1 August 2005

Longwood to launch graduate program in Creative Writing

Longwood University is launching a master's degree program in creative writing this fall.

Graduates of the 36-credit hour program, which will generally take two years to complete, will earn a Master of Arts degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. In addition to the traditional approach, students also may opt for a "summers-only" plan in which they earn their degree in three summers.

"This delivery option is aimed at middle school and secondary teachers, especially in South-Central Virginia," said Mary Carroll-Hackett, assistant professor of English, who directs the program.

Some six students, all of whom are recent Longwood graduates, are enrolled in the program, with another student set to join in the spring semester. Four of the first six students graduated from Longwood in May and the other two in 2004.

"We're looking at an average of about eight to 10 graduate students rotating through here," said Carroll-Hackett. "We expect some students to come straight through after getting their bachelor's degree, and others to wait a few years."

At least 20 majors, as well as some minors, are enrolled in the undergraduate concentration in Creative Writing that Longwood began last year, also directed by Carroll-Hackett.

"Our program model, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, is 'an education for the working writer,'" she said. "Several graduate programs nationally, including ours, offer professional courses, but as far as our research indicates, we're the only undergraduate creative writing program in the country to offer a professional course. This course introduces students to the real-world aspects of being a writer. With the inclusion of classes that address the 'business' of being a writer - topics such as landing an agent, teaching a workshop, or marketing your own work - we're taking a very practical approach to living and working as a writer in today's market."

The Creative Writing program, in conjunction with the Department of English and Modern Languages, publishes the Dos Passos Review, an international twice-yearly literary journal. The first issue was published online in June 2004. The first print issue came out last December and the second print issue in mid-July.

"One of the hallmarks of a creative writing program is providing students access to literary publishing, as we're doing through the journal," said Carroll-Hackett, the journal's editor-at-large and prose editor. "The program has six undergraduate student interns, who comprise the Student Editorial Board and are involved in every aspect of producing the journal."

The Dos Passos Review has launched a small literary press, Briery Creek Press, which later this year will offer a contest for a poet who has never published. The recipient of the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry, named for a native of South-Central Virginia and member of the journal's Editorial Board, will receive a $1,000 award and have his work published in a book to be released in the fall of 2006.

Carroll-Hackett came to Longwood in the fall of 2003 after teaching at East Carolina University. Other faculty in creative writing include Dr. Craig Challender, Dr. Hood Frazier and Dr. Brett Hursey (who taught with Carroll-Hackett at ECU). Dr. Challender and Dr. Hursey recently published books of poetry, and Carroll-Hackett recently published a collection of short stories.

The staff of the Dos Passos Review includes, besides Carroll-Hackett and those professors, Susan Stinson, formerly a marketing associate at Random House in New York City (her father, Dr. Massie Stinson, now retired, was a longtime member of Longwood's English faculty) and Wendy Gray, an adjunct instructor on the English faculty.