The Creative Writing program at the University of La Verne challenges all students — majors, minors, passersby — to develop their craft, examine the culture around them, and expand readers’ understanding of what it means to live.
Our major and minor programs give students the opportunity to practice literary creative writing through a careful study of the modes and theories of the art, with an emphasis on contemporary applications. Courses encourage students to learn and employ techniques gleaned from literary creative writing while simultaneously helping students better understand the literary and cultural contexts of their work.
Students graduating with a BA in Creative Writing will be prepared to enter and excel in graduate creative writing studies, particularly at the MFA level. Students will also have professional experience in publishing through a cornerstone of the program, our literary journal Prism Review, and opportunities to create areas of emphasis within their major degrees through our optional concentrations in Activism, Narrative Studies, and Publishing (scroll down on linked page to see details).
For more information about potential career paths and job market outlooks for writing-related degrees, read this helpful Best Colleges article here.
Working with Writers
Students meet and learn from amazing writers. Our notable visitors have included Ross Gay, Maggie Nelson, Victoria Chang, Patricia Smith, Aimee Bender, Craig Santos Perez, Hannah Sanghee Park, Scott Nadelson, Jared Stanley, Matt Sumell, Amelia Gray, Michael Jaime Becerra, Richard Lange, Brent Armendinger, and Larry Fondation. Since fall 2022, we’ve hosted Douglas Manuel (pictured below), Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi (virtually; right), Carribean Fragoza, and Leah Huizar.
ULV’s Creative Writing program immerses students in the life of contemporary literary: it gives them models to aspire to, prepares them for teamwork, instructs them in editing and assessing manuscripts, and guides them along as they create their own contemporary contribution to literature. Beyond careers in writing and writing-related fields, creative writing classes stress the need for analytical thinking: to be successful writers, students must learn and be able to integrate abstracts concepts, learned knowledge, and reflections on everyday life, and they must integrate all of this into small and self-contained systems.