Creative Writing

Gain the skills to tell the stories that matter most.

Words are power: at home, at school, at work, in the world. Knowing how to put your thoughts into words can help you do anything from gaining a promotion to making a friend. And if you want to improve your skill, the minor in writing is an ideal place to start.

The program offers two tracks:

The literary writing track explores creative writing, biography and autobiography, fiction and nonfiction, poetry, and prose.
The “eclectic” writing track includes a selection of courses with an emphasis on writing for business, journalism, and public relations.

Sometimes, writing well means broadening your boundaries and taking risks; Oglethorpe offers a culture where such growth is always encouraged. With small classes, and a dynamic, cross-genre curriculum, the environment is both creatively supportive and intellectually stimulating.

Besides prose and poetry, we have Playwriting, Screenwriting, Adaptation from Prose to Screen and Television, Memoir, Autobiography, Writing the Personal Essay, and Long Form Essay. In Independent Studies, senior students can create brief storyboards and scripts for a TV advertisement, write and submit to an online literary magazine, interview the editor, and watch a contemporary documentary film and analyze it.

With writing internships, our writing students have a broader and more integrated array of experiences. We have also brought nationally known writers to give readings and talk with our classes. Our thirty-seven year-old literary magazine will now for the first time be showcased as part of an online journal. Our students go on to get awards, MFA degrees, and enter multi-media graduate programs. Our graduates are writing professionally and teaching writing in secondary schools around Atlanta and many other areas.

We hope to accommodate more students and to have Writing Scholars and writing scholarship competitions, allowing talented students to travel to writing conferences and workshops where they will get first-rate teaching from very fine poets and story writers.

Real-World Experience
Life After Oglethorpe
Degree Requirements & Courses

Interested in author readings, book signings, and literary festivals? Atlanta is definitely the place to be! (The AJC Decatur Book Festival is the largest independent book festival in the country.) Looking for a top-notch internship at a trendy advertising agency or a widely read magazine? Atlanta’s got a lot of those, too.
- With a hip and thriving literary scene, Atlanta offers plenty of opportunities for students to interface with the community, like one recent class whose investigation of the long form essay took them to a meeting of Carapace/Atlanta, a popular storytelling event that draws participants from all over the city, or the annual on-campus Writers at Work panel discussion with working writers, editors, and publishers.
- Complete internships at local literary establishments like Atlanta Magazine, Creative Loafing, Peachtree Publishing, offices of literary agents, and more.
- Join with your literary peers at Oglethorpe and take advantage of a life-changing study abroad experience: a semester at University of Oxford at England. Or strike out on your own adventure, with unique study abroad opportunities all over the world.
- Oglethorpe students are always encouraged to explore their own passions and individual interests, wherever they lead. One writing student created her own Independent Study to explore her interest in interactive and visual storytelling; her project examines storytelling techniques across a wide selection of media, from copywriting to blogs.

Graduates with a background in writing often excel in creative careers of all kinds, including music, theater, and the visual arts. Many pursue a career in communication: working in advertising, blogging, journalism, marketing, television, and more. Others put their communication skills to work as educators, both at home and abroad.
- Follow in the footsteps of our accomplished alumni who are excelling at making a living through their writing talents. One alum received a grant to attend one of the top playwriting programs in the country; he’s now writing and producing his own plays in New York City. Another earned her MFA in Visual Arts from The New School (also in NYC) and is supporting herself as an artist.

See degree requirements and course descriptions in the University Bulletin.