The English Department fosters reading, writing, and media skills through a broad selection of small seminars. Our classes combine the study of English and American literature, exploring the craft of poetry, Shakespearean drama, science fiction, the techniques of horror films, the rhetoric of medicine, and the dynamics of novels, plays, short stories, and creative non-fiction.
The Writing Program supports a thriving culture of writing, coordinating courses for student writers, including first-year Academic Inquiry Seminars and a variety of communication-intensive courses, and offers pedagogical and curricular development for faculty and staff.
NCTE Conference on Communication & Composition 2026
During the first week of March, CWRU’s Writing Program served as local hosts for the annual NCTE Conference on Communication & Composition in Cleveland, Ohio.
Sea, Poison, Caren Beilin’s New Book
Caren Beilin is the author of the novel Sea, Poison (New Directions, 2025), longlisted for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award in Fiction.
Missing Sam, Thrity Umrigar’s New Book
Thrity Umrigar‘s newest novel Missing Sam is out from Algonquin. Publisher’s Weekly calls it an “engrossing thriller . . . that doubles as a moving meditation on otherness. . . . Though the hunt for Sam propels the narrative, Umrigar never loses sight of the bigger picture, including the conflicting pulls of family, faith, sexuality, and culture that shape her characters.”
Anisfield-Wolf Distinguished Visiting Writer Named
Rohan Chhetri is a poet and translator who earned a PhD from the University of Houston in 2023. For the past two years, he's been a postdoc at Texas Christian University, where he taught Asian American and World Literature courses as well as creative writing workshops. Chhetri has an MFA from Syracuse...