Our senior and honors-thesis creative writers give readings of their manuscripts and thesis projects at the completion of their coursework.
Students pursuing a serious interest in writing may apply to write a creative project or thesis in the senior year. This possibility is open to students undertaking a creative writing concentration in the English major, and/or to students who have significant creative writing experience.
Proposals for creative projects are submitted prior to registration during the fall of the senior year. Proposals are then considered along with the student’s overall performance in writing and concentration courses. Applicants should have taken at least two creative writing courses in the concentration.
Samples of those diverse projects are below.
Some recent senior creative writing projects:
Victoria Andreades created a comic strip, “Stories from Token City,” and, since she’s not an artist, found someone to draft the first “episode” in a webcomic form, where you scroll vertically instead of turning pages. It’s knockout good, and it galvanized everyone to “up their game” each week.
Matthew Alaniz created a manuscript of bilingual poetry, “Familia Roots,” that emerged from his trips (some were Gordon missions trips) to Mexico, where he lived with families there, and formed important relationships and a deeper appreciation for Mexico. His finished manuscript, in Spanish and English, is 45 pages, and it includes some beautiful spot art by his fiancé. (Matthew has published these poems in a book, and his fiancé is now his wife.)
Hannah Andres, for her combined senior theses in both Art and English, created “Many Shallow Pools,” a series of five thematically-related short stories, which she illustrated in gorgeous pen-and-ink drawings. The collection tallies 89 pages.
Amelia Wood chose to blend her interests in environmental science, history and story in a project that began as fiction and morphed into a nonfiction manuscript, comprising short “environmental reflections.” They are written with the attention of a poet. I’ll attach one. Amelia also wrote fabulous fiction; we encourage her to continue the story she has paused.
Jena Jekums began the term collaborating with Nick Merritt on a video/podcast project (Jena’s was the podcast part) interviewing minority and marginalized members of the church in the Boston area. The Covid pandemic forced a recalibration for both. Jena shifted to writing a poetry manuscript, and then adjusted again to create a quarantine-inspired chapbook of poetry designed to reflect the new slower pace of life, and to relish “the liturgy of the ordinary.” Her chapbook, which she publish during the summer, is entitled “Color,” and represents a new collaboration with friend and poet Will Funderburk. The four parts of the mss, which take the reader through the day, are Cream, Ochre, Seafoam, and Lavender.
Ars Creative Writing 