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 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.
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.
Apply
The Literature faculty welcomes an application for the Creative Writing concentration of the Literature major from any currently enrolled student at UC Santa Cruz. Students are encouraged to apply at the end of the sophomore year or during the junior year, and to complete both introductory and intermediate creative writing courses at UCSC before applying to the concentration. Students are required to take only one creative writing course at UCSC before applying to the concentration.
Applications are due the second Friday of instruction in fall, winter, and spring quarters, and must be submitted via this application form by 3:00 p.m. on that day. Writing sample should be titled (your name and which concentration fiction or poetry):
LastName_FirstName_Concentration.pdf
For assistance with file submission, please reach out to litdept@ucsc.edu a minimum of 1 business day before the application deadline.
IMPORTANT NOTES: The Creative Writing concentration requires a substantial amount of reading as well as writing. Please apply only if you are committed to reading as well as writing. Submissions containing gratuitous violence, unnecessarily gruesome violence, and/or stories which appear to rely on violence to create narrative tension are unlikely to be accepted for the creative writing concentration.
The application form will ask for the following, in this order:
- Student information, including:
- Name
- Student identification number
- Email address
- Present class standing, e.g. frosh, sophomore, junior, junior transfer, senior
- Anticipated quarter of graduation
- Concentration to which you’re applying: Fiction or Poetry
- Creative writing courses you’ve taken at UCSC or elsewhere, including course title, quarter, and instructor’s name
- In 125 words or less total, reply to the following prompt:
- Describe your childhood kitchen
- Submit Writing Sample: up to ten pages of poetry or five to seven pages (1,250 to 1,750 words) of fiction.
- Writing samples must:
- be typed using a 12-point font, and fiction must be double spaced.
- be submitted in .pdf format using the file name format: LastName_FirstName_Concentration.pdf
- For assistance with file formats, please reach out to litdept@ucsc.edu a minimum of 1 business day before the application deadline.
- Writing samples must:
Additionally, you must ask for an evaluation from all Creative Writing instructors you’ve had at UCSC. Email your request to your instructors; they will upload evaluations to a confidential site used by the portfolio review committee. (Students will not receive copies of these evaluations.)
Students applying to both the fiction and poetry concentrations must submit two separate applications. Students may apply to both fiction and poetry; however, if accepted into Creative Writing, they will be accepted into fiction or poetry due to space constraints.
All students applying to the Creative Writing concentration of the Literature major will be notified of their application status by email on the Monday following the Friday that falls one week after the application deadline. Students accepted into the Creative Writing concentration and who have completed LIT 1 or its transfer equivalent are encouraged to immediately declare the Creative Writing concentration in order to be able to enroll in advanced Creative Writing courses.
Please contact the Literature Department (litdept@ucsc.edu) for additional information.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I apply to the creative writing concentration?
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. The lower-division workshops are Introduction to Creative Writing (LIT 90), Introducción a la Escritura Creativa/Introduction to Creative Writing (LIT 90X), Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction/Prose (LIT 91A), and Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry (LIT 91B). Students normally apply to the Creative Writing concentration late in the sophomore year or during the junior year.
Applications are due the second Friday of each quarter, and must be submitted as a .pdf document to litdept@ucsc.edu by 3:00 p.m. on that day. Application information may be viewed here. Applicants will be notified of the status of their application by 6:00 p.m. on the third Friday of the quarter.
What are you looking for in the application?
We want your best writing. By best, we mean work that best represents your writing strengths and interests. Excerpts from longer works are fine. If you do experimental work, it might be helpful to put the work in context in the prefatory note. If you are doing genre work (mystery, romance, fantasy, etc.), we prefer that it play with the genre in some way—working against the standard form through language, character, or plot.
Because creative writing at UCSC is an academic concentration within a Literature department, we are looking for students who are excellent readers, editors, writers, and seminar participants. Evaluations from your UCSC creative writing instructors play a crucial role in your acceptance into the concentration. Nearly all students accepted into the concentration have received excellent evaluations from their creative writing instructors. If you think your past performance may not reflect your abilities, you may explain that in the accompanying note. Alternately, students may take another creative writing course in order to strengthen their work and/or demonstrate their ability to participate constructively.
What if I don’t get in?
We always tell students that getting rejected is an initiation into the writing life. Writers get rejected all the time. Nobody liked Moby Dick. Many writers did not study creative writing in college. If you want to apply again, take an intermediate or another introductory class. Read contemporary fiction or poetry that you admire. Meanwhile, begin work toward another concentration in the Literature major or toward another major, in case you don’t get into Creative Writing.
How do I get into Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction/Prose (LIT 91A) and/or Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry (LIT 91B)?
Students who have completed LIT 90, Introduction to Creative Writing, or LIT 90X, Introducción a la Escritura Creativa/Introduction to Creative Writing, may enroll in LIT 91A, Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction/Prose, and/or LIT 91B, Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry. Students who have completed a creative writing course at another college or university may get an enrollment code from the Literature Department staff during class registration, or from the course instructor after instruction begins.
Students who have not taken a creative writing class should bring a three-to- five-page writing sample to the first class meeting. If space is available in the course, the instructor will admit additional students after reviewing the writing samples.
What is Methods and Materials (LIT 179C)?
Methods and Materials is a class that acts as a bridge between creative and critical work. You read published work on a particular topic or genre, and respond both creatively and critically. Topics may include storytelling, memoir, screenwriting, the serial poem, historical fiction, or film and poetry.
Why am I required to go to the Living Writers Reading Series if I am taking a creative writing course?
The Creative Writing program at UCSC is small, and we want to expose you to a wide range of writers, to their different styles, preoccupations, writing processes, and to the ways they are writers in the world. (Is the writer a professor, a postal carrier, or a journalist?) We also want to create a community of writers at UCSC, and connect that community to the larger writing world.
What do I do at a reading?
Keep your senses open. Notice how the writers read their work, how they present themselves, what they emphasize. Take notes, write down phrases, questions, images, things you don’t like and things you do. Ask questions about the writing or the writing life during the question and answer session. If you start daydreaming, it’s okay, but come back to the present. Many people don’t care about poetry and fiction, but in that auditorium, you are surrounded by people who do.
Why do we have to read in a writing class?
Reading is the best way to learn to write. Reading is a fairly magical process in which what you read goes into your head and influences the way you write. The more carefully you read, the more you learn about the ways language, form, rhythm, and voice work together to create a text.
I want to work on a literary magazine. How do I do that?
Contact the creative writing interns (cwintern@gmail.com) for guidance in your search for work experience on a UCSC literary magazine or newspaper. Student editors of UCSC publications are responsible for selecting their staff; please get in touch with the editors of any publication on which you wish to work. You may start a new magazine or journal; the creative writing interns can help you, and will assist with publicity for your publication.