and rigorous majors at Miami. What’s changed is that our new major offers a wider range of workshops. We’ve added creative non-fiction, screenwriting and the literary marketplace, a course which focuses on the business side of the literary biz. And because some of our faculty’s interests have expanded, and we’ve added new faculty members, there’s an increasing focus here in writing for digital media.
Undergraduate writers at Miami have an opportunity to work on Inklings, our undergraduate literary magazine, and to interact with the many prominent writers who visit the campus each year to give readings. Each year, several of our top senior undergraduates are invited to join our graduate students in a week-long sprint course which brings a visiting writer to campus. In addition, Miami has recently created a combined five-year B.A./M.A. in creative writing.
Miami creative writing majors have enjoyed considerable success following graduation. Adrienne Miller, ’94, spent nearly nine yeras as Esquire’s literary editor. She visited us in the spring of 2006 to read from her first novel, The Coast of Akron. David Kajganich, ’92, attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, from which he received an M.F.A. He returned to teach creative writing at Miami for several years, and now works in Hollywood as a screenwriter, most recently on a re-make of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Many other recent graduates have lived and worked abroad, or are in M.F.A. programs and beginning to publish their work. For an eye-opening list of their post-graduation adventures, see Updates from Alumni.
One more thing. Many people wonder why we, in Southwest Ohio, are called Miami. Are we lost? Hallucinating? Founded in 1809 (before Florida achieved statehood), we're located in the scenic Miami River Valley, named for the local Miami tribe. It turns out the other Miami was settled by wandering Ohioans who missed the area, and named it in our honor. Daytona Beach is similarly named for Dayton, Ohio, 50 miles up the road.
So now you know. We’re looking for undergraduate screenwriters, poets, fiction and creative non-fiction writers who yearn to read a lot, to write better and to make a career. No guarantees on the career, but we’ll teach you, keep you here for four productive years and send you on your way as a better writer.