creative writing classes stanford

Creative Writing

Stanford’s Creative Writing Program--one of the best-known in the country--cultivates the power of individual expression within a vibrant community of writers. Many of our English majors pursue a concentration in creative writing, and the minor in Creative Writing is among the most popular minors on campus. These majors and minors participate in workshop-based courses or independent tutorials with Stegner Fellows, Stanford’s distinguished writers-in-residence.

English Major with a Creative Writing Emphasis

The English major with a Creative Writing emphasis is a fourteen-course major. These fourteen courses comprise eight English courses and six Creative Writing courses.

English majors with a Creative Writing emphasis should note the following:

All courses must be taken for a letter grade.

Courses taken abroad or at other institutions may not be counted towards the workshop requirements.

Any 190 series course (190F, 190G, etc.), 191 series course (191T, etc.), or 192 series course (192V, etc.) counts toward the 190, 191, or 192 requirement.

PWR 1 is a prerequisite for all creative writing courses.

Minor in Creative Writing

The Minor in Creative Writing offers a structured environment in which students interested in writing fiction or poetry develop their skills while receiving an introduction to literary forms. Students may choose a concentration in fiction, poetry.

In order to graduate with a minor in Creative Writing, students must complete the following three courses plus three courses in either the prose or poetry tracks. Courses counted towards the requirements for the minor may not be applied to student's major requirements. 30 units are required. All courses must be taken for a letter grade.

Prose Track

Suggested order of requirements:

English 90. Fiction Writing or English 91. Creative Nonfiction

English 146S Secret Lives of the Short Story

One 5-unit English literature elective course

English 190. Intermediate Fiction Writing or English 191. Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing

English 92. Reading and Writing Poetry

Another English 190, 191, 290. Advanced Fiction, 291. Advanced Nonfiction, or 198L. Levinthal Tutorial

Poetry Track

English 92.Reading and Writing Poetry

English 160. Poetry and Poetics

English 192. Intermediate Poetry Writing

Another English 192, or 292.Advanced Poetry or 198L.Levinthal Tutorial

Creative Writing minors should note the following:

To declare a Creative Writing minor, visit the Student page in Axess. To expedite your declaration, make sure to list all 6 courses you have taken or plan to take for your minor.

Any 190 series course (190F, 190G, etc.), 191series course (191T, etc.), or 192 series course (192V, etc.) counts toward the 190, 191, or 192 requirement.

For more information, visit the Stanford Creative Writing Program.

Creative Writing

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School of Humanities and Sciences

This course of study cultivates the power of individual expression within a vibrant community of writers.

What You'll Study

Stanford’s Creative Writing Program--one of the best-known in the country--cultivates the power of individual expression within a vibrant community of writers. The Minor in Creative Writing offers a structured environment in which students interested in writing fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction develop their skills while receiving an introduction to literary forms. Students may choose a concentration in either prose or poetry. Creative Writing minors will participate in workshop-based courses and may have an opportunity to work independently with Stegner Fellows, Stanford’s distinguished writers-in-residence.

Degrees Offered

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Learn more about Creative Writing in the Stanford Bulletin

• Creative Writing Program
• Department of English
• School of Humanities & Sciences
• Explore IntroSems related to this major

Exploratory Courses

English 10c.

Introduction to English I: Tradition and Individuality, Medieval to Early Modern

ENGLISH 11A

Introduction to English II: High Life and Low Life: British Literature 1660-1820

ENGLISH 11B

Introduction to English II: American Literature and Culture to 1855 (AMSTUD 150)

ENGLISH 12A

Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43, AMSTUD 12A)

ENGLISH 12C

Introduction to English III: Modern Literature

ENGLISH 145G

US Fiction 1945 to 2000

ENGLISH 146A

Steinbeck (AMSTUD 146A)

ENGLISH 152G

Harlem Renaissance

ENGLISH 17Q

After 2001: A 21st Century Science Fiction Odyssey

ENGLISH 71

Dangerous Ideas (ARTHIST 36, COMPLIT 36A, EALC 36, ETHICSOC 36X, FRENCH 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36, TAPS 36)

ENGLISH 81

Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

ENGLISH 90

Fiction Writing

ENGLISH 91

Creative Nonfiction

ENGLISH 92

Reading and Writing Poetry

ENGLISH 9CE

Creative Expression in Writing

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Information about the Creative Writing Minor

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Creative Writing

In this course, students develop the imaginative, critical, and technical skills necessary for writing fiction and poetry. Using the published work of well-known authors as well as original student writing, students explore various topics and problems faced by those embarking on the creative-writing process. Students read texts as writers, not as critics or historians of literature. Additionally, this class examines the fundamental questions facing writers today: how and why do writers write?

The course follows the workshop model in which students bring their own stories and poems to class for group discussion and students develop the skills to constructively critique and workshop each other's work. Through this process, students learn a variety of techniques for improving and developing their own writing. 

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Creative Writing

This course provides a chance for students to explore the craft of writing – poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction – to discover what they want to say about themselves and their individual perspectives in and through written language. Students will discuss a variety of creative composition strategies, including figurative language, sound, imagery, voice, and style. They will read poems, personal essays, short stories, and essays on the craft of writing as inspiration for their own work in these genres.

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For writer Molly Antopol, silences create room for fiction

The Creative Writing Program’s newest fiction writer tells wide-ranging stories about individual lives shaped by the forces of history.

Molly Antopol  expected to be a union organizer like other members of her Los Angeles-based progressive family. Instead, she pursued writing and in 2023 joined Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences as a professor in the English Department, member of the Creative Writing Program , and author of a highly acclaimed collection of short stories, The UnAmericans  (W.W. Norton, 2014). 

The UnAmericans has been recognized for nuanced, believable stories set everywhere from contemporary rural Maine to World War II-era Belarus. The fictions present predominantly Jewish characters who experience their individual dramas—whether intimate, like a teenager coping after her mother’s sudden death, or geopolitical, like an exile from an oppressive communist regime remaking his life in the United States—against the great historical dramas of World War II and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. The UnAmericans received the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award. It was also longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. 

But back when Antopol was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she focused her efforts on supporting the United Farm Workers in Watsonville, California. 

“The work felt incredibly important,” Antopol said. “I always wanted to be a writer, but being a writer never felt like something that I could actually do. It felt very pie in the sky.”

Finding her subject matter and method

Perhaps informed by her experience with organized labor, Antopol’s approach to writing leans heavily into hard work. She painstakingly researches her stories to make them feel authentic. She travels, interviews people, combs through archives, and listens to oral histories to build the “poise” and “heft” for which her stories have been recognized . As part of her MFA from Columbia University (2004), Antopol wrote a complete collection of stories, never intending to publish it, before she turned her hand to The UnAmericans . 

“I felt like I needed to learn how to write character, how to write setting, how to write dialogue,” Antopol explained. “I wanted to learn all of the technical skills that I could in order to write a book that I would be comfortable putting out into the world.” 

After college, Antopol received a fellowship to do environmental and human rights work in Israel. That experience helped define the themes and settings in her writing. 

At a party, she met a woman from Antopol, Belarus—a war-decimated predominantly Jewish village from which the writer takes her name. Incredibly, the woman knew Antopol’s deceased namesake . The connection led Antopol to a kind of collective scrapbook, called a Yizkor book , containing oral histories, maps, and photos memorializing the town’s Jewish residents killed in World War II. In addition to providing the raw material for a story in The UnAmericans about resistance fighters in Belarus, the book opened Antopol’s eyes to the realization that narrators often don’t share directly what is most important. The emotional heart of a story can be like a drop of dish soap in oily water, Antopol realized, and the same was true in her family. 

“I’m interested in stories that explore and sometimes interrogate the nature of storytelling itself,” Antopol said. “Getting to read that Yizkor book made me think about all of the gaps and silences in the stories told in my own family—which loves to tell stories. But Antopol, in Belarus, was a place I had never heard about. This helped me think about the ways humans tell stories about the dark periods of history that no one wants to look at.” 

The slippage between the emotional heft of a story and how it is told also shapes the stories in The UnAmericans and those stories her characters tell themselves. For example, the protagonist in “The Quietest Man” organizes against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia as a young professor. When arrested and interrogated, he does not report on his fellow activists, thus earning his nickname. But later in his life, as an exile in the United States, he faces questions from his daughter, who is writing a play about her father’s formative drama. The Quietest Man tells her a web of lies that make him seem a better man and father than he has ultimately been. 

“[A]s I continued to talk,” he concludes, “I wondered if any of what I was saying would begin to feel like the truth. It didn’t yet, but I was just getting started.” 

Antopol worked on The UnAmericans  for 10 years. Logging long days at her desk, she put each story through more than a dozen major revisions, some while she was at Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow (2006-2008) and as a Jones Lecturer (2008-2018). 

Feeling like a writer

Following her lectureship, Antopol taught at Harvard University and then the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. But The Farm feels like home. 

“Stanford is the first place I ever really felt like a writer,” Antopol said. “It is an incredible thing to be back and to be on the faculty and to get to work with these amazing students.”

For some writers, teaching is something they do to support their writing. For Antopol, it has helped reveal her craft.

“Once I started teaching and realized just how much I loved it and how beautifully it complemented the writing, I knew I was on the right path,” she said.

As a teacher as well as a writer, Antopol focuses on craft and revision. She aims to supply her students with as many ideas and examples as she can to empower them to excavate “the narrative possibilities that are inherent in each piece” of their writing to steer their revisions, she said. 

It’s important to Antopol to make sure student writers get insights, in addition to edits, from their classmates and from her so they can find their own voices. The first half of her semester-long workshops are devoted to reading published authors’ work—her picks include Edward P. Jones, Joy Williams, Roberto Bolaño, and Gish Jen—to train students how to appreciate different styles and objectives. 

“We’re developing a vocabulary, almost a library of terms and of books to discuss,” Antopol said. “That way we feel really comfortable discussing fiction writ large with each other before we apply any of this to the work of the writers in the room. It’s also about teaching my students how to read like writers—to try to understand what the writer is doing and what we can learn from that.”

The learning environment also inspires the instructor. 

“There is just something so incredible about being with a group of students who value language, sentences, and stories in such a deep and profound way,” she said. “Working with these smart and engaged students and talking so seriously, so rigorously, and so generously about stories helps me as a writer, too. The combination has been amazing.”

Antopol is currently completing work on her forthcoming novel, Saturn ,   which will be published by W.W. Norton. 

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Creative Writing Program

Offers undergraduate courses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction writing, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship.

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Wed, Oct 23, 2024 8pm to 9:30pm PT

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Are you looking for the best online creative writing courses? You may have found some promising classes online, but you may also be unsure if the course is actually good. How can you know you’ll benefit from the course without spending your money first?

The good news is, there are creative writing courses out there for everyone, and they’re sure to improve your writing. Even better news, the best online creative writing courses share many of the same qualities.

If you want to learn how to write creatively, or if you simply want to improve your everyday writing, the best online creative writing courses can transform your writing abilities. Let’s explore what you might learn in creative writing classes, and how they help writers of all skill levels.

The Best Online Creative Writing Courses: Contents

What do you do in a creative writing class?

• Reputable Instructor
• Clear Course Description
• Promise of a Great Experience
• Constructive Feedback
• Focus on Craft
• Respect Your Creative Autonomy
• A Writing Community
• Motivate You to Write
• Jumpstart a Writing Habit
• Broaden Your Literary Horizons
• Offer a Healthy Creative Outlet
• Give You Next Steps

How to Make the Most of Online Creative Writing Courses

Every online creative writing class is unique, and different courses emphasize different things. We have classes that are entirely generative, meaning the focus is on writing new poems, essays, stories, or making headway into a novel or memoir project. Other courses might have more of a workshop component, in which you share your work with the class and receive feedback on how to improve your writing.

Some online writing courses also focus on specific skills or types of writing. You might take a class focused entirely on learning the tools for revision, or on learning the elements of fiction writing so you can later employ them in a story or novel.

In short, the best online writing courses typically include the following:

• Lectures and discussions on a topic of creative writing craft.
• Assignments that help you generate new work or revise old work.
• Opportunities to give and receive feedback with your fellow classmates.
• Feedback on your work from the instructor, who themselves is a successfully published author of the type of writing you’re producing.
• A weekly video call. Some courses, including ours, are entirely text-based and asynchronous, but many classes meet at least once a week on Zoom.

In addition to all of this, you will make new friends and connections in the best online creative writing classes. Writing is often a lonely experience for writers, and the bonds you make in creative writing workshops can last a lifetime.

12 Things to Look For In the Best Online Creative Writing Courses

The best online creative writing courses will sharpen your writing skills, help you find your confidence, and introduce you to new communities of writers. How do they do it? Here’s 12 things to look for to make sure you’re spending your money on the right online writing class. 

1. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Have a Reputable Instructor

Your course is only as good as the instructor who teaches it. For online writing classes to teach you the craft, they need to have reputable, trustworthy instructors. A great instructor will also be empathetic, community-oriented, adaptive to your writing needs, and a great writer themselves.

A great instructor will also be empathetic, community-oriented, adaptive to your writing needs, and a great writer themselves.

Do some research on the course instructor: they should have a terminal degree in their field (M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D., etc.), as well as a significant publication history. A reputable instructor will make all the difference in your course: as part of their education, the instructor should have undergone dozens of writing workshops, submitted to countless literary journals, and had their work scrutinized by critics and book lovers alike.

In order for an instructor to help you develop your creative writing skills, they need to be successful on their own. The best instructors are what make the best online creative writing courses.

2. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Have a Clear Course Description

What does the course teach you, and what will you learn week by week? In addition to listing a reputable instructor, the course description should tell you exactly what you’ll gain from taking the course.

In addition to listing a reputable instructor, the course description should tell you exactly what you’ll gain from taking the course.

Be sure you know exactly what you’re getting out of your online creative writing course, including what you might learn and write in the process. Consider what will help you the most as you embark on your writing journey: entering a course with certain goals or learning objectives will help you make the most of the course’s lectures and writing assignments.

There should be no ambiguity: if you’re paying for the course, you deserve to know exactly what you’re paying for. And, if you have questions, ask the program administrator before you enroll. They should be happy to hear from you!

3. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Promise a Great Experience

The best online creative writing courses prioritize one thing: YOU! Your learning, your goals, and your writing should be at the center of your experience. And, your course should guarantee that experience.

The best online creative writing courses prioritize your learning, your goals, and your writing.

Creative writing classes can be a risk, since they probably won’t confer university credit and you probably haven’t interacted with that instructor before. You want to be confident that your learning is guaranteed, otherwise you’ll only waste your time, money, and creativity.

Before you enroll in an online writing course, look to see if the program administrators have a student promise . Your experience in the course should be the number one priority of the instructor and administrators; otherwise, you’re better off looking elsewhere for the best online creative writing courses.

4. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Offer Constructive Feedback

In addition to useful lectures and assignments, creative writing courses give you access to helpful, instructional feedback. Most instructors hold Masters or Doctoral degrees in English or creative writing and, as a result, they have ample knowledge of what works in literature, as well as tons of experience in giving feedback.

Creative writing courses give you access to helpful, instructional feedback.

In the best online creative writing classes, an instructor will both inspire you to write and guide you towards being a better writer. Their feedback will cover the many aspects of great writing. For example, your instructor might comment on:

• Unclear language
• Ideas that need to be expanded
• Sentences that are too wordy or passive
• Opportunities to use more engaging vocabulary
• Places to improve writing structure
• Grammar and spelling corrections

Finally, an instructor will tell you what you are already doing well in your writing. When you write a really great metaphor , use interesting word choice, or find a moment of great insight, your instructor will tell you—highlighting the creative writing skills you have already mastered.

5. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Focus on Craft

You might be wondering how creative writing classes are different from high school English. The big difference is that, where a typical English class focuses on basic grammar and literacy skills, creative writing classes focus specifically on craft.

Creative writing classes focus specifically on craft: the elements of language and storytelling that make a work of prose or poetry successful.

What is creative writing craft? Craft involves the elements of language and storytelling that make a work of prose or poetry successful. Focusing on craft is how creative writing classes primarily improve your writing.

Your writing class might focus on the structure of a short story, the different types of literary devices , the importance of effective word choice , or the elements of storytelling . A writing class should break down successful works of literature into the components that make it work, giving you the tools to practice your own creative writing skills.

Additionally, craft-focused writing helps you with everyday writing. From improving your vocabulary to structuring an email, the creative writing practice translates to improved writing in every aspect of your life.

6. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Respect Your Creative Autonomy

One of the benefits of creative writing classes is the perspective you get from different writers. No two writers are working on the same projects, and in your course, you’re likely to work with students of different genres and writing styles.

your creative authority should be respected no matter how new you are to creative writing.

With so many different writing philosophies in one class, the new ideas you encounter can help strengthen your own writing. But in the worst-case scenario, a student or instructor might try to force their writing philosophy onto you. This is always unfair, as there is no one-size-fits-all writing advice, your creative authority should be respected no matter how new you are to creative writing .

For example, let’s say you’re writing a poem about your childhood cat, and the instructor thinks it should be a poem about your experiences growing up. No matter how many times you explain you want this poem to be about your cat, the instructor keeps telling you to write more about your childhood. By ignoring your goals for the poem, the instructor is not respecting your creative autonomy, because they think they know your writing needs better than you do.

No matter where you are in your writing journey, you are a writer, and you deserve respect and compassion as such. Every writer is on a constant journey of growth and discovery; your instructor and course should acknowledge and respect that. In your course, you will encounter many different ideas, but you should also encounter the freedom to accept or reject those ideas. It’s your writing: you get the final say!

7. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Foster a Writing Community

A creative writing course fosters a creative writing community . This community gives you the motivation to create, as it creates a safe environment to experiment, take risks, and grow in your writing practice.

A writing community gives you the motivation to create, as it creates a safe environment to experiment, take risks, and grow in your writing practice.

For even the most solitary of writers, writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Participating in a community of word enthusiasts can jog your creativity and give you useful feedback on your work. Additionally, the feedback you provide other writers in the community also helps you learn. It’s a self-fulfilling, self-sustaining process, where members of a writing group can continuously grow, improve, and fine-tune their love of the craft.

In fact, well-known authors throughout history have been a part of valuable writing communities, such as The Beat Poets, Stratford-on-Odeon, and other famous writing groups .

When you enroll in creative writing classes, you also take part in a writing community. Foster relationships, make new writing friends, and forge your own writing group—it may one day be famous, too!

8. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Motivate You to Write

Writing is a skill that you can only develop through practice. For anyone just starting on our writing journeys, the best online creative writing classes keep you motivated and accountable.

The best online creative writing classes keep you motivated and accountable.

Every instructor works differently, but you can expect the following in a creative writing class:

• Creative writing prompts
• Daily journaling assignments
• Helpful revisions
• Inspirational readings
• Ideas to combat writer’s block
• Different opinions on how to write creatively

Some courses are even designed to motivate you, such as our course Write Your Novel! The Workshop With Jack . Sometimes, the biggest struggle is simply to begin, and creative writing courses help you do that.

9. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Jumpstart a Writing Habit

The best online creative writing courses will get you into a writing habit. By combining lectures with thought-provoking assignments, one of the primary goals of a writing course is simply to get you writing.

You’ll gain the most from your creative writing courses if you block out the time to write every day.

To make the most of your creative writing classes, try to find time to write every day. It’s best to write at the same time every day, but if your schedule doesn’t allow this, sneak time where you can.

Here are some ways you can steal time as a writer:

• Journal for 15 minutes before you go to bed.
• Write while you wake up with your morning breakfast or coffee.
• Keep a journal on your phone during work and lunch breaks.
• Write on your commute to and from work. If you’re driving, consider keeping an audio journal, where you write by speaking into your phone’s recording device.
• Write on your phone while running on the treadmill.
• Put pen to paper while taking a bath.

These ideas won’t work for everyone, and it all depends on your schedule and lifestyle. Nonetheless, you’ll gain the most from your creative writing courses if you block out the time to write every day, no matter how brief that time is. And, your course should help you find the time to write!

10. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Broaden Your Literary Horizons

You need to read great writing to produce great writing. The best online creative writing courses will introduce you to great literature, giving you additional opportunities to explore the writing craft.

The best online creative writing courses will introduce you to great literature, giving you additional opportunities to explore the writing craft.

In creative writing classes, you might read both classic and contemporary literature. As writers, it’s good to have knowledge of both worlds. Classic literature introduces you to the bedrock of modern writing, including the devices and rhetorical strategies that make for effective poetry and prose.

Contemporary literature, on the other hand, gives you a glimpse into today’s literary zeitgeist. It’s important to understand today’s publishing landscape and the type of work that’s being published, even if you don’t intend to write like contemporary authors.

In fact, it’s better if you don’t try to write like anyone else! Reading other writers shows you what works in literature and what doesn’t, giving you opportunities to experiment with form and style. But, at the end of the day, your writing is for you, not for publishers or particular writing schools.

Use your creative writing classes as opportunities to explore literature, experiment with words, and discover what you’d like to write yourself.

11. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Offer a Healthy Creative Outlet

Creative writing classes offer a healthy outlet for your creativity and emotions.

A healthy writing space can supplement your emotional health and wellbeing.

How is that so? With a space to put thoughts to paper, many writers inevitably reach breakthroughs about their own feelings and experiences. This is true regardless of whether you write poetry, fiction, plays, articles, or creative nonfiction.

Now, even the best online creative writing courses can’t replace the benefits of therapy. But, a healthy writing space can certainly supplement your emotional health and wellbeing. Between the prompts, community, and writing habits that a creative writing class fosters, you’re sure to come away from your course with renewed emotional health.

12. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Give You Next Steps

Your education doesn’t end at the end of your course. If anything, the best online creative writing courses are only the beginning of your writing journey!

The best online creative writing courses are only the beginning of your writing journey!

The best online creative writing courses give you opportunities for continuous growth. Those opportunities can take many forms, such as: a list of literary journals to submit to, further readings on a topic of interest, future creative writing classes, or even simply the instructor’s email.

If you’re ready to move on to the next level of your career, your instructor should provide you with next steps. And if you crave more learning, ask the instructor!

A creative writing course is much like life: the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Being an active participant will teach you as much about creative writing as the instructor will, because engaging with language is how you grow as a writer. Actively working with suggestions and ideas, keeping a daily writing practice, and offering other students constructive feedback will all boost your creative writing skills.

A creative writing course is much like life: the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Additionally, do your research before you enroll in the course, or you might end up taking a class that isn’t suited to your needs. Look up the instructor for the course, their teaching style and previous publications, and how much experience they have as a writing coach. If they don’t seem well suited towards your learning style, they might develop your creative writing skills, and they won’t be worth the cost.

Find the Best Online Creative Writing Courses at Writers.com!

Are you looking for a writing community? Are you ready to get writing? Check out some of the upcoming courses at Writers.com , the oldest creative writing school on the internet.

Sean Glatch

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Stanford Creative Writing Program

Read Nicholas Jenkins’s letter to The Stanford Daily about recent Program changes. 

The Stanford Creative Writing Program, founded in 1946 by Wallace Stegner, has become one of the nation’s most distinguished creative writing institutions. After almost 80 years, the program continues to evolve while also respecting its original vision of recruiting and supporting talented writers, offering exceptional creative writing instruction and mentorship, and inspiring undergraduates to develop their own unique creative written expression.

In the 1940s, E. H. Jones generously created the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, now considered the most prestigious creative writing fellowship in the U.S. for emerging writers. Dr. Jones also made possible the Jones Lectureships, which are limited, fixed-year teaching appointments, allowing exceptional Stegner Fellows some time and support to prepare a manuscript for publication, hone their teaching skills, and transition to a longer-term teaching career elsewhere.

The original framework of term-limited appointments allowed for a consistent flow of selected Stegner Fellows into the Jones Lectureship. However, over time this framework of term-limited appointments was not followed.

In the past two years, the School of Humanities and Sciences leadership and the Creative Writing Academic Council faculty have been working to formulate necessary changes in the program and to identify additional resources to meet its growing needs. A Working Group of Creative Writing Academic Council faculty held listening sessions and discussions.

Now, after thoughtful deliberation, the Working Group has recommended restoring the original intent of the Jones Lectureships: one-year appointments with the possibility of renewal for a limited term, up to a total of five years. This change will again allow Stegner Fellows the opportunity to apply to be Jones Lecturers once they have completed their fellowships. In other words, the Jones Lectureships are not being eliminated; they are only being term limited, as was the original intent of the program, so that the Stegner Fellows have an opportunity to teach Creative Writing courses at Stanford. We plan for there to be as many lecturers in the Program in five years’ time as there are today, and we expect to offer more classes then than now.

The university, school, and numerous generous donors are committed to not only the excellence of the program but also its growth. This means increasing the number of Creative Writing classes to better meet high student demand as well as ensuring competitive compensation for both the lecturers and fellows. We will provide more updates in early fall quarter about the Creative Writing Program and how it will continue to be one of the preeminent programs in the nation.

We understand that these changes to the Jones Lectureships will be met with mixed reactions. However, we firmly believe that the changes advance the program’s pedagogical mission and provide promising writers with the resources to complete their books and obtain appointments at other colleges and universities.

Throughout the history of the program, the Jones Lecturers—both those who are here now and those who have been lecturers in the past—have helped make Stanford Creative Writing what it is today, and we are truly grateful to them for their significant contributions to the program’s mission.

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Department of English

M.f.a. creative writing.

English Department

Physical Address: 200 Brink Hall

Mailing Address: English Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 1102 Moscow, Idaho 83844-1102

Phone: 208-885-6156

Email: [email protected]

Web: English

Daniel Orozco

Associate professor emeritus.

[email protected]

View Full Profile

Daniel Orozco taught fiction writing.

College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences

• M.F.A., University of Washington, 1994
• B.A., Stanford University, 1979

Daniel Orozco's work has appeared in  Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, Zoetrope: All Story, Ecotone , and others.  He is the author of Orientation and Other Stories  (Faber and Faber).

Focus Areas

• Fiction Writing
• The Short Story
• Writing Pedagogy

Selected Publications

• Orientation and Other Stories .  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  2011.

Awards and Honors

• Pushcart Prize 2022. For “Leave No Trace,” selected by Bill Henderson and reprinted in The 2022 Pushcart Prize XLVI: Best of the Small Presses.
• William Saroyan International Prize for Writing 2012. For Orientation and Other Stories .
• Whiting Writers' Award 2011. Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.
• Literature Fellowship in Fiction 2007. Idaho Commission on the Arts.
• Best American Essays 2007. For “Shakers,” selected by Robert Atwan and David Foster Wallace, and reprinted in Best American Essays 2007 .
• National Magazine Award Finalist for Fiction 2006. For "Somoza's Dream."
• Literature Fellowship in Prose 2006. National Endowment for the Arts.
• Best American Mystery Stories 2005. For “Officers Weep,” selected by Otto Penzler and Joyce Carol Oates, and reprinted in Best American Mystery Stories 2005 .
• Scowcroft & L’Heureux Fellowship in Fiction 1997-1999. Stegner Creative Writing Program. Stanford University.
• Pushcart Prize 1997. For “The Bridge,” selected by Bill Henderson and reprinted in The 1997 Pushcart Prize XXI: Best of the Small Presses .
• Best American Short Stories 1995. For “Orientation,” selected by Katrina Kenison and Jane Smiley, and reprinted in Best American Short Stories 1995 .
• Interview with Danial Orozco

Orientation and Other Stories - Daniel Orozco

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