The University of Redlands offers one of the first undergraduate majors in creative writing and is nationally recognized for the quality of its graduates. The program of study is unusually intensive, resembling a Master of Fine Arts curriculum rather than a typical undergraduate program because of the structure and demanding nature of the major, the high profile of our faculty and the classroom practices we employ. We have spent the last several years evaluating and strengthening our program to incorporate a reorganized Visiting Writers Series that brings nationally-recognized artists to campus and to organize a structure for our revitalized literary journal, the Redlands Review. We have adjusted our curriculum to make these activities an integral part of our curriculum, and strengthened our graduation requirements to give students more grounding in literature as well as workshop practice. We meet or exceed all the standards detailed by the Associated Writing programs guidelines for undergraduate creative writing programs and our graduates have distinguished themselves in several fields after leaving Redlands.

1. READING AND ANALYSIS – Engage in questions of justice, value, spirituality and meaning raised by literary texts in sophisticated written and oral responses. 2. CRITICAL THINKING – Practice close reading, make sound interpretive arguments based on textual evidence, and make thinking visible through written and oral responses. 3. INVENTION AND CRAFT – Negotiate the tension between intention, aptitude, and effort, and acknowledge that a similar struggle faces other writers through careful and constructive feedback and self-reflection. 4. CREATIVITY – Refine creativity through repeated cycles of problem-solving, risk-taking and experimentation. 5. TECHNICAL COMPETENCE – Utilize the library and other media resources, when relevant and useful, to the creation of literary writing. Develop the professional habits of a writer: revision, developing community, public reading, and submission for publication. 6. A FINISHED PRODUCT – Produce a portfolio of work, which has progressed beyond the draft of apprentice stage most common in workshop, and can be reasonably called finished. 7. CITIZENSHIP AND SHARED ENDEAVORS – Provide constructive feedback that serves their peers’ intentions.