Welcome to the NYU Creative Writing Program. The Creative Writing Program at NYU has distinguished itself for twenty-five years as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. Permanent faculty members are E. L. Doctorow, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, and Zadie Smith. Our Distinguished Writers-in-Residence are Anne Carson, Jonathan Lethem, and Charles Simic. Collegiate Professor Jonathan Safran Foer is the 2009-2010 Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence. Joining our faculty each year are South African writer Breyten Breytenbach, an NYU Distinguished Global Professor, and Matthew Rohrer, Darin Strauss, and Chuck Wachtel, Clinical Associate Professors. Visiting faculty in 2009-2010 include: Jennifer Egan, Eamon Grennan, Edward Hirsch, Major Jackson, David Lipsky, Brian Morton, Susan Orlean, Meghan O'Rourke, Brenda Shaughnessy, and Irini Spanidou. The program is distinguished also by its exceptional students—many of our gifted alumni have published critically acclaimed and award-winning books.

The Creative Writing Program now occupies a lovely townhouse on West 10th Street in the same Greenwich Village neighborhood where so many writers—James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Hart Crane, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, and Marianne Moore, to name just a few—have lived and worked. The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House allows writers—established and emerging—to share their work in an inspiring setting. Students come to the house to attend events, workshops, and craft classes, and also to gather informally, seeking out quiet corners in which to read and write. The beautiful reception floor, which features skylights and stained glass, is an ideal setting for the intimate readings, literary salons, panel discussions, book parties, lectures, and seminars that are held in the house throughout the year. The program offers two graduate degrees—a Master of Arts Degree in English with a Focus in Creative Writing and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing—as well as the popular Minor in Creative Writing for undergraduate students. The program also includes innovative literary outreach programs, teaching opportunities, a prominent reading series featuring over 100 writers each year, seminars with editors and publishers, two celebrated literary journals, undergraduate writing contests, summer writing programs in New York, Florence, and Paris, and an exciting student reading series held at the famed KGB Bar.

The NYU Creative Writing Program is a vital and dynamic center for writers and writing located in the heart of Greenwich Village. If you would like to learn more about the program, please join us at one of our fall 2009 CWP Information Sessions or email us at creative.writing@nyu.edu.

Best wishes,

Deborah Landau
Director