| by Jim Harms The author, an award-winning poet, is director of the Creative Writing Program in the WVU Department of English. |
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This past April, the Los Angeles Times devoted a great deal of space to answering the question, "Why are so many young people from a generation raised on computer games flocking to a discipline that has changed little since the invention of the printing press?" The discipline under discussion was creative writing. The
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No one needed to tell the folks in WVU's Department of English
to get with the program; creative writing courses have been offered
at WVU for more than 25 years. In that time, several writers
of national importance have emerged from Morgantown, including
the best-selling nove Jayne Anne Phillips, and critically
acclaimed poets Maggie Anderson and Irene McKinney.
In recent years, the Creative Writing Program has picked up steam, first with the implementation of an undergraduate concentration in 1994, and more recently with the department's commitment to expand the graduate program by offering the master of fine arts degree. These decisions build on a strong foundation for creative writing that began with the establishment of a creative writing endowment and the Virginia Butts Sturm Writer-in-Residence program. As a result, the program expects to continue to bring outstanding visiting writers to campus, to join a that in the past has included Pinckney Benedict, Patricia Hampl, David St. John, Lynn Emanuel, Reginald McNight, and Peter Cameron.
Three years ago the Creative Writing Program spawned a summer writers' conference, the West Virginia Writers' Workshop, which is supported by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English. This four-day conference attracts more than 60 participants from all over the country to the WVU campus for a program of readings, workshops, panel discussions, and lectures. Twelve West Virginia high school students are selected each year to receive full scholarships to attend the conference. High school teachers of English are solicited to nominate deserving students for this honor. The conference reflects WVU's commitment to take a central place in the state's literary community, and to continue to nurture the growth of its writers as well as raise the profile of the state itself as a cultural oasis.
There seems little doubt that creative writing will continue to thrive at West Virginia University. The writing faculty includes poets John Flynn and James Harms, fiction writer Gail Adams, and nonfiction writers Kevin Oderman, Ethel Morgan Smith, and Ellesa Clay High. The department expects to add another fiction writer to this within two years.
So how is the question answered? Why are so many flocking to creative writing programs when poetry, literary fiction, and nonfiction seem ever more marginalized in our culture? After all, there's almost no economic utility in a creative writing degree, so why would someone waste time in such classes? The poet and teacher of poetry Richard Hugo once wrote that "a creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters." This was undoubtedly an example of hyperbole on Hugo's part, and as a poet he certainly was entitled to such license. But it does seem likely that something is happening in the creative writing workshop that isn't ordinary. Perhaps it's all the attention students are required to give each other's inner lives, and their own. Perhaps it's the embrace of mystery and magic, the ineffable, the unspeakable. Whatever it is, WVU simply cannot offer enough creative writing classes, which is why the Department of English continues to do everything it can to be a home to young writers.
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