Creative Writing
From the Director of Creative Writing , Ed Falco
Welcome to Creative Writing. If you’re interested in writing short or long fiction, poems, plays, creative nonfiction, fiction for young people, or experimental writing that defies genres and categories, you’re in the right place.
The faculty in our program are accomplished writers with publications that fit all those categories. Our writer-teachers have published scores of books between them, had plays produced here and abroad, been in the forefront of experimental, multi-media writing, and won or been finalists for major prizes, including the Whitbread Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Creative writing students, especially, are a talented and interesting lot. Our poetry, playwriting, fiction, fiction for young people, and creative nonfiction classes attract young writers with creative imaginations and a love of language. One of our former undergraduates, Robin Allnut, currently teaches as an instructor in the program, after having earned his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Another ex-undergrad, Amy Bryant, just published her first novel with Harper-Collins. It’s titled Polly, and part of it is set here in Blacksburg.
I’m biased, but I feel that creative writing students comprise one of the most interesting communities on campus. In addition to our faculty, our students, and our classes, the creative writing program offers a variety of campus readings by renowned poets, playwrights, essayists, and fiction writers. In the past our visiting writers have included Raymond Carver and Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcott and Toni Morrison.
There’s an old saw that says you can’t teach someone to be a writer. Personally, I disagree. I think you can teach a person to write—and I know for sure that we can all, faculty and students alike, have a good and rewarding time trying.
Ed Falco