For more than 80 years, the The New School has been a vital center for creative writing and the instruction of writing in New York City.
The School of Writing offers students at all levels of experience the opportunity to study the craft of writing under the direction of master teachers who are themselves distinguished practitioners. The approach emphasizes the study of literature as a dynamic artistic discipline, a creative activity, rather than as a field for historical analysis or an object for interpretation, as in English, literary studies, or comparative literature departments. In their workshops and seminars, New School writing teachers approach works of art from the inside out, moving from close attention to language, craft, and form into history and culture, engaging the full complexity of a work, and resisting critical narrowness, insularity, and reductionism.
The School of Writing offers a renowned MFA in Creative Writing program, with concentrations in fiction, poetry, arts writing, nonfiction, and writing for children, and an innovative curriculum for undergraduates, which includes the Riggio Honors Program: Writing & Democracy and an extensive roster of on-campus and online workshops and seminars open to both continuing education students and students enrolled in degree programs in the School of Undergraduate Studies. The School of Writing also hosts an extensive series of readings and other lively public events.
In the classroom and through our public programs, the School of Writing seeks to animate and intensify the writer's life. Our motto is Beckett's—"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
