University Catalog 2024-2025

EXPLORE PROGRAMSAPPLY

Creative Writing

The Department of English offers a two-year studio/academic program in fiction or poetry leading to the Master of Fine Arts degree. The program provides an opportunity for students of superior and demonstrated ability in imaginative writing to develop their skills and critical judgment through the practice of writing and the study of literature. The aim of the program is to prepare talented students for careers in writing. Degree candidates are expected to produce a book-length work of literary value and publishable quality.

Requirements for the MFA in Creative Writing

Candidates for the MFA degree must complete a total of 36 credits. Eighteen of these are taken in the area of writing specialization. These include workshop courses (12 credits) and thesis (6 credits). The remaining credits are taken in literature (6 credits) and elective areas (12 credits, including 6 credit hours of teaching preparation for those on a composition teaching assistantship). In their final semester, students must pass a comprehensive written examination on writing craft, based on a book list selected jointly by the student and the faculty. The final thesis must be a book-length manuscript in the student's field of interest. In fiction, an approximate 200 pages are expected; in poetry, 50 pages. See program website for specific requirements by concentration.

Student Financial Support

All students admitted to the MFA program are eligible for teaching assistantships. TAs in the MFA train to teach undergraduate composition courses, and a few selected creative writing classes.

Other Relevant Information

The English department has a long tradition of academic and literary excellence, including its heritage of writers from Guy Owen to Lee Smith. The strength of NCSU in the sciences offers students the opportunity to do creative work that engages with issues of technology and its effect on individuals and institutions that are not typically addressed in fine arts programs.

Through the NC State Literary Readings Series, the department sponsors readings and visits by distinguished poets, fiction and non-fiction writers.

Creative Writing Program Website

Admission Requirements

Overall GPA of 3.0 or higher; one official transcript of all undergraduate and graduate work; two letters of recommendation; and two writing samples, one creative, one critical. Creative sample: for fiction, two short stories, or for a novel, three chapters (or one chapter and a short story) totaling 25-40 pages; for poetry, 12 complete poems. Critical sample: no more than 15 pages of writing demonstrating your ability to succeed in graduate-level literature classes, a required part of the MFA curriculum.

Applicant Information

  • Delivery Method: On-Campus
  • Entrance Exam: None
  • Interview Required: None

Application Deadlines

  • Fall: February 1

Degrees

Faculty

Full Professors

  • Belle McQuaide Boggs

Assistant Professors

  • Meg Day
  • LaTanya Denise McQueen
  • Carter Sickels

Practice/Research/Teaching Professors

  • John J. Kessel
  • Jill Collins McCorkle
  • Joseph H. Millar

Assistant Director

  • Chelsea Krieg

Lecturer

  • Destiny Hemphill

Courses

ENG 509  Old English Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Study of Old English language with selections from important poems including Beowulf. Examination of the poetry in the light of various modern critical approaches.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 510  Middle English Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Study of major works of medieval English literature (exclusive of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) in historical context, as reflections of and influences on social and cultural change. Includes works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Langland's Piers Plowman and Malory's Morte d'Arthur.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 529  16th-Century Non-Dramatic English Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Prose and poetry of the English Renaissance, excluding drama. Special attention to major authors, including Spenser and Sidney, and to intellectual, cultural and literary backgrounds and developments. Introduction to pertinent methods and issues of scholarly inquiry and critical interpretation.

Typically offered in Fall only

ENG 530  17th-Century English Literature  (3 credit hours)  

A close examination of the literature of England from 1600 to 1660 with emphasis on major literary figures and movements, development of important literary forms and genres and relationship between literary texts of this period and their philosophical, political and theological contexts. Some bibliographical and textural assignments. Content and focus varies according to instructor's emphasis, but writers covered usually include Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Marvell and Browne.

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 531  American Colonial Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Survey of American literature and thought from the beginning to adoption of the constitution. Representative works such as travel and exploration reports, Indian captivity narratives, diaries, journals, auto biographies, sermons and poetry.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 539/WL 539  Seminar In World Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Rotating topics in world literature, including treatment of the subject's theoretical or methodological framework. Possible subjects: colonialism and literature; orality and literature; the Renaissance; the Enlightenment; translation; comparison ofNorth and South American literatures; African literary traditions; post-modernism and gender. Readings in English (original languages encouraged but not required).

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 548/AFS 548/ENG 448/AFS 448  African-American Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Survey of African-American literature and its relationships to American culture, with an emphasis on fiction and poetry since 1945. Writers such as Bontemps, Morrison, Hurston, Baldwin, Hayden, Brooks, Naylor, Harper, and Dove.

Requirement: Junior Standing

GEP Humanities, GEP U.S. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, GEP U.S. Diversity

Typically offered in Fall and Summer

ENG 549  Modern African Literature  (3 credit hours)  

The works of the most important writers shaping modern African literature in English (and English translation). Selections from East, West, North and South Africa, spanning colonial through post-colonial Africa--from literature of protest and culture conflict to that of disillusionment, reappraisal and feminism.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 550  British Romantic Period  (3 credit hours)  

A study of British literature during the Romantic era (1780s-1830s), including poetry, periodicals, novels, drama, and criticism as well as their political and cultural contexts.

Typically offered in Fall only

ENG 551/ENG 451  Chaucer  (3 credit hours)  

Introduction to the study of Chaucer through an intensive reading of The Canterbury Tales.

R: Sophomore standing and above

GEP Global Knowledge, GEP Humanities

Typically offered in Fall only

ENG 558  Studies In Shakespeare  (3 credit hours)  

An intensive study of a particular phase of the Shakespeare canon. Emphasis will normally be on one dramatic genre (tragedy, comedy, history), but occasionally the focus may be more limited.

Typically offered in Fall and Summer

ENG 560  British Victorian Period  (3 credit hours)  

Explore how writers represented the tumultuous Victorian era (1837-1901), spanning responses to industrialization, political reform, religion, colonialism, class, gender, and race at home and abroad. The course covers an array of literary forms and seeks to include perspectives from within the British Isles as well as from across the British empire.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

ENG 561  Milton  (3 credit hours)  

An intensive reading of Milton with attention to background materials in history and culture of seventeenth-century England.

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 562  18TH-Century English Literature  (3 credit hours)  

British writers of the period 1600-1790 studied in historical and cultural contexts. Usually includes works by Dryden, Swift, Pope, Defoe, Mandeville, Boswell and Johnson, but addition of other significant writers possible.

Typically offered in Fall only

ENG 563  18TH-Century English Novel  (3 credit hours)  

Selected British novels of the Restoration and eighteenth century from a variety of contemporary critical perspectives. Such writers as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Burney, Smollett and Austen.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 564  Victorian Novel  (3 credit hours)  

Study of selected British novels published between 1837 and 1901 in contexts of the development of the genre, historical period and current literary theory. Such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, Bronte, Trollope, Eliot, Meredith and Hardy.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 565  American Realism and Naturalism  (3 credit hours)  

Study of literary culture of United States from 1860s to early 1900s with emphasis on fiction by such realists and naturalists as Twain, Howells, Chesnutt, James, Crane, Wharton, Dreiser and Norris. Inclusion of prose of writers such as Adams and DuBois possible.

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 570  20TH-Century British Prose  (3 credit hours)  

Examination of British fiction of this century and relationship of significant intellectual, historical and political issues. Inclusion of such writers as Joyce, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Beckett and Murdoch possible but also post-colonial novelists as well.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 571  20TH-Century British Poetry  (3 credit hours)  

Development of English poetry from its late Victorian phase through Modernism to present post-war scene. Inclusion of such writers as Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Smith, Auden, Larkin, Heaney, Wolcott and Hill possible.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 572  Modern British Drama  (3 credit hours)  

Survey of modern British drama from its beginnings at turn of the century to present.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 573  Modern American Drama  (3 credit hours)  

A survey of modern American drama centering on major figures.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 575  Southern Writers  (3 credit hours)  

Introduction to literary culture of "the South," tracing the roots of the twentieth-century "Southern Renaissance" in such ante-bellum genres as plantation fiction, Southwestern humor, fugitive-slave narration and pastoral elegy. Examination of persistence of "Southern" writing within increasingly standardized culture of the United States.

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 576  20TH-Century American Poetry  (3 credit hours)  

Development of modern American poetry from rebellion against the romantic and genteel verse of the 1890's; special attention to Robinson, Frost, Pound, Williams, Stevens and Ransom.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 577  20th-Century American Prose  (3 credit hours)  

An examination of representative American writers of novel and short fiction.

Typically offered in Spring only

ENG 578  English Drama To 1642  (3 credit hours)  

Elizabethan and Jacobean drama from 1580 to 1642, excluding Shakespeare. Coverage of such writers as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Heywood, Tourneur and Ford.

Prerequisite: ENG 261 and upper division or Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 579  Restoration and 18th-Century Drama  (3 credit hours)  

Representative British plays of the period 1660-1780 studied in cultural, social and ethical contexts. Usually includes works by Etherege, Wycherley, Behn, Dry-den, Otway, Vanburgh, Farquhar, Congreve, Lillo, Gay, Goldsmith and Sheridan.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 580  Literary Postmodernism  (3 credit hours)  

Post-1945 literary theory in relationship with representative avant-garde writers. Theoretical and argumentative essays in such areas as chaos theory, deconstruction, feminism and the limits of fiction. Fiction readings by Calvino, Pynchon, Barthelme, Cortazar and others.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

ENG 582  Studies in Literature  (3 credit hours)  

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in literature.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

ENG 588  Fiction Writing Workshop  (3 credit hours)  

Advanced work in techniques of writing fiction for students with substantial experience in writing. Workshop sessions with students commenting on each other's work.

Prerequisite: ENG 488 or ENG 489

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

ENG 589  Poetry Writing Workshop  (3 credit hours)  

Advanced work in techniques of writing poetry for students with substantial experience in writing. Workshop sessions with students commenting on each other's work.

Prerequisite: ENG 488 or ENG 489

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

ENG 695  Master's Thesis Research  (1-9 credit hours)  

Thesis research.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall and Spring