Master of Arts in English
Program in Creative Writing

Visiting Writers Program  Editorial Opportunities  Financial Assistance  

Faculty  More Information  Alumni  

The Master's in Creative Writing and Literature prepares students to be poets, novelists, essayists, short story writers, reviewers, editors, and teachers. One of the department's largest and most vibrant tracks, the program offers creative writing workshops in every genre, and features individualized attention from highly published, award-winning faculty. In addition to taking writing workshops, creative writing students receive both a broad and specialized education in the traditions of British and American literature.

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The Visiting Writers Program
Each year the Visiting Writers Program brings to campus nationally and internationally known writers. Recent visitors include Antonya Nelson, Charles Baxter, Dean Chaon, Ted Kooser, E. Annie Proulx, Patricia Hampl, Bret Lott, Barry Lopez, Michael S. Harper, Michael Cunningham, Yusef Komunyakaa, William Kittredge, Ron Carlson, and Mary Karr. These writers give public readings and lectures, visit classes, and read and discuss student works in individual tutorial sessions.

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Opportunities for Editorial Experience
Students in the Creative Writing track also have the opportunity to serve on the editorial staff of Touchstone, K-State's annual literary journal.

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Alumni
KSU creative writing students have gone on to publish highly acclaimed books and to win prestigious awards such as the Flannery O'Connor Prize for Short Fiction (Debra Monroe for her book, The Source of Trouble); the National Poetry Review Book Prize (Bryan Penberthy for his book, Lucktown); the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry (Derick Burleson for his book, Ejo: Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994); the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize (Amy Fleury for her book, Beautiful Trouble) and to edit prominent literary journals such as Cimarron Review, North American Review, and Gulf Coast. Current and former graduate students have recently published in excellent literary journals such as The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, and New England Review. In addition, KSU students have won national acclaim during their graduate careers as winners of the Intro Journals Project sponsored by the Associated Writing Programs. KSU M.A.s are routinely accepted into the nation's finest terminal degree programs (both M.F.A. and Ph.D.) that emphasize creative writing. In recent years, KSU Creative Writing M.A.s have accepted tenure-track or other full-time teaching positions at more than a dozen institutions across the country.

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Financial Assistance and Awards
Financial assistance available to incoming M.A. students includes teaching assistantships and graduate school fellowships, and the Seaton Fellowships in Creative Writing ( our Creative Writing students are also eligible for non-graduate school fellowships). For more information about financial aid, go to the Frequently Asked Questions about Graduate Studies page.

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Workshop Atmosphere and Community
Our creative writing workshops sometimes include students from our four other M.A. tracks (literature, composition and rhetoric, cultural studies, and children's literature). However, we deliberately limit enrollment in our workshops to no more than fifteen students. Our workshops are demanding, but their atmospheres are congenial and supportive.

Overall, we have an active, supportive community of writers both in the university and the surrounding area. A local art gallery regularly sponsors poetry readings by our students, for example. Manhattan is located in the Flint Hills, a green, hilly section of Kansas with the Kansas River and two large lakes nearby. Less than ten miles away, the Konza Prairie is the largest remnant of tallgrass prairie in the United States. The town itself has about 50,000 residents, not including the 20,000 students at KSU.

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Creative Writing Faculty

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Elizabeth Dodd Elizabeth Dodd teaches creative writing and literature.  Her latest book, Prospect: Journeys & Landscapes, a collection of nonfiction essays, appeared from University of Utah Press in 2003, and was winner of the William Rockhill Nelson Best Nonfiction Book Award. She's also the author of two collections of poetry, Like Memory, Caverns, which won the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award from New York University Press in 1992, and Archetypal Light, published by the University of Nevada Press in 2001. She's also the author of The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Gluck (University of Missouri Press, 1992). Dodd publishes frequently in the field of ecocriticism, with essays on James Wright, Terry Tempest Williams, Michael S. Harper, as well as other topics.  She is on the editorial board of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment and is a Contributing Editor for Tar River Poetry. Dodd has twice won the Stamey Award for outstanding teaching from KSU's College of Arts and Sciences, and she is a recent recipient of the Kansas Arts Council's Fellowship in Poetry.

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Jonathan Holden Jonathan Holden is University Distinguished Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Kansas State University. A poet/critic, Dr. Holden's work includes The Old Formalism: Character in Contemporary American Poetry (U. Of Arkansas Press, 1999) and Knowing: New and Selected Poems, University of Arkansas Press, 2000. Dr. Holden has won numerous awards including the Devins Award for Design for a House (1972), The AWP Award for Leverage (1982), The Juniper Prize for The Names of the Rapids (1985) and The Vassar Miller Prize for The Sublime (1995). Dr. Holden has received two fellowships in Creative Writing, from the National Endowment for the Arts, one in Poetry ($5,000) and one in Creative Nonfiction Writing ($20,000). In 1997, his Guns and Boyhood in America: Memoir of Growing Up in the 50's, was published in the University of Michigan's Poets-on-Poetry series. In the year 2000, Holden was, with Anthony Hecht and Mary Karr, one of the three judges for The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His most recent work is a memoir, Mama's Boys: The Search for Identity of an Identical Twin, with Lewis-Clark Press. He is currently revising his final critical book On Moral Poetry.

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Imad Rahman Imad Rahman is an assistant professor teaching creative writing -- fiction and creative non-fiction. His stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, One Story, Chelsea, Bridge, The Sonora Review and The Madison Review. His first book, I Dream Of Microwaves, a collection of connected stories, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April 2004.

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Susan Jackson Rodgers Susan Jackson Rodgers (M.F.A., Bennington Writing Seminars) is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing Program. Her collection of stories, The Trouble With You Is, won the Mid-List First Series Award in Short Fiction, and was published in 2004. Her fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, New England Review, Quick Fiction, and Glimmer Train. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prize Special Mentions, and a Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship. Rodgers won KSU's Presidential Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in 2007.

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For More Information
For application materials or for other information about the Creative Writing Program or the Visiting Writers Program, contact:

Susan Rodgers, Director
Creative Writing Program
Department of English
108 English/Counseling Services Building
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-6501
(785) 532-2183 Office
(785) 532-2192 FAX
E-mail: suejack@ksu.edu