Program Overview

Novelists, memoirists, poets, playwrights and screenwriters articulate the questions of our time. They help us to free ourselves from our easy assumptions and to empathize with people whose circumstances differ from our own. Literature gives our culture a way to talk to itself.

SNHU's major in creative writing is for students interested in careers in writing and book publishing, and for students who simply wish to explore a passion for writing. It teaches skills useful for journalism, law, communications, and many other professions. It prepares students for graduate programs, like the university's low-residency Master of Fine Arts in fiction and nonfiction writing. Creative writing courses begin during freshman year.

Publishing opportunities at SNHU include the student literary journal, The Manatee, and contests in the university's nationally-distributed journal, Amoskeag. Faculty help students prepare work for submission to graduate programs, agents, and editors. Students on the main campus in Manchester spend classroom time with agents, editors, publicists, and visiting writers. Students attend workshops, readings, and networking events.

Our faculty includes nationally acclaimed writers. They host renowned visiting writers. Students can join the creative writing club and the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the only statewide literary organization for writers of all levels and genres, which is housed on the university's main campus in Manchester.

Students who wish to major in creative writing on the main campus in Manchester must submit a writing sample of 5-10 pages to the program coordinator. Students applying to the online program in creative writing must submit a sample to the online program.

Creative writing majors on the main campus in Manchester choose a concentration in fiction, a concentration in nonfiction, or no concentration. Online majors choose a concentration in fiction, nonfiction, poetry or screenwriting. Majors on the main campus who choose no concentration take workshops in three out of four genres. Majors on the main campus who choose a concentration in fiction or nonfiction focus on a long work in the chosen genre. Online majors focus on the chosen genre and take a course in writing for new media.

For majors on the main campus, the concentrations in fiction and nonfiction make it easier to complete a B.A. in Creative Writing and English in three years with coursework during summers. The concentrations can also help students write work samples strong enough to earn admission to the low-residency M.F.A. program. Students who finish a B.A. with a concentration in fiction or nonfiction in three years can earn both a B.A. and an M.F.A. over the course of five years, if they are accepted to the M.F.A. program in the third year of the B.A.

Program Outcomes

• Apply techniques and terminology essential to analyzing (and appreciating) literary form, genre, structure, and style
• Produce creative works in a variety of genres (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, screenwriting), employing the conventions and techniques of those genres
• Produce a body of advanced work in the student’s chosen genre, reflecting a culmination of the student’s workshop training and the beginning of professionalization