Creative Writing

The OU Creative Writing Program allows students to major or minor in four different genres: fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and screenwriting. OU Faculty include novelists, short story writers, poets, creative nonfiction writers, graphic novelists, and film-makers.

Our program's first priority is to provide students with excellent introductory, intermediate, and advanced-level workshop courses in the genre of their choice. These workshops are small and create opportunities for students to work closely with professors and peers building a vibrant community of writers and artists. Majors are also required to take courses in other genres (this can include courses in play-writing,offered through the Department of Music, Theater, and Dance, and in creative nonfiction courses offered through the Department of Writing and Rhetoric). We aim to demonstrate the overlap between various forms of creative writing while also helping students to develop their own voices through the honing of specific literary techniques. And because faculty members work in a variety of genres and styles, students are encouraged to experiment and explore, even as they also learn the traditional tools of craft and revision. Creative writing students also take cognate classes in contemporary literature and cinema in order to be immersed in the important voices of writers today.

Mentorship is another key to the success of our program. The relationships that our students build with faculty in formal and informal ways help to guide them into the professional realm, while also introducing them to the diversity of employment options. When students enter their junior and senior years, they are encouraged to do internships. They can also request alumni mentors. CW majors who work closely with faculty, internship site directors, and OU graduates are better able to make the transition from school to the working world; they also learn how to capitalize on their skills as talented writers.

Finally, we encourage and facilitate the engagement of our creative writing majors with the writing and publishing community at large, as they move toward becoming professionals in that community. Numerous innovative and multi-format events and activities support students' engagement with the larger writing community, both on the OU campus and elsewhere (see Student Engagement section on this website). As a culmination of their writing work, all senior creative writing majors have the option of participating in a capstone reading that is open to the university and larger community. This event takes place in April. Alumni can continue to be involved in our OU English Alumni Association.

Jeff Chapman, Fiction and Comics
Jeff is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing and the director of the Creative Writing Program. His interests include comics, mythology, classical Greek & Latin, and contemporary fiction. Thirty of his short stories, graphic stories, and essays have been published in anthologies and magazines, including South Dakota Review, Black Warrior Review, The Florida Review, and Cutbank. He received his M.F.A. in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and his Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Utah. In 2015, he received a Kresge Artist Fellowship.

Kitty Dubin, Playwriting
Kitty is Special Lecturer in Theater and has been teaching beginning and advanced classes at Oakland University for the past eighteen years. In that time, over one hundred of her students' plays have been produced, received staged readings or won awards. Her own plays have been produced at theaters throughout Michigan, including the Purple Rose, BoarsHead, Performance Network, and the Fourth Street Playhouse. She is Playwright-In-Residence at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre where she has had six plays produced. She has also had her work performed in New York City, Austin, Los Angeles, and Chicago and she is a frequent speaker at writers conferences. This August, her play, CUTTING IT CLOSE, will be performed at Boxfest, a one act festival in Detroit where all the plays are directed by women. Kitty got her B.A. from Case Western Reserve University, a M.A. in English from Wayne State University and a M.A. in Guidance and Counseling from Oakland University.

Annie Gilson, Fiction (literary and fantasy) (www.annettegilson.com)
Annie is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing and the advisor of the Creative Writing Program. Her first novel, New Light, came out from Black Heron Press (second printing, 2010). Annie also writes Young Adult fantasy novels and is represented by Kelly Sonnack of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. She reviews contemporary fiction for a number of periodicals, including Publishers Weekly, Rain Taxi, and American Book Review. She received a B.A. in creative writing from Bard College and a Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century Literature from Washington University in St. Louis.

Katie Hartsock, Poetry (katiehartsock.com)
Katie is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Hartsock's second poetry collection, Wolf Trees (2023), weaves changing ecologies with personal worlds of motherhood and living with Type 1 diabetes. first full-length poetry collection, Bed of Impatiens, was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award, and was published in 2016. Hartsock teaches poetry and creative writing workshops, and literature courses including Classical Mythology, What Is Lyric Poetry?, and Disability Studies and Literature. Her poetry appears widely, in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Dappled Things, Image, Iron Horse Literary Review, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, The New Criterion, Pleiades, Poetry, RHINO, The Threepenny Review, and THRUSH. Her current manuscripts-in-progress include The Last Crusade, a poetry collection (containing, yes, a few Indiana Jones poems), and Songs of the Iliad, a hybrid text combining translation with vignettes of the epic's ancient audiences and creative commentary.  Selections of her translations of Homer appeared in University of Iowa's Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University and a MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received the major Hopwood graduate award in poetry.

Peter Markus, Fiction
Peter is Special Lecturer in Creative Writing; he has also taught for 20 years as a writer-in-residence with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. He is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as five other books of fiction, the most recent of which is The Fish and the Not Fish, a Michigan Notable Book of 2015. His fiction has appeared widely in anthologies and journals including Chicago Review, Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West, Massachusetts Review, and Northwest Review, among many others. He received his B.A. from University of Michigan and his M.F.A. from Western Michigan University. In 2012, he was awarded a Kresge Arts in Detroit fellowship. Links to Peter's work:

Novel excerpt: We Make Mud
Short story: Bird with One Wing
Interview: Fiction as Magic Language Spell
Review: Detroit Free Press - "Book of one-syllable words makes Peter Markus notable"

Susan McCarty, Memoir and Essay
Susan is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Her first book, Anatomies, was published by Aforementioned Productions in 2015. She was the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists' Award in 2015 and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts residency in 2012. Her essays and stories have appeared in South Dakota Review, the Iowa Review, the Utne Reader, Conjunctions, Hotel Amerika, and other journals. She has an M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. Before coming to Oakland, she was an assistant professor of English at Salisbury University on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and before that, she was an award-winning junior editor at Penguin and Avalon Books, a freelance copyeditor for Boston's Weekly Dig and the Beer Advocate, and an obituary writer at the Eastern Iowa Gazette.

Keep up with current events such as readings and contests by liking the program on our Creative Writing Department Facebook page. Please also consider applying for one or all of the scholarships that Creative Writing offers:

Creative Writing Scholarships

You can find out more by visiting Oakland University Scholarships.

Opportunities for Engagement

OU Creative Writing Club
The vibrant OU Creative Writing Club, advised by Prof. Kathy Pfeiffer, gives our students a weekly meeting place to discuss their work, the work of writers who inspire them, and to share ideas that can help strengthen the program. Check out our website or join us on the Creative Writing Club Facebook page.

OU Screenwriters' Guild
The OU Screenwriters' Guild, advised by Prof. David Shaerf, brings together aspiring screenwriters and film-makers. It also offers opportunities for those interested in writing film scripts to get together and workshop, attend lectures, and pitch scripts to filmmakers to get made! No experience necessary. Contact faculty advisor David Shaerf for additional information.

The Oakland Arts Review (The OAR)
The Oakland Arts Review, also known as The OAR, is a journal put out by the Creative Writing Program devoted to undergraduate writing. Genres we publish include fiction, scripts, nonfiction, poetry, and comics (can include excerpts of graphic novels). Students may also submit images for cover art. The journal is overseen by Professor Susan McCarty. Students interested in working on the journal should complete the Intern and Volunteer Form and submit to [email protected]. Contact Susan McCarty to request the Intern and Volunteer Form.

Submit materials for publication to the Oakland Arts Reviews.

Annual Reading Series
"Every semester the Creative Writing Program sponsors readings and craft talks by fiction writers, poets, screenwriters, and creative nonfiction authors. Readings range from the avant-garde to traditional. We regularly host round-tables on publishing and editing as well as workshops on publication and on teaching creative writing in the public schools. These events take place on the OU campus and information is available on Creative Writing Department Facebook page. Our endowed poetry event, The Maurice Brown Reading Series, is the first event of the year. The event is funded by a generous donation from OU Professor Judith Brown in memory of her husband, OU Professor Maurice Brown, a great lover of poetry. The reading series began in 1988; over the years, we have brought many leading American poets to campus, including those named for Poet Laureate and the Pulitzer Prize.

Department Awards and Contests

Four contests run yearly:

• OU Flash Fiction Contest: Two separate contests, one open to current undergrads, and one to everyone who is not an undergrad
• OU Literary Non-fiction Contest: Open to undergrads, faculty, staff, and alumni
• OU Ekphrasis Poetry Contest: Two separate contests, one open to current undergrads, one to everyone who is not an undergrad
• OU Screenplay Award: Open to undergrads

Mentoring Program
Our Mentoring program pairs employed alums with English major juniors and seniors, to help students make the transition into the working world. But our students also maintain a thriving OU English Alumni Association. This network is for you: we could host reading groups on campus, talk shop and job searches, and even set up readings and writing groups for alumni! Alumni are also welcome to attend meetings of the Creative Writing club.

Internships
The Creative Writing Program prioritizes student involvement in volunteer and internship activities and in writing groups around the area. Students intern in a wide cross-section of literary venues, including Dzanc Books (small press), Wayne State University Press, 826Michigan (literacy and creative writing outreach program), Midwestern Gothic (literary journal), InsideOut Detroit (creative writing workshops in Detroit public schools), Baldwin Center and Common Ground (community help centers), and Write A House (Detroit literary nonprofit). Students are also free to design their own internships.

Study Abroad Opportunities
Currently, students can take Fiction and Poetry Workshops at The University of London, London, UK and at the University of East Anglia, UK.