The Creative Writing Concentration at UC Santa Cruz

General Information

Creative Writing, a concentration within the Literature major, offers a sequence of workshops from introductory through advanced levels in both poetry and fiction. Other activities available to interested students include participation in literary journals on campus, attendance at readings by visiting writers, and use of the creative writing library at Kresge College.

Admission to the Creative Writing Concentration
Admission to the creative writing concentration is selective. Interested students are required to take one lower-division workshop at UCSC before applying to the creative writing concentration; however, students are strongly encouraged to complete two lower-division workshops (at least one at UCSC) before applying.

To apply for admission to the creative writing concentration, students should submit a completed application form, which can be found below. 

Applications are due by 3:00 PM on the second Friday of instruction each fall, winter, and spring quarter. Quarterly instruction start dates are available on the UCSC Academic Calendar

Access the application form here. 

 

Students accepted into the concentration are required to declare the Literature major, with a concentration in Creative Writing, in order to enroll in upper-division creative writing workshops. Students must complete three advanced writing workshops and a senior project seminar in order to complete the creative writing concentration of the Literature major. 

 


 

UCSC Creative Writing Faculty

Christopher S. Chen
Twentieth- and 21st-century African American literature; Asian American literature; comparative ethnic literary studies; modern and contemporary US poetry and poetics; contemporary U.S. experimental writing; racial capitalism and theories of comparative racialization.
Humanities 1, room 628 • cche75@ucsc.edu 

Micah Perks
Reading and writing contemporary fiction, creative non-fiction and historical fiction; U.S. alternative communities; feminism.
Humanities 1, room 233 • meperks@ucsc.edu

Jennifer Tseng
Fiction; creative nonfiction; poetry; interdisciplinary collaboration; collaboration with existing texts; hybridity; multiracial identities, queer identities & the intersections between them; women in translation.
Humanities 1, room 234 • jetseng@ucsc.edu 

Rob Wilson
Transnational and postcolonial literatures, especially as located and transformed in Asia/Pacific; cultural-political emergences as posited against empires of globalization; cultural poetics of America in the Pacific and Oceania; the sublime, Longinus to Hiroshima; poetics of experimental writing, especially poetry; the poetry and cultural poetics of Bob Dylan; Beat beatitude, social and literary, from Jesus to Juliana Spahr et al.; San Francisco as Global City, with its literature read as archive of vision and critique; Pacific Rim cities from Hong Kong and Seoul to Taipei, Kaohsiung, Shanghai, Honolulu, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Humanities 1, room 631 • rwilson@ucsc.edu 

Ronaldo V. Wilson
20th-century and contemporary African American literature; poetry; contemporary American poetry and poetics; Black visual culture; recent experimental writers and artists.
Humanities 1, room 238 • rvwilson@ucsc.edu 

Visiting Faculty

Melissa Sanders-Self
Contemporary fiction; modern American Southern literature; classic literature; screenplays.
Cowell College, room 111 • msanders@ucsc.edu 

Gary Young
The prose poem; fine printing; printmaking; publishing and book design.
Humanities 1, room 229 • geyoung@ucsc.edu

Department of Literature
literature.ucsc.edu 
creativewriting.ucsc.edu 
litdept@ucsc.edu 
(831) 459-4778