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NYU Creative Writing Program

New york, united states.

The Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University has distinguished itself for more than three decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The program enables students to develop their craft while working closely with some of today's finest poets and writers. Students also have an opportunity to enjoy America's most literary terrain, benefiting from the extensive cultural resources of the University and New York City.

Each year the faculty selects a talented group of writers and offers them rigorous and supportive teaching. Most candidates take one workshop and one other course each semester and complete the program in two years; only one writing workshop may be taken per semester. In the final semester, students present a creative thesis consisting of a substantial body of finished work in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

The NYU Creative Writing program provides an environment which enables students to work seriously at their craft and, through outreach programs, the literary journal Washington Square, and public readings, bring the art of writing to the larger community of New York City. This is a serious community of writers engaged in an exceptional program of study.

Washington Square is the literary review of New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. A biannual literary magazine, it is staffed and edited by CWP students. It includes work by established writers as well as NYU alumni. It sponsors a student reading series open to the public and enables students to experience working on a literary magazine in all phases of its production.

NYU's Creative Writing Program offers a prestigious literary reading series, free and open to the public. (Support is provided by NY Community Trust, the NY State Council on the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., Poetry Society of America, the NYU Book Center, and many more.) Guest writers are invited to meet informally with students during their visits. Recent guests have included André Aciman, Kaveh Akbar, Donald Antrim, Amy Bloom, Jericho Brown, Anne Carson, Alexander Chee, Susan Choi, Sandra Cisneros, Lydia Davis, Stuart Dybek, Mark Doty, Deborah Eisenberg, Melissa Febos, Joshua Ferris, Rivka Galchen, Jorie Graham, Terrance Hayes, Marie Howe, Etgar Keret, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rachel Kushner, Dorothea Lasky, Victor LaValle, Kiese Laymon, Jonathan Lethem, Sam Lipsyte, Patricia Lockwood, Layli Long Soldier, Carmen Maria Machado, James McBride, Dinaw Mengestu, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Eileen Myles, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Morgan Parker, Carl Phillips, Claudia Rankine, Karen Russell, Tracy K. Smith, Gary Shteyngart, Edmund White, and Colson Whitehead.

Students may apply for fellowships that involve teaching in literary outreach programs. These programs, which have become national models for excellence in literary outreach, include The Starworks Fellowship Program, The Goldwater Writing Workshop, and the Veterans Writing Workshop.

Contact Information

58 West 10th Street Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House New York New York, United States 10011 Phone: 2129988816 Email: [email protected] https://as.nyu.edu/cwp.html

Minor / Concentration in Creative Writing +

Undergraduate program director.

The Minor in Creative Writing offers undergraduates the opportunity to hone their skills while exploring the full range of literary genres including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The Minor is a sixteen-point credit load consisting of three to four creative writing courses. V39.0815 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction & Poetry (or V39.9815 Creative Writing, or equivalent) is generally the foundational course, to be followed by twelve additional points in the form of three higher-level workshops (Intermediate/Advanced/Master Class; four points each) or one higher-level workshop combined with one of our summer intensives (Writers in New York or Writers in Paris; eight points each).

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Graduate program director.

The Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University has distinguished itself for more than two decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The program enables students to develop their craft while working closely with some of today's finest poets and writers. Students also have an opportunity to enjoy America's most literary terrain, benefiting from the extensive cultural resources of the University and New York City.

Washington Square Review is the literary review of New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. A biannual literary magazine, it is staffed and edited by CWP students. It includes work by established writers as well as NYU alumni. It sponsors a student reading series open to the public and enables students to experience working on a literary magazine in all phases of its production.

NYU's Creative Writing Program offers a prestigious literary reading series, free and open to the public. (Support is provided by NY Community Trust, the NY State Council on the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., the NYU Book Center, and many more.) Guest writers are invited to meet informally with students during their visits. Recent guests have included Andre Aciman, Fred Moten, Claire Messud, Carl Phillips, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Ladan Osman, Jenny Offill, Susan Choi, Khaled Mattawa, Layli Long Soldier, Chang rae-Lee, Curtis Sittenfeld, Pamela Sneed, Patricia Lockwood, Melissa Febos, Rachel Cusk, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, Eliot Weinberger, Douglas Kearney, Kaveh Akbar, and Maggie Nelson, among many others.

Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU. 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; Blood, Tin, Straw; The Unswept Room; Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980- 2002; One Secret Thing; Odes; and most recently, Arias, which was a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2012, her collection Stag's Leap was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. 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. Professor Olds holds the Erich Maria Remarque Professorship at NYU.

https://as.nyu.edu/cwp/graduate/faculty.html

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. Her first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers' First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won The Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Award (Eurasia Section) and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Swing Time, was published in 2016. She is the editor of an anthology of short stories entitled The Book Of Other People and has published several collections of short stories including Martha and Hanwell (2005), and Grand Union (2019), as well as several collections of essays including Changing My Mind (2009), Feel Free: Essays (2018), and the most recent Intimations: Six Essays (2020). She was formerly the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine. Zadie Smith is a graduate of Cambridge University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She became a tenured professor of fiction at NYU in 2010.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestselling novel Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. His other novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am. He is also the author of the nonfiction books, Eating Animals, and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest,” and was included in The New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list of writers. He lives in Brooklyn.

Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. With Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann he wrote the secret book Gentle Reader! It is not for sale. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem They All Seemed Asleep in 2008. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994.

His poems have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many journals. He's received the Hopwood Award for poetry and a Pushcart prize, and was selected as a National Poetry Series winner, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Recently he has participated in residencies/ performances at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle).

Matthew Rohrer was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in Oklahoma, and attended universities in Ann Arbor, Dublin, and Iowa City. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.

Darin Strauss

Darin Strauss is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than it Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir, Half a Life, the comic-book series, Olivia Twist, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story (Random House, 2020). A recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Library Association Award, and numerous other prizes, Strauss has written screenplays for Disney, Gary Oldman, and Julie Taymor. His work has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries, and he is a Clinical Professor at the NYU Creative Writing Program.

Deborah Landau

Deborah Landau (Director) is the author of four collections of poetry: Soft Targets (winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award), The Uses of the Body and The Last Usable Hour, all Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her other awards include a Jacob K Javits Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition was published by Valparaiso Edici?ones in 2017. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, and The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She is a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition is forthcoming from Valparaiso Ediciones.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, selected for The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English.

Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she was a Javits Fellow and received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at New York University, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and daughter.

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander's most recent novel is kaddish.com. He is also the author of the Dinner at the Center of the Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, as well as the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases (all published by Knopf/Vintage). He was the 2012 recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for What We Talk About. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Vogue, and Esquire, among other places. His work has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous editions of The Best American Short Stories, including 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Translated into twenty-two languages, Englander was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He’s been a fellow at the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and at The American Academy of Berlin. In 2012 Englander's translation of the New American Haggadah (edited by Jonathan Safran Foer) was published by Little Brown. He also co-translated Etgar Keret's Suddenly A Knock at the Door and Fly Already, published by FSG. His play The Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at the Public Theater in 2012, and his new play, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of a 2019 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, and the 2020 Blanche and Irving Laurie Theatre Visions Fund Prize, was commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater and was supposed to be running at The Old Globe in San Diego right now—sigh. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University and lives with his family in Toronto.

Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin 2018) and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). To Float In The Space Between was winner of the Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin won the Hurston/Wright 2019 Award for Poetry and was a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, the 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Hayes is a Professor of English at New York University.

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has published numerous essays and memoirs, novellas, plays, children's and young adult fiction, and dozens of works of short fiction, poetry, and fiction, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), as well as the New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger) and The Gravedigger’s Daughter, A Book of American Martyrs, and the most recent, Hazards of Time Travel, My Life as a Rat, and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. Her most recent works, published with HarperCollins, include the poetry collection American Melancholy (2021) and a collection of stories The (Other) You (2021). Her next novel Breathe will be published in August 2021. In 2013, she received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection for Black Dahlia and White Swan. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Catherine Barnett

Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent collection, Human Hours, was published in 2018 by Graywolf Press and received the Believer Book Award in Poetry. She is also the author of Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Alice James Books, 2004), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012), which received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for an outstanding second book. Barnett has taught at Barnard, Princeton, and Hunter, and is currently a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published to major acclaim in 1993. It has been translated into thirty-four languages and made into a feature film. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Middlesex also won the WELT-Literaturpreis of Germany and the Great Lakes Book Award, and it was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, France’s Prix Medici, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His third novel, The Marriage Plot (FSG, 2011), was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and was named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Republic, Publisher's Weekly, and numerous other publications. His latest book, the story collection Fresh Complaint (FSG, 2017), was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, The Guardian, NPR, and others. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review, and Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists.” Eugenides is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. He taught creative writing at Princeton for many years before joining the NYU Creative Writing Program as a tenured full professor and the Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Professor in American Letters. Eugenides has been inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

http://as.nyu.edu/cwp/graduate/Faculty1.html

Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award, it is a Barack Obama Summer Reading selection and a New York Times Editors’ choice. Her third novel, A Separation, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori. She is also the author of Gone To The Forest and The Longshot, both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages and is being adapted for film and television. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.

Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru is a Clinical Professor in the Creative Writing Program. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. He is the author of five novels, including White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, One Book New York, the Prix du Livre Inter étranger, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His latest novel Red Pill was published in 2020 by Knopf. He is also the author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men and a short story collection, Noise. His novella Memory Palace was presented as an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, Bookforum, October and Frieze. He has written screenplays, radio drama, and experimental work using field recordings and voice-to-text software. He has taught at Hunter College and Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is a past deputy president of English PEN, a judge for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and has been a frequent presenter, interviewer and guest on television and radio.

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is a recipient of the 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, and the author of six collections including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March of 2020 at The Shed, NYC, and The White Card, and the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. She also co-produces a video series, “The Situation,” alongside John Lucas, and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. In 2016, she co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). In addition to the MacArthur, her numerous awards and honors include the Forward Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Her most recent book is Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf, 2020). A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program as a tenured Professor in Fall 2021.

Publications & Presses +

Washington Square Review

Visiting Writers Program +

Nick Laird, Nadifa Mohamed, Ocean Vuong, Marie-Helene Bertino, Kiran Desai, Alex Dimitrov, Uzodinma Iweala, David Lipsky, Leigh Newman, Idra Novey, Meghan O'Rourke, Julie Orringer, Jana Prikryl, Jess Row, Nicole Sealey, Parul Sehgal, Brandon Taylor, Hannah Tinti, Phillip B. Williams

Reading Series +

NYU Reading Series ( http://as.nyu.edu/cwp/reading-series.html )

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Creative Writing Program

Bachelor of Arts in Humanities

Visionaries Wanted

Stories impact us in profound ways. Good stories can inspire and touch our souls; they bring freshness, life, understanding and clarity to our human experience. They can draw us closer to God and to Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. They are at the core of the entertainment which shapes our culture and society. Under the guidance of experienced writers, JPCatholic students study the discipline and craft of powerfully telling stories for multiple mediums, whether that be a novel, short story, or screenplay.

St. John Paul the Great, a writer and artist himself, wrote extensively encouraging artists to develop their “divine spark”, to create works whose excellence communicates truth and beauty. Many career paths after graduation are available to students in the Creative Writing emphasis, but they are all oriented to contributing to the common good.

“Society needs artists...they not only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service in favor of the common good.”

POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II

Creative Writing Curriculum

Creative Writing Core

All Creative Writing students will take a well-rounded foundation of courses in areas like short fiction, poetry, prose fiction, and non-fiction.

Elective Tracks

Screenwriting

Immerse yourself in opportunities to write for film and television, with the chance to pitch your screenplay to our Feature Film Program.

Study landmark novels, contemporary fiction, and works like Lord of the Rings and The Brothers Karamazov that bridge literature and theology.

Learn more about marketing and publishing, with the opportunity to lead a campus creative arts journal.

General Education

Theology & Philosophy

Impact culture for Christ and grow in faith and understanding through a rich sequence of Scripture based Theology courses and Philosophy courses.

Prepare yourself for a career in writing with skills in marketing, project management, and entrepreneurial thinking.

Study the human condition by actively engaging in an exploration of literature, art, culture, politics, economics, and more.

Envision your future at JPCatholic

Submit your story to the Feature Film Program

JPCatholic’s annual Feature Film Program gives students the opportunity to pitch their scripts to be developed into a full-length movie.

Publish Your Work in Our Student Journal

Our student-published journal Pelican’s Plume provides you with opportunities to share your work in creative writing, poetry, illustration, and more.

Diverse Elective Opportunities

Whether you are interested in poetry, short stories, non-fiction writing, screenwriting, adaptation, or novels, you’ll have the chance to explore and develop your unique voice. You can also delve into electives from our other programs such as illustration, theatre, film, and more.

Our Authentically Catholic Community

Our campus is a place where students can grow both professionally and spiritually. We’re a unique community of artists and innovators, centered around our faith in Jesus Christ and the beauty of the Catholic faith. Immerse yourself in an abundance of opportunities for spiritual growth, including Daily Mass, Confession, Adoration, Rosary, Retreats, and Service Projects.

Our Small Campus Environment

With a total student body under 300, JPCatholic offers a warm, tight-knit campus community. Foster lifelong friendships, form creative partnerships, and surround yourself with a supportive environment that encourages your growth in both virtue and artistic excellence.

Generous Scholarships Available

At JPCatholic, we’re committed to making a quality Catholic education affordable for every student. 99% of our students receive a scholarship, and packages take both need and merit into account. Our personalized financial counseling process assists you in identifying all awards you might be eligible for.

Graduate in 3 Years

Our unique academic model prepares students for the real-world pace of professional life in the industry, with a focus on hands-on projects, internships, and portfolio preparation. The program is structured on a year-round quarter system, and you graduate with your Bachelors Degree in just 12 quarters. Each quarter is 10 weeks long, with about 3 weeks of break between each quarter.

Alumni Success

JPCatholic alumni have found success in a variety of paths, ranging from Hollywood to independent media organizations, and from large corporations to nonprofits to their own entrepreneurial start-ups. View our placement rate and alumni jobs by clicking below.

Located in San Diego County

John Paul the Great Catholic University is centered in north county San Diego, just a 35-minute drive from downtown in America's Finest City. Southern California is famous for its fantastic weather, beautiful beaches and mountains, and bustling metropolitan areas. Our campus is just 15 miles from the beach, a short trip by car or train. And with Los Angeles and Hollywood within striking distance, students have even more opportunities for internships and networking.

Meet the Faculty

With small class sizes and mentorship, professors are able to provide individualized training. They bring decades of experience and unique perspectives from varied backgrounds.

Christopher Riley

Professor of Film

Chris is one of the most authoritative figures for the official screenplay format of Hollywood. He is a screenwriter whose first film, After The Truth, an award-winning courtroom thriller written with his wife, Kathleen Riley, sparked international controversy when it was released in Germany. Other credits include 25 To Life, a dramatic thriller for Junction Entertainment and Touchstone Pictures; The Other White House, a political thriller for Sean Connery's Fountainbridge Films and Intermedia; Aces, an action-adventure romance for Paramount Pictures; and a screen adaptation of the book Actual Innocence for Mandalay Television Pictures and the Fox television network.

A veteran of the Warner Bros. script department, Riley is the author of The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style . From 2005 through 2008, he served as director of the acclaimed Act One Writing Program in Hollywood, which trains Christians for careers as writers and executives in film and TV. Chris holds a BS in Telecommunications from Oral Roberts University and was a National Merit Scholar.

Dr. Julie Anne Stevens

Adjunct Professor of Humanities

Julie Anne has her PhD from Trinity College Dublin. She publishes and lectures on Irish literature and the visual arts, nineteenth and twentieth century Irish and American women’s writing, illustrated children’s books, and short fiction. She took early retirement in August 2021 from Dublin City University to relocate to the United States, and returned to JPCatholic where she had been a visiting professor from 2017-2019. As a tenured lecturer in the School of English, DCU, she served as a convenor for both Research (2015-17) and Teaching and Learning (2020-21). She also served as the Director for the Centre for Children’s Literature and Culture (2009-17). During this time, she was treasurer of the Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (ISSCL) and in 2013 she accepted an invitation to join a panel of judges for the Children’s Books Ireland Awards. She currently is part of the team for the Irish Women’s Writing (1880-1920) Network and one of the editors for their forthcoming double issue of English Studies (2022-23) She published The Irish Scene in Somerville and Ross in 2007 and co-edited The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century in 2010. Somerville Press published her latest book, Two Irish Girls in Bohemia: The Drawings and Writings of E. Œ. Somerville and Martin Ross , in 2017.

Steve Kramp

Professor & Chair of Theology and Humanities

Steve is a theologian and prize-winning poet. Prior to coming to JPCatholic he taught courses in writing, literature, and cultural history at a number of universities and colleges, including the University of California, Merced, and the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He holds a BA in English from the University of Oregon, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an MA in Theology and Christian Ministry from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He also worked for three years in youth ministry at a Seattle-area parish.

In his classroom teaching Steve often returns to his primary intellectual interest, which is the intersection of faith practice and artistic practice. In addition to his teaching and administrative service as Humanities Chair at JPCatholic, Steve is currently working on Holy Saturday, a series of long poems. Prof. Steve has received a Mandatum from the Bishop of San Diego as an ecclesial recognition of his posture and commitment to teach Theology always in communion with the Church, and in conformance with the requirements of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Bill Marsilii

Adjunct Professor of Screenwriting

Bill co-wrote Déjà vu - a romantic time-travel thriller, which at the time was the highest-priced spec screenplay of all time after selling to Jerry Bruckheimer and Touchstone Pictures for $5 million. Déjà vu, which starred Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer and Jim Caviezel, grossed more than $180 million worldwide. Marsilii sold 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo to Walt Disney Pictures, and with his Deja Vu partner Terry Rossio, sold Lightspeed, a space adventure to Bruckheimer/Disney. More recently, Marsilii adapted the sci-fi comic Sebastian X for producer Gale Anne Hurd and director Martin Campbell, and sold an original project, Cold, to Lionsgate with Reese Witherspoon attached to star and produce. Marsilii has been a guest lecturer at a wide variety of film and screenwriting programs, including those at UCLA TFT, USC, NYU, and Pepperdine. He has served as a mentor for the Act One Screenwriting Program.

Sheryl Anderson

Visiting Professor of TV Writing

Sheryl is an accomplished author, television writer, and producer with over 20 years of experience. Over the course of her career, Sheryl has written and produced for hit TV shows such as Charmed, Flash Gordon, Ties that Bind , and the Netflix original series Sweet Magnolias . She began her career as a development executive for Grant Tinker's GTG Entertainment where she wrote for half-hour sitcoms Parker Lewis Can't Lose and Dave's World. Sheryl has also published four novels in her Molly Forrester series. In addition to her writing, she has taught for Act One, an instructional program for Christian screenwriters, and for UCLA's Writer's Extension Program.

Robin Murray, PhD

Robin is a classicist whose research focusses on Imperial Rome, early Christianity and ancient philosophy. Her dissertation analyzed the theme of death and death preparation in the Satyrica, an ancient novel by Petronius who, although a friend to the Emperor Nero, was forced to commit suicide by him in 66 A.D. More broadly, she studies the Graeco-Roman world and strives to make it relevant to people of today. She received her PhD in Classics from UC Irvine where she taught classes on the history and literature of ancient Greece and Rome and served as the assistant editor to the Classics journal TAPA ( Transactions of the American Philological Society ). She lives in Northern San Diego with her husband and children.

Megan Jauregui Eccles

Megan writes dark, speculative fiction for young adults and is represented by Laura Galit of LKG Agency. Her writing has appeared in Kelp Journal, Coachella Review, Ladies of the Fright, The Lineup, and Dwarf+Giant. She is editorial assistant and social media manager for Hill Nadell Literary Agency. She holds a BA in Music from the University of San Diego and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert. She lives in San Diego with her husband and four sons.

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Humanities Program Overview

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Story Masters Film Academy is an online education platform founded by screenwriting alumna Tara Stone and two JPCatholic faculty, Prof. Chris Riley and Prof. Nathan Scoggins. Story Masters offers online courses in screenwriting and directing for high school students; JPCatholic has partnered with Story Masters to make these two courses eligible toward transfer credit at JPCatholic.

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