Faculty of Any and Sciences Department of English Graduate Program in Cre;ane Wtitin~, 19 Unnersity`Place. Room 219 - New York. NY 100(13-4556 Telephone: (212) 998-8816 FAX: (212)995-4864

May 14, 2004

Dear Members of the Graduate Creative Writing Program, I'm delighted to welcome you to the 2004-2005 academic year at NYU's Graduate Creative Writing Program--both those of you who are entering the program this fall and those who are returning. I speak for myself and for all the faculty when I say that we greatly look forward to working with you this year. Our hope is to provide a community that helps you devote yourself wholeheartedly to your writing. We are committed to supporting you fully toward that end.

Below you will find information about the coming year at NYU. You will also find various forms enclosed, which you will need to fill out and return to us in the next few weeks. PLEASE NOTE ALL DEADLINES CAREFULLY; these are important dates that must be observed by everyone. If you have any questions about these forms or about registration, please contact Danielle Nigro-Bullock, the Creative Writing Program's Administrative Secretary, at 212-998-8816 or at [email protected]. You may also contact Russell Carmony, the CWP's Program Coordinator, at 212-998-7584 or at [email protected]. If you have any questions about housing or financial aid, you may contact our representative in Graduate Enrollment Services, King Fung-Shelley, at 212-998-8056 or at king. [email protected]. And of course, I hope you'll feel free to contact me anytime, with any questions, no matter how small they may seem, at 212-998-8806 or at [email protected].

The fall term begins on Tuesday, September 7, 2004 and ends on Wednesday, December 8, 2004. Permanent Faculty E.L. Doctorow Galway Kinnell Panic Marshall Sharon 0ldc Program Director A1efsea Hmninerle

Orientation and Welcome Reception for New and Returning Students An orientation will be held for all new Creative Writing Students on Tuesday, September 7, from 2 to 4 pin, and from 4 to 6 pm we invite all new and returning students to join us for a welcome reception. At the orientation we will provide a range of information on the CWP and several current students will join us to discuss our outreach projects (which are described below) as well as our literaryjoumal, Washington Square. The orientation and reception will take place at NYU's Ireland House, One Washington Mews (the entrance is on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square Park North and 8th Street).

CWP Faculty During the 2004-2005 academic year, Creative Writing Program workshops in poetry will be led by Kimiko Hahn, Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, and Tom Sleigh. The Craft of Poetry class will be taught by Edward Hirsch in the fall and by Phillis Levin in the spring. Fiction workshops will be taught by Breyten Breytenbach, Nicholas Christopher, Paule Marshall, Irini Spanidou, Chuck Wachtel, and myself. (Chuck Wachtel's workshop will be a year-long workshop in the novel. You may sign up either for one term or for the full year.) The Craft of Fiction class will be taught by Paule Marshall in the fall and by Chuck Wachtel in the spring.

Galway Kinnell, who founded the CWP in the 1970s, will be retiring in May 2005. Galway has been an enormous presence here at NYU, and he will be greatly missed. The program has been shaped by his leadership and vision and by his extraordinary generosity and brilliance as a teacher. Although he will not teach during the 2004-2005 academic year, he will be available for occasional office hours and meetings with students. I hope you will take advantage of his availability and arrange to meet with him. He's a special poet, a special teacher, and a special man, and you might be surprised by how much you can learn about writing from one or two conversations with him. Enclosed in this packet you will find faculty biographies. Books by our faculty are available for you to read in our lounge and are also available in NYU's Bobst Library. Please note that all students are expected to take at least one Craft course during their course of study in the program. Students pursuing the MFA degree may take as many as four Craft classes provided they are taught by four different instructors. Room assignments for workshops and Craft classes will be posted in the CWP lounge at the beginning of the term.

Registration--Very Important Summer Deadlines!

Registration in a creative writing workshop is a two-part process. First you must fill out the Workshop Preference Form included in this packet and return it to Russell Carmony. This form must be received by him no later than Friday, June 11. (You can mail or fax this form to Russell; the fax number here is 212-995-4864. You can also let Russell know of your preferences by sending them to him via email. His email address is given above.) We try to give all students their first preference, but when this is not possible, we assign workshops according to seniority: students registering for their fourth semester are given their first choice, and so on. In addition, we will try to ensure a mix of first and second-year students in each class. To find out which workshop you have been assigned to, you will need to call or e-mail Russell between Thursday, June 17 and Friday, June 25. Russell will then provide you with an access code, which you will need in order to register.

Once you have your access codes, you can register over the phone by calling TorchTone (212-995-4747). You may also register online at www.albert.nyu.edu or in person at 25 W. 4th Street. If you are registering for a Craft course, you must follow the same steps outlined above. A Craft Course Preference Form is enclosed.

Registration for fall electives is now open, so if you wish to take a class outside of the Creative Writing Program this fall, you may register for the class immediately, via TorchTone or online. (You do not need an access code to register for most university classes. If an access code is required you will need to obtain that code directly from the department offering the course.) You can view a complete listing of graduate courses offered at NYU this fall at www.nyu.edu/registrar. You may also consult the NYU Directory of Courses, which can be picked up in the Creative Writing Program, Graduate Enrollment Services or information centers around campus, for a list of all university graduate classes and for registration instructions. Many departments offer detailed descriptions of their courses; the English Department keeps a binder near the Graduate Secretary's desk. Also, we are enclosing a list of other schools at NYU that offer elective courses that might be of interest to you if you are pursuing an MFA. Remember: all electives must be 4 credit, graduate level classes. (Some graduate classes in other schools are only 3 credit classes.) If you have any questions about your class schedule or course options, please feel free to contact me.

If you register for an elective course other than a Craft class or an English Department course, you must also fill out a CWP Elective Permission Form and submit it to me at the start of the term. That form is included in this packet.

Please be certain to be fully registered by Friday, August 20 so that your aid and/or loan package is processed in due time. You have until September 14 to add or drop a course without penalty. Keep in mind that you are charged registration fees for adding or dropping a course after the first week of classes! You are also charged registration fees if you register for a course and drop that course before the first week of classes. Registration fees are non-refundable.

Two additional dates to keep in mind: September 21 is the last date to register via TorchTone. September 28 is the last day to drop/add without a W (withdrawal) appearing on your transcript. Financial Aid (Loans)/Departmental Fellowships It is especially important that you register for your two classes by August 20 if you will be receiving any financial aid next year, such as fellowship awards or student loans. If you have questions about financial aid you can call the Financial Aid Office at 212-9984170. The Financial Aid Office should be able to inform you of the date you can expect to receive your first refund check (the money left over after your tuition has been paid). In order for the university to process your aid package you must be a registered student. Unlike other graduate students at NYU, for whom a full-time courseload consists of twelve credits, Creative Writing Students are considered full-time when they are registered for eight credits (two classes); this is in recognition of our students' need for time to write. Because of your special status within the university you are required to complete the Full-Time Equivalency Form (enclosed) to confirm that you are eligible for aid. Please fill out and return the form (indicating whether you are a full-time or part-time student) to Russell by June 11, 2004. Also, if you are a full-time student, please be sure to make your full-time status clear when you are filling out forms for financial aid. (We emphasize this because the Financial Aid Office occasionally needs to be reminded that two classes per semester constitutes a full-time courseload in our program.)

Students receiving departmental fellowships and/or stipends in the fall can retrieve their checks from Graduation Enrollment Services (GES), located at 1/2 Fifth Avenue. The first stipend checks should be ready on September 15. Larger fellowships are paid out in several installments throughout the course of the year. To find out when your check will be ready, and how the award will be paid out, please contact King Fung-Shelley in GES at 212-998-8056. If you have any other questions about these fellowships, please speak with me directly. A reference area with information on outside graduate student scholarships and fellowships is located at GES, 1/2 Fifth Avenue, and all students are welcome to use those resources when researching funding sources for graduate school.

Advisement During each semester of study in the Creative Writing Program, your workshop instructor will serve as your creative writing advisor. This means that you will have rotating advisement each term. During your course of study at NYU, the program director works in tandem with the faculty and serves as your academic advisor. I therefore encourage all students to meet with me early in the academic year to discuss the curriculum and your individual course of study at NYU as well as other matters of relevance, including fellowship support, internships, work opportunities, etc. Teaching Assisiantships Teaching positions in undergraduate creative writing are available to many of our students during their second year in the program. Teaching Assistants are paid approximately $4,000 to teach one class in either the fall or spring term. Applications will be made available to all first-year students in December for teaching positions in 2005-2006.

2004-2005 Teaching Assistants The CWP will be holding an orientation session for all of our students who are teaching this fall. This is a mandatory meeting and will take place on Wednesday, September 1 at noon in the CWP Conference Room on the 2nd floor at 19 University Place (Room 224). Please remember to submit copies of your syllabus to me prior to your first session of class. Also, if you will be teaching undergraduate creative writing during either semester of this academic year, please note that there will be a university-wide orientation session for TAs on Tuesday, August 31. TAs should be receiving a packet of information about this orientation directly from the Teaching Assistant Training Program.

M.A./M.F.A. Degrees The Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU offers a choice between a Master of Arts Degree in English Literature with a Concentration in Creative Writing or a Master of Fine Arts Degree. I'm enclosing a page listing course requirements for each of these degree programs. Please review that information carefully and contact me if you have any questions.

Foreign Language Proficiency Exam If you elect to pursue the M.A. Degree in English Literature with a Concentration in Creative Writing, you are required to pass a foreign language proficiency examination. The exam is composed of two to three paragraphs that must be translated into English in two hours with the aid of a bilingual dictionary. It is best to take the test as soon as possible in the course of your study. An application must first be filed in the Office of Student Affairs and Academic Services, 1/2 Fifth Avenue. The cost of the exam is $25, which may be paid by check or money order (cash is not accepted). The fall semester exam will be held on October 29. The application is due by October 4.

Thesis Enclosed you will find a page with details about the thesis requirements. Your thesis advisor is generally your last workshop instructor (i.e. the instructor of your fourth and final workshop in the program). It may be possible to choose a professor other than your workshop instructor as long as you receive approval rrom myseit ana the instructor in advance. Please note that your thesis is intended to be a compilation of work presented in workshops throughout your time in the program; it is not a project to be written in its entirety during your final term. Your thesis advisor should be approached at the time of the first class meeting to discuss your tutorial schedule for the term.

For those who are graduating in January 2005, the deadline for thesis submission (two copies of the signed, bound thesis due to the program director) is Thursday, December 9, 2004.

Graduating Students At least four months before the date of your graduation, you must apply to graduate by calling TorchTone at 212-995-4747. Graduation Services will then send you a copy of your "Graduation Checksheet," which summarizes your complete graduate record, including any requirements that you haven't yet satisfied or any monies you might still owe to the Bursar's office. It is essential that you resolve any discrepancies or problems indicated on your checksheet immediately so that you are eligible to graduate on schedule. The final date to apply for January Graduation is Monday, October 4. The Reading Series Each year the Creative Writing Program brings distinguished writers of fiction and poetry to NYU to read from their work and to meet with our students. While the readings are free and open to the entire NYU community as well as the general public, the series is presented first and foremost for the benefit of our students. (Many of the writers who appear in our reading series meet our students for master classes prior to the reading.) The reading series flier will be in your mailbox at the start of the term. In addition to this general reading series, students from the CWP organize a student reading series. Information on the fall schedule will be distributed at the start of the term.

CWP Outreach Programs *Goldwater Writing Workshop For 19 years, CWP students have had the opportunity to take part in an ongoing writing workshop at Goldwater Hospital, a 900-bed city hospital for the severely physically disabled on Roosevelt Island. A number of stipend-paying teaching positions are available each semester, and volunteers are also needed to take part in this important project as teaching assistants. Student teachers receive $1,500 per term. This year, the student coordinator for the project is Lauren Rooker, a second-year poetry student. A letter from Lauren is enclosed, as is an application for both teaching and assistant positions. In order to apply for a fellowship, please fill out the enclosed application and return it to the Creative Writing Program by Tuesday, September 7. If you would like to contact Lauren this summer, she can be reached at [email protected].

*The Starworks Teaching Project Through the Starworks Teaching Project, CWP students teach writing to children in hospitals and to learning-disabled students at Stuyvesant High School All of our students are eligible to apply to become Starworks Fellows. Fellows teach one day a week and receive a stipend each term of $1,500. In addition, one Fellow teaches two days a week at St. Mary's Hospital in Queens and receives a stipend of $8,000. In order to apply for a fellowship, please fill out the enclosed application and return it to the CWP by Tuesday, September 7. Indicate whether you wish to be considered for all Starworks positions or only for the St. Mary's fellowship. Please note that the travel time to St. Mary's from Manhattan is about 40 minutes.

The MCC Prison Writing Project: Luna Rosa Veronica Mitchell, a recent graduate of the CWP, oversees a program at the Manhattan Correctional Center where CWP students and alumni lead a writing workshop for women inmates. If you are interested in Luna Rosa, please contact Veronica at 212741-1578 or at [email protected].

Washington Square: The Literary Journal of the NYU CWP The literary magazine of the CWP, Washington Square is staffed and directed by Creative Writing graduate students. I encourage you to join its editorial staff. These positions (which rotate each year) provide an excellent opportunity to learn about the production of a literary journal. There are many ways to get involved. Enclosed is a letter from Maria Filippone, the Editor for 2004-2005. Both new and continuing students are encouraged to apply for staff and committee positions. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Maria directly at [email protected].

Work Resources I know that many of you will be looking for part-time work this year while you are at NYU. Information about resources to help you find work and other sources of funding is enclosed.

Personal Information Sheet It is essential that the CWP and the university alway have your most recent mailing address and phone number, so it is therefore important that you return the enclosed information sheet to Danielle by June 11. To update your mailing information with the University online at www.albert.nyu.edu or at any NYUView kiosk on campus. The program uses email to distribute memos, program announcements and general information to students in an efficient and timely manner throughout the academic year,. Therefore it is essential that all students inform Danielle of their email addresses. NYU provides free email addresses to all students. To register for your e-mail address, go to www.home.nyu.edu and click on the link to activate. NYU also provides free 24-hour access to computers at Student Computer Terminal Centers located around the campus.

CWP students are assigned mailboxes in the department and should check them weekly for additional program announcements.

All students should obtain an NYU ID Card as soon as possible in the new term. This card will allow you access to the library, the gym and other venues on campus. (See www.nyu.edu/nyucard.) Again, I hope you won't hesitate to call or email me if you have any questions. In the meantime, on behalf of Melissa Hammerle, the CWP's director, who is on leave, and on behalf of the faculty and staff here, I wish you the very best as you prepare for the coming year at NYU.

Sincerely, Brian Morton Acting Director enc.: CWP Calendar Faculty Bios Workshop Preference Form Craft Preference Form Full-Time Equivalency Form Dept. of English Class Schedule Elective and Independent Study Permission Form Goldwater Letter and Application Washington Square Letter Starworks Application Student Information Form Thesis Requirements/ Guidelines M.A./M.F.A. Description Employment and Funding Resource List NYLT Information Campus Map Creative Writing Program Fall 2004 Important dates

Friday, June 11 Workshop/Craft Preference Sheets due to CWT. Full-Time Equivalency Forms due to CWT.

Thursday, June 17 Workshops Assignments Posted and Access Codes Available.

Friday, August 20 You should be registered for all classes.

Wednesday, September 1 TA Practicum Meeting for Fall Teachers, noon, 19 University Place, Creative Writing Lounge (Room 224).

Tuesday, September 7 CWP Orientation for New Students, 2 - 4 p.m., Ireland House, One Washington Mews, entrance on 5'J' Ave. Welcome Reception for all CWT students and faculty 4 - 6 p.m., Ireland House. First Day of Fall Classes.

Tuesday, September 14 Last day to add/drop a course without penalty.

Tuesday, September 21 Last day to Register by TorchTone. Last day to drop courses for a 70% refund.

Tuesday, September 28 Last day to drop courses for a 55% refund; last day to drop ivithoutgrade of LY. Wednesday, September 29 Payment Deadline for tuition and fees.

Monday, October 4 Application for Foreign Language Exam due (for MA candidates only). Final date to apply for January Graduation.

Tuesday, October 5 Last day to drop courses for a 25% refund.

Friday, October 29 Foreign Language Exam.

Thursday-Friday November 25-26 Thanksgiving Recess

Wednesday, December 8 Last Day of Classes

Thursday, December 9 Thesis Submission Deadline for January Graduation. c:\cwp\fall calendar2004 Creative Writing Program Faculty Biographies 2004-2005

Fiction Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, novelist, playwright, and painter. The recipient of numerous international literary awards, Professor Breytenbach has published 30 books of poetry, as well as several novels, story compilations, essays and dramatic works including Memory of Snow and of Dust, Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel, and Judas Eye. In the late sixties he joined the exiled activists of the African National Congress in Paris. In 1975 he was arrested in South Africa and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was released in 1982 and returned to Paris. His highly acclaimed nonfiction books of his South African odyssey include A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Return to Paradise, and Dog Heart: A Memoir. His most recent dramatic piece, The Play, premiered in South Africa in the spring of 2001. His latest collection of poems is Lady One. He is the Distinguished Global Professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

Nicholas Christopher has published four novels, The Soloist, Veronica, A Trip to the Stars, and most recently, Franklin Flyer, and several books of poetry including S Degrees and Other Poems, In the Year of the Comet, Desperate Characters: A Novella in Verse & Other Poems, A Short History of the Island of Butterflies, On Tour with Rita, and Atomic Fields: Two Poems. He is also the author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Paule Marshall is the author of five novels: Daughters; Praisesong for the Widow; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; Brown Girl, Brownstones; and most recently The Fisher King. She has also published two collections of short fiction, Soul Clap Hands and Sing; and Reena and Other Stories, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, including The Reader; Literature: A Contemporary Introduction; and Calling the Wind: A 20th Century Anthology of African-American Short Stories. A MacArthur Fellow and past winner of the Dos Passos Prize for Literature, Professor Marshall has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of at Berkeley, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and Yale University. She was designated a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1994. Professor Marshall holds the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Literature and Culture.

Brian Morton is the author of the novels The Dylanist, Starting Out in the Evening, finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award, and most recently A Window Across the River. He is the recipient of the Koret Jewish Book Award for fiction, the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He has taught at the New School for Social Research, Sarah Lawrence College and at New York University. Irini Spanidou is the author of two highly acclaimed novels, Fear, which takes readers to Greece in the 1950s, and into the spartan military world that has shaped a 13-year-old girl, as she moves fearfully yet with intelligence and nerve toward womanhood; and of God's Snake, which also provides readers with a passionate look at the past decades in Greece. She has taught creative writing at New York University, Sarah Lawrence College and Brooklyn College.

Chuck Wachtel's books include Because We Are Here, a collection of short stories and novellas, and the novels Joe the Engineer, which won the PEN/Hemingway Citation, and The Gates. He is also the author of The Coriolis Effect and, most recently, What Happens to Me, a collection of poems and short prose. He has taught at Purdue University, Sarah Lawrence College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is currently a visiting writer on the faculty at NYU. Poetry

Kimiko Hahn is the author of Air Pocket, Earshot, which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award, The Unbearable Heart, winner of an American Book Award, Volatile, Mosquito and Ant, and The Artist's Daughter. In 1995 she wrote ten portraits of women for a two-hour HBO special entitled Ain't Nuthin But a She-Thing. She is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a Lila Wallace- Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

Edward Hirsch is the author of six books of poems: Lay Back the Darkness, On Love; Earthly Measures, The Night Parade, Wild Gratitude, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and For the Sleepwalkers, which received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from The Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a Lila Wall ace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. He has been a professor of English at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Hirsch is currently the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Phillis Levin is the author of three poetry collections, Temples and Fields, The Afterimage, and Mercury. She is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. She has been the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Grant, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and is an Elector of the American Poets Corner of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She has taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, The New School University and is currently Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Hofstra University.

Philip Levine is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Not This Pig, Red Dust, They Feed They Lion, 1933, The Names of the Lost, Ashes: Poems New and Old, 7 Years from Nowhere, One for the Roses, What Work Is, for which he received the National Book Award for Poetry, and The Simple Truth, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is The Mercy. Mr. Levine has also been the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. For over thirty years he taught English and Creative Writing at California State University in Fresno and for several years he has been a distinguished visiting professor in the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

Sharon Olds, professor and permanent faculty member in the Creative Writing Program, is a previous director of the Program. Her first book of poetry, Satan Says, received the San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Her second book, The Dead and the Living, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of The Gold Cell, The Father, The Wellspring, and Blood, Tin, Straw. Her most recent book is The Unswept Room. She received a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Grant in 1993, part of which was designated for the NYU workshop program at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island. In 1997, she received the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award. From 1998-2000 she was the New York State Poet Laureate.

Tom Sleigh is the author of After One, Waking, The Chain, and The Dreamhouse. His latest collection of poems is Far Side of the Earth. His play Rubber premiered in New York in 2002. He has won the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. He teaches at . page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 page 9