Creative Writing at the University of Oregon

Join like-minded peers in a learning community with the shared mission of deepening your intellectual lives and developing yourselves as literary artists over an entire year. Nowhere else on campus do undergraduate students receive the sustained and close attention to their creative writing that the Kidd Tutorial offers.

Students are challenged to confront literature with a spirit of engagement, to pose questions, and to seek connections among a wide variety of texts in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, craft, and criticism. The spirit of inquiry and exposure to diverse ideas are integral to the tutorial with the expectation that students will use what they learn as inspiration for their own work. Students leave our yearlong course with the tools of technique, critical reading, and compositional savvy to sustain their writing efforts far into the future.

Each Kidd Tutorial section matches one graduate tutor—a poet or fiction writer—with at least four and no more than seven undergraduates who have identified a primary focus of poetry or fiction. In the belief that writers must explore and experiment in order to learn their craft and become better writers, all students study and write poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Occasionally two sections meet for a group class or workshop (for instance, a fiction and poetry section). At least twice during the year, students meet as one class to discuss a topic of common interest. And all sections convene for the Kidd Talks throughout the year.

The Kidd Tutorials’ twelve credit hours (4 credits per term) count toward a student’s degree as elective credits; if you are interested in the Kidd Tutorial, make sure you don’t use up all your electives prior to applying to The Kidd. For English majors, the first two Kidd courses (CRWR 417, 418) will fulfill English major upper-division elective credits; the third term (CRWR 419) may be accepted to fulfill one of the other requirements (perhaps “1789 to the present,” or a gender or race/ethnicity category). English majors should check with Professor William Rossi, Director of Undergraduate Studies, about this possibility.

During the 2008-2009 school year, Kidd Tutorial sections will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:00-3:50pm (all three terms). Students must maintain a grade of C or higher in their Kidd Tutorial section in order to register for subsequent terms.

Each year, at least six poets, fiction writers, and writers of literary nonfiction visit the University of Oregon Creative Writing Program to give readings, workshops, and lectures. At least two visiting writers meet, often more, with the assembled Kidd Tutorial sections to speak about literary craft and to take questions from students and tutors. These informative and informal lectures are open to the public. Recent Visiting Writers have included Frederick Busch, Marjorie Sandor, Major Jackson, Tobias Wolff, Gerald Stern, Tess Gallagher, Bret Lott, Antonya Nelson, Susan Straight, Mark Doty, and N. Scott Momaday.

In addition, faculty from across campus are invited to present Kidd Talks throughout the year.

Six $3,000 scholarships will be awarded for 2008-2009. The funds will be paid out $1,000 per term. If a student who is awarded a scholarship leaves the Kidd Program for any reason during the year, distribution of the funds will be terminated.

Every student with a 3.5 GPA or higher who applies to the Kidd Program is eligible for a scholarship. Scholarships will be awarded based on the quality and potential of the literary work the student submits with his or her application.

Scholarship recipients will be notified by email and letter sometime in early May.

Every student who is accepted into the Kidd program will be awarded a book written by each of our six Visiting Writers during the term the writer does his or her reading. Students are encouraged to get their books autographed by the Visiting Writers.

The Kidd Memorial Writing Competition, held each spring, awards up to $800 in total prizes to poets and fiction writers enrolled as undergraduates at the University of Oregon. The Creative Writing Program invites a nationally known poet and fiction writer to judge student manuscripts; one of these writers then presents the Kidd Prizes to the winners. Past judges have included Frederick Busch, B. H. Fairchild, Mark Doty, Rosellen Brown, Mary Gaitskill, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Gerald Stern, Susan Straight, Edward Hirsch, Charles Baxter, Eavan Boland, and Tobias Wolfe.

The best potential candidates for the Kidd Tutorials are those who are motivated to develop their writing and their literary craft through serious intellectual engagement—and who, as a rule, are already experienced in university-level writing workshops. Students should have completed two or more courses at the Introductory (200) and Intermediate (300) levels in Creative Writing.

If you have a question about the Kidd Tutorials, you’re welcome to contact the Director of the Kidd Tutorials, Professor Laurie Lynn Drummond (lauried@uoregon.edu, 346-0510, 47A Columbia) or Kidd Fellow Christopher Roethle (croethle@uoregon.edu, 346-0541, 47B Columbia) at any time during the year. Their hours are posted each term in the Creative Writing Program office, 144 Columbia.

Applications to the Kidd Tutorials are accepted in the Creative Writing Program office, 144 Columbia, through the second Friday in April. However, interested students are encouraged to inquire throughout the year. Applications include a personal statement (see detailed instructions on application), a letter of recommendation from a teacher, unofficial transcripts, and a writing sample. Complete and print your application directly from the web.

In 1991, with an endowment of over one million dollars from Walter and Nancy Kidd, Garrett Hongo (then Director of the Creative Writing Program) proposed creation of the Kidd Tutorials. The proposal modeled the program on the Watts Writers' Workshop in Los Angeles, the Watson Foundation of Rhode Island, the Hopwood Lecture and Contests at the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Tutorials. A pilot program was begun that same year.

The Watts Writers' Workshop was created through federal funding and by community leaders in Watts following the riots of 1965. Community leaders proposed the workshops as a way for the community to rebuild itself, and as an avenue to enhance and promote cultural life, raise morale, and provide education. The Workshop did a great deal for an emerging black literary consciousness and community and helped build the beginning of a tradition for young black artists. This kind of community as well as the focus and intensive scholarship that characterizes the Harvard Tutorials continues to inspire the Kidd Tutorials here at the University of Oregon.