How to Enroll

Most Creative Writing courses are available for direct enrollment in Axess: SimpleEnroll. However, some of our courses may require instructor consent, submitting an application, or completing our Course Preference Form prior to enrolling in the course. When browsing in ExploreCourses, pay special attention to the Notes sections, which will indicate if direct enrollment is available or if an application or our Course Preference Form is required. Instructions for all enrollment processes can be found below.

A variety of Creative Writing courses are available for direct enrollment in Axess: SimpleEnroll. Register for these courses in SimpleEnroll, no additional forms nor separate applications necessary. To view available classes, browse ExploreCourses or our list of courses.

Enrollment can be tricky to navigate. To set yourself up for success each quarter, consider the following:

• Pay your tuition and fees
• Clear any holds blocking your registration
• Review your academic plan of study with an advisor

Other helpful enrollment tools can be found on the Registrar's website.

Remember: If you enroll into a course, then you must attend the first class meeting to secure your spot in the course.

Some Creative Writing courses may require instructor consent to enroll. To request instructor consent for a given course, follow its instructions listed below. When browsing on ExploreCourses, the instructions can also be found in the Notes section of the course.

English 9SF Fight the Future: Speculative Fiction and Social Justice with Shannon Pufahl & Jonah Willihnganz

Fill out the online Google form to request instructor consent:

Winter 2023 Form

English 157H/Oceans 157 Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter with Sara Michas-Martin

Fill out the online Google form to request instructor consent:

Winter 2023 Form

Priority goes to seniors who are declared Creative Writing minors or English majors (then juniors, sophomores, and freshmen). They will be followed by seniors with any other major (then juniors, sophomores, and freshmen).

A small number of Creative Writing courses require a separate application to be considered for enrollment. The instructor(s) of the course will review the applications and select their pool of students accordingly. Each course application is linked below.

English 190G The Graphic Novel with Shimon Tanaka & Sarah Frisch

The Stanford Graphic Novel Project is a wholly unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the graphic novel form by reading and collaborating on a complete book that will be printed in paperback format. We'll collaboratively write, design, and illustrate a full-length graphic novel. We're looking for artists, writers, designers, and all-around team players. This will be an intense, challenging, rewarding class, but with a heavy workload. The project will take place over two 5-credit classes offered during fall and winter quarters; preference will be given to students who can complete both terms, but it's possible to take the class for only one of those terms. Fulfills Creative Expression (CE) requirement; drawing experience not required.

Fall 2022 & Winter 2023 Application

English/Asnamst/Amstud 91A Asian American Autobiography with Chang-rae Lee

This is a dual purpose class: a writing workshop in which you will generate autobiographical vignettes/essays as well as a reading seminar featuring prose from a wide range of contemporary Asian-American writers. Some of the many questions we will consider are: What exactly is Asian-American memoir? Are there salient subjects and tropes that define the literature? And in what ways do our writerly interactions both resistant and assimilative with a predominantly non-Asian context in turn recreate that context? We'll be working/experimenting with various modes of telling, including personal essay, the epistolary form, verse, and even fictional scenarios.

Winter 2023 Application

English 146W Short Stories That'll Break Your Heart and Change Your Writing with Elizabeth Tallent

Exploration of classic (mostly) and contemporary short stories emphasizing craft aspects useful to writers and looking closely at how Chekhov, Kafka, Woolf, Flaubert, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Munro, and others evoke emotion. Satisfies the English 146S requirement in the CW minor and English major with CW emphasis.

Spring 2023 Application

English 190SW Screenwriting Intensive with Edward Porter & Georgina Beaty

The main requirement for this course is a full length film script. The course explores elements of screenwriting including beat structure, character creation, scene vs. montage, as well as description and dialogue. Students will read four to five screenplays during the first half of the course and then write a 90-page film script in the second half of the course. Students will additionally write synopses, treatments, character sketches, and beat sheets. Designed for any student who has always wanted to write a screenplay.

Spring 2023 Application

English/Femgen 190W Contemporary Women Writers with Elizabeth Tallent

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version." Is this what sets contemporary women writers apart? How can we understand the relation between the radically unprecedented material such writers explore and "the official version"? What do we find compelling in their challenging of structure, style, chronology, character? Our reading- and writing-intensive seminar will dig into the ways women writers confront, appropriate, subvert, or re-imagine convention, investigating, for example, current debate about the value of "dislikable" or "angry" women characters and their impact on readers. While pursuing such issues, you'll write a variety of both essayistic and fictional responses, each of which is designed to complicate and enlarge your creative and critical responsiveness and to spark ideas for your final project. By affirming risk-taking and originality throughout our quarter, seminar conversation will support gains in your close-reading practice and in articulating your views, including respectful dissent, in lively discourse. In short, skills highly useful in a writer's existence. Our texts will come from various genres, including short stories, novels, essays, blog posts, reviews, memoir.

Spring 2023 Application

English 192V The Occasions of Poetry with Michael Collier, the Mohr Visiting Poet

Riddles, prayers, curses, songs, incantation, invective, praise, personal and historical memory, art, cultural identity, love and death, in fact a lot of love and death, are just a few of the occasions of poetry we will consider in this course. I hope by doing so we come to see that the full range of human experience is the only thing that limits poetry’s occasions. We will read intensively in modern and contemporary poetry as well as practice the craft of writing poems. We will discuss what we read and write from a poet’s point of view, rather than a scholar’s, paying particular attention to structural and formal elements. We will also take up general aesthetic questions regarding the art of poetry by reading essays written by poets about the practice of their craft. The format of the class will blend workshops with discussions. Ultimately, I hope we see that one of the most useful and important occasions that poetry provides is the creation of a small, passionate group dedicated to supporting and encouraging each other as we learn our craft as poets.

Spring 2023 Application

Questions?

We're here to support you! Email creative1 [at] stanford.edu with your inquiries, or stop by our advising hours and talk to one of our Peer Advisors.

For enrollment questions specific to Creative Writing, visit our Enrollment FAQ page.

For general enrollment troubleshooting, refer to the Student Services guide.