The Writing Program at The New School
The New School has been a vital center for writing since 1931. Over decades of steady innovation, our writing and literature faculty has included many of America's most acclaimed poets, novelists, and nonfiction writers. The writing faculty today includes Jeffrey Allen, Susan Cheever, Hettie Jones, Honor Moore, David Lehman, Jonathan Dee, Francine Prose, David Gates, Dale Peck, Helen Schulman, and Director Robert Polito.
* Registration for the Summer Writers Colony opens December 6, 2011
June 4-21, 2012
Workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Discover the writer's life in New York City. This intensive three-week summer program provides a supportive yet demanding atmosphere in which to develop as a writer. Students are offered the chance to embark on a new writing project or to devote a substantial amount of time to developing a work-in-progress. Writing workshop instructors guide discussion of student work and provide detailed written feedback. Summer literary salons bring notable writers into conversation with the students and faculty of the colony. In supplemental sessions, students try everything from experimental fiction to children's writing to writing walking poems during a literary tour of New York City's Greenwich Village. The Summer Writers Colony community gathers for celebratory readings of student and faculty work.
Courses meet from 12:00 noon to 8:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Mornings and weekends are reserved for regular writing practice. Undergraduate students can earn 6 credits. The Writers Colony is also open to noncredit students.
2012 Summer Writing Workshop Faculty
Kathleen Ossip, Madge McKeithen, Sharon Mesmer
2012 Visiting Writers
We are pleased to feature Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides and his new novel, The Marriage Plot; Ruth Lily Poetry Prize winner Fanny Howe and her book, Come and See; award-winning investigative journalist Lucette Lagnado and her new memoir, The Arrogant Years; Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri and her book of stories, Unaccustomed Earth; Whiting Award winner Tracy K. Smith and her new book of poems, Life on Mars; and Guggenheim fellow Kevin Young and his hybrid book of criticism, The Grey Album.
The Writing Program offers an MFA in Creative Writing with concentrations in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and writing for children. For New School undergraduates, the program offers the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, an innovative curriculum of writing workshops and seminars culminating in a thesis project.
The New School continues to offer every fall, spring, and summer term an extensive program of writing workshops in its adult continuing education curriculum, open to noncredit students and matriculated and nonmatriculated undergraduates.