Creative Writing
Inspiration, Craft, and Commitment
Creative writing students at Miami learn invaluable skills to help them inspire, engage with, and shape the world around them: attention to craft, style, and form to fully articulate your vision and reach your desired audience; awareness of diverse contemporary and historical literary traditions and genres; close reading skills which make for a more informed artist and citizen; and familiarity with the conventions of the literary marketplace, to take next steps toward publishing, professionalization, and careers.
Writing for the Future
Recent graduates have gone on to successful careers in entertainment and the creative arts, publishing and editing, the video game industry, advertising, marketing, law, medicine, and business, working for such companies as Paramount, Nickelodeon, HarperCollins, and others.
Miami’s CW alumni have enjoyed considerable literary success. A partial list of honors received by former students includes the Pulitzer Prize (one winner, one finalist), the National Medal of the Arts, the PEN/Robert Bingham Award for Fiction, the Asian American Literary Award, the Whiting Fellowship, the Obie Award, the Directorship of the Academy of American Poets, and the national Poet Laureateship. Our graduates have sold their first books to Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House, Harcourt, and Bloomsbury.
Miami has a very cool creative writing program, which is very experimental and pushes your boundaries. I’ve really appreciated the general mindset of, 'You know the rules; now go and break them!'"
Delaney Heisterkamp, ‘20
Marketing and Social Media Associate, Sourcebooks Fire
A Lively & Connected Literary Community
There are many ways you can get involved with our robust literary community right here on campus, such as working in the student-run literary publications Happy Captive Magazine and Inklings; attending our extensive reading series of visiting, graduate, and undergraduate writers; exploring special topics through the Marianne D. McComb Conference and Lecture Series on Creative Writing [see FAQ below]; and engaging in exciting intermediate and advanced workshops across genres. Whatever your creative goals, you’ll find the support, inspiration, and encouragement to achieve them at Miami.
My time at Miami was integral to the process of writing and selling my memoir. The creative writing faculty helped foster my voice and style and find the language I needed to talk about my project and my writing, which gave me an edge when pitching agents and publishers. My cohort provided astute and serious criticism of my writing as well as a community of writers with different writing styles and interests whom I still look to for advice and feedback.
Matt Young M.A., Creative Writing ‘15
Author, Eat the Apple (Bloomsbury, 2018) and End of Active Service (Bloomsbury 2024)
The Creative Writing program at Miami helped guide me in my career of books. Understanding the structure of storytelling as a writer, the realities of the industry as an editor, yet still holding true to the magic of books as literature and exploring each title as an adventure to be a part of, a history to be understood… I can’t imagine a better program for writers, readers, and book lovers looking to craft a future in their fields.
Meg Gibbons ’10, Sourcebooks Senior Editor
A Dynamic Education and Curriculum
The creative writing major at Miami is a thriving program with an increasingly global curriculum and outlook.
What’s more, our flexible curriculum makes it easy to double major, both to tailor your college experience and help you meet your professional goals.
Program highlights include:
Literary Marketplace course focusing on the business side of the literary life.
Campus visits by prominent and emerging authors, as well as professionals from across the publishing industry.
New offerings on translation, live performance, and writing for digital media.
Editorial experience working with campus literary magazines, as well as for-credit internships with literary presses and publishers.
Opportunities to apprentice with creative writing faculty on individualized creative projects and honors theses.
See the Creative Writing Curriculum page for a complete list of required and elective courses for the major.
Creative Writing Curriculum page
CW Contact
Brian Roley, Director of Creative Writing
brianroley@MiamiOH.edu
Frequently Asked Questions
Contact the English Department and request to be added via email (english@miamioh.edu), phone (513-529-5221), or in-person visit (134 Harris Hall).
The mission of the Creative Writing major is to combine a joyfully intensive writing practice — with courses available in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, creative nonfiction, and more — with critical thinking skills developed through the analysis and interpretation of literary texts and creative work across genres and media. Combining the workshop model with courses in literature and the literary marketplace, the major develops fluent written and oral communication skills; trains students to locate patterns in, analyze, and interpret complex and surprising information; enhances creative flexibility and inventiveness; and empowers students to entertain, inspire, and speak to the world.
Creative Writing majors have found great success interning for literary publishers and presses, including with such entities as HarperCollins, The Book Group, F(r)iction magazine, Brink Literacy Project, and London’s Peirene Press. There are also opportunities available within the program itself through Miami University Press, including unique internships in literary editing and small-press marketing and book promotion.
Generously supported by the McComb Family Fund, the Marianne D. McComb Conference on Creative Writing is a biennial conference which explores special topics in creative writing, the creative process, genre, and the writing life. This two-day undergraduate conference is free and open to the public and brings in visiting writers, artists, and presenters to explore such topics as graphic literature, science fiction and popular literature, writing literatures of addiction and mental leath, and, most recently, writing resilience and joy, our 2023 conference featuring Ross Gay, Lydia Conklin, and Talia Kamara among many others, including Miami undergraduates presenting their own creative and critical work.
In non-conference years, the McComb Family Fund sponsors the Marianne D. McComb Lecturer in Creative Writing, a visiting writer who conducts an intensive special topics workshop with undergraduates. Past courses have focused on writing for (and about) video games with Cara Ellison and the ethics of storytelling in film with Dave Kajganich; the 2023-24 iteration of the series is "The Craft of Television Writing" with Dean Bakopoulos, Head of Screenwriting Arts at the University of Iowa.
Our Annual Publishing Symposium brings together professionals from around the literary world—including agents, editors, and debut authors—for a discussion on the publishing industry and process and to offer advice for students seeking to publish their work, as well as for those students seeking to work within publishing. In most years, our panel includes an alumnus of the program who can speak to their path from the Miami classroom to their work in literary production. The Publishing Symposium is usually held in April of each year; please see our events calendar [link to come] for more.
Creative Writing students can apply for a range of scholarships and awards, including the prestigious Greer Hepburn and Montaine Prizes, the Cathy Denny Scholarship in Creative Writing, and the Bookwalter Award in Creative Writing.
Yes! Visit https://sites.miamioh.edu/creativewriting/
Our Faculty
- Joseph Bates | Associate Professor, Miami University Press Co-Editor | batesjr@MiamiOH.edu
- Lizzie Hutton | Assistant Professor, Director of the Howe Writing Center | huttoneb@MiamiOH.edu
- Margaret Luongo | Professor | luongomm@MiamiOH.edu
- TaraShea Nesbit | Associate Professor | nesbittm@MiamiOH.edu
- Brian Roley | Director of Creative Writing, Professor | brianroley@MiamiOH.edu
- Jen Sammons | Visiting Assistant Professor | sammonjh@MiamiOH.edu
- Emily Spencer | Assistant Professor | spencee@MiamiOH.edu
- Keith Tuma | Professor, Miami University Press Co-Editor | tumakw@MiamiOH.edu
- Cathy Wagner | Professor | cwagner@MiamiOH.edu