Department of Creative Writing

Welcome! Since 1999, the UNCW Department of Creative Writing has cultivated a community of deeply committed writers who believe that the creation of art is of crucial personal and collective value.

We think you'll find we are an open-minded and big-hearted group. Our faculty encourages a rigorous yet safe, supportive environment in which diverse writers can grow as artists and as individuals. We believe excellence starts with an informed application of craft and we encourage writers to explore aesthetics and methods across genre lines.

Whether you are an undergraduate writer just finding your path, or a more experienced one looking for support and guidance in the mastery of your art, we have a program that will stimulate and excite you. We invite you to explore the pages of this site. Get to know us.

Look over our 18 experienced, well-published faculty writers and editors. Check out the creative careers and prestigious publications of our students and alumni, and the extraordinary resources of our Publishing Laboratory with its comprehensive, hands-on curricula for BFA and MFA students, including a Post-Baccalaureate Publishing Certificate.

Take note of our new initiatives in Environmental Writing for MFA students. Find out more about our award-winning student-staffed journals, Chautauqua and Ecotone, and micro-press book imprint, Lookout Books, at Ecotone Lookout. Read about our partnership with HarperCollins Publishers, which offers students direct access to crucial publishing industry information and individuals. Then by all means let us hear from you. We look forward to answering any questions you may have. crw@uncw.edu

Student listens to lecture in Fisher Student Union

Undergraduate Programs See Undergraduate Programs

Audience seated listening to lecture in a lecture hall

Graduate Program Explore the Creative Writing MFA

Find important campus dates, deadlines, exam schedules and more. The calendar will help you plan your semester.

See the Academic Calendar

Publishing Lab

Integral to the Department of Creative Writing, the Publishing Laboratory incorporates into the apprenticeship of creative writers an applied learning experience in the process by which literary manuscripts, including their own, are edited and designed into books and published to a wide audience of readers.

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Our Journals & Imprint

Books & Accolades

Department of Creative Writing Senior Lecturer Kimi Faxon Hemingway

Poetic Voyage

How do we tell the stories of the places that are important to us? "Best of Our State" on PBS NC explains how Kimi Faxon Hemingway introduces her students to the home of the world's oldest cypress trees, N.C.'s Three Sisters Swamp, to explore the idea.

Best of Our State

Creative Writing's Faculty & Staff

Established in 1999 under the leadership of Mark Cox, UNCW's Department of Creative Writing now includes a faculty of over 20 members. Since its birth, the department has made its mark, housing a thriving BFA major and one of the most innovative MFA programs in the nation.

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Our Values

We believe that the ultimate measure of our worth is not a faculty's published work - important as that may be - but the artistic, personal, and academic evolution of each of the students in our charge. Our primary profession, in short, is to recruit, support, and nurture the most promising writers and students of letters in the country.

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