About

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

-Albert Einstein

The philosophy of the Creative Writing Program at MU is that imagination stimulates progress, and in our classes, we inspire and challenge our students to imagine inner landscapes of their own. By using sound and symbol to build new worlds and characters, to evoke images and tell stories, students who study Creative Writing learn to elevate language to an artform.

The University of Missouri’s Creative Writing Program is known for its commitment to literary study as an essential component of literary production. The department offers the B.A. with a Creative Writing depth of study, an Undergraduate Minor in Creative Writing, as well as the M.A. and Ph.D. in English with a concentration in creative writing.

The program is under the direction of Professor Phong Nguyen.

Professor William Peden founded MU’s Creative Writing program in 1946, with the vision of combining creative writing and serious literary scholarship. His mission continues today. Our M.A. program has been in existence since the 1970s, and the Ph.D. with an emphasis in creative writing was established in 1988.