Learning to write well is an important feature of a Davidson education and a special emphasis in the English Department, where all courses involve instruction in writing. While students at Davidson cannot major in writing, they can take a variety of writing courses throughout their four years. The English Department is pleased to offer a wide array of writing courses, made possible by both permanent staff and the visiting McGee Professor of Creative Writing.

The McGee Professorship
Through a gift of Davidson alumnus John McGee, the College hosts a writer in residence for one semester of each academic year. The McGee Professor is an outstanding writer of national stature, whether a poet, fiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, or essayist. Many McGee Professors are accomplished in several of these areas at once. While on campus, McGee Professors teach writing classes, help direct senior honor theses, and contribute to the life of the College through readings and other appearances. Recent McGee Professors have been Rona Munro, Terese Svoboda, Henri Cole, Diana Hume George, Stephen Sandy, Pinckney Benedict, Maxine Kumin, Robert Morgan, Davidson alumna Sheri Reynolds, Jill Ciment, Maria Irene Fornes, Josephine Humphreys, Al Young, Susan Allport, Douglas Glover, Dorothy Allison, and D.A. Powell. 

The McGee Professor of Writing for 2011-12  is novelist and critic Thomas Mallon.  His seven novels include Henry and Clara, Bandbox, and Fellow Travelers. He has written nonfiction books about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever), and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays, Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review and other publications. Mallon visited Davidson in March 2010 and recently gave a public reading on January 25 from his forthcoming work Watergate:  A Novel.  He is in resdience spring 2012. 

Previous McGee Professor D.A. Powell (spring 2011) visited Davidson on October 7, 2010 and gave a public reading to a standing room only audience at the Carolina Inn.  While here, the poet met with students and toured campus.

Fall 2009 McGee Professor of Writing, Dorothy Allision, is a self-described feminist, working-class story teller, and sometime poet.  She received mainstream recognition with her best-selling novel  Bastard Out of Carolina, a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award.  The novel has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was adapted to film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ron Eldard.  
Creative Writing
The English Department regularly offers creative writing courses in four genres, in courses taught on the introductory and advanced levels. In introductory courses, English 202 includes the writing of both poetry and fiction, while English 203 focuses exclusively on poetry, English 204 on fiction, and English 205 on either screenwriting or playwriting. On the advanced level, English 301, "Writing Nonfiction Prose," is a class in the art of the creative essay, English 303 focuses exclusively on poetry, English 304 on fiction, and English 305 on either screenwriting or playwriting. All creative writing courses are taught by a combination of permanent faculty and the visiting McGee Professor of Creative Writing. Courses in creative writing at Davidson are workshop-based: they rely upon peer critiques as a fundamental aspect of instruction. Classes are limited to sixteen students at the introductory and intermediate  levels, and twelve students on the advanced (seminar) level. Permission to enroll in advanced creative writing courses is required prior to registration; the application procedure may include submission of a writing sample. For further information, contact Prof. Alan Michael Parker, Director of Creative Writing.

Recent Visiting Writers
Anthony S. Abbott is the Charles A. Dana Professor of English Emeritus at Davidson College, where he taught from 1964 to 2001.  He is the author of six books of poetry, including the newly published collection, If Words Could Save Us, and two novels, including Leaving Maggie Hope, which received the Novello Festival Press Award.

Neil White's memoir In the Sanctuary of Outcasts was the Common Reading selection for the Davidson class of 2015.  He spoke on September 13 about the year he lived as an inmate with the last victims of leprosy in the continental United States.  White has been a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, advertising executive and federal prisoner.  

Cartoonist GB Tran's graphic memoir, VIETNAMERICA, is a depiction of his family's survival and escape during the Vietnam War and their reinvention in its aftermath as refugees living in the United States. He received the 2011 Gregory Millard Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Tran visited Davidson College on September 27, 2011.

War correspondent Sebastian Junger delivered the 2011-12 Reynolds Lecture on September 20 in the Duke Family Performance Hall. Junger is the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Perfect Sotrm, A Death in Belmont and Fire. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Junger works as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a contributor to ABC News. He has covered major international news stories in Liberia, Sierra Leone and around the globe.

 Soldier-poet and Iraq veteran Brian Turner read from his book of poems Here, Bullet on September 9, 2010 in the Duke Family Performance Hall.  Turner earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and then served seven years in the US Army, inlcuding one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.  Here, Bullet won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and went on to be named a New York Times "Editor's Choice" selection for 2007 and win the 2007 Poets Prize, among others.  Here, Bullet was the 2010-11 reading selection for all incoming students.

Award-winning author Tobias Wolff came to Davidson in September 2010. His novel Old School was assigned as the first-year orientation book discussion. The story is about honor, integrity, plagiarism, and literature, thus fitting the college's 100th anniversary of its honor code and 50th anniversary of the student-run honor council. Wolff is the author of many books including This Boy's Life; he teaches at Stanford University.

The Literary Life at Davidson College
View the 2011-2012 Literary Calendar of Events

Poet and critic Edward Hirsch will give the Joel A. Conarroe lecture on March 13, 2012 at 8:00 pm in the Duke Family Performance Hall.  Author of eight collections of poetry, including The Living Fire:  New and Seleted Poems, and four prose works, Hirsch has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.  He taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston for seventeen years and now serves as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.  Tickets are free but required by calling the Union Ticket Office at 704-894-2135.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry W.S. Merwin delivered the 2010-11 Joel A. Conarroe Lecture on May 2 in the Duke Family Performance Hall.  The author of sixteen collections of poems, essays on environmental and literary ideas, and a memoir-and the translator of Dante, Follain, Porchia and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight- Merwin has received numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize and the Tanning Prize.  He lives, writes and gardens on the island of Maui.

                          
Margaret Atwood delivered the 2009-10 Joel A. Conarroe Lecture on February 25 at 8:00 pm in Duke Family Performance Hall.  Atwood is the prizewinning author of The Year of the Flood, The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin.  Considered a giant of modern literature, her work has been translated into over thirty languages and studied by colleges and universities around the world.  Atwood addressed a wide-range of issues relating to her work, modern literature, and the creative process.  

The 2008-09 Joel A. Conarroe Lecture was given by Russell Banks on  January 26 at 8:00 pm in Duke Family Performance Hall.  Banks has authored 13 books of fiction, including The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, and most recently, The Reserve.  A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Banks is the founder and president of Cities of Refuge, North America, and the recipient of numerous distinguished awards and prizes.  

The Conarroe Lecture brings contemporary writers to Davidson to lecture, read from their work, and interact with students.  Three former lecturers, with Joel Conarroe, include Salman Rushdie, Annie Proulx, and Michael Ondaatje. 

Joel A. Conarroe Lecturer Michael Chabon visited Davidson College in February 2008.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist has authored many works including The Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and Wonder Boys, made into a critically accalimed film starring Michael Douglas and Tobey McGuire.

The 2010-11 Reynolds Lecturer was Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, who offers an irreverent perspective on the lives of Latin American immigrants and their children. Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He teaches at M.I.T.

Past Reynolds Lecturers have included Anna Deveare Smith, Thomas Wolfe, Zadie Smith ('07), Derek Walcott ('08), and Elizabeth Gilbert and Catherine Gilbert Murdock (09).  Nobel Laureate Walcott met with students during two Q&A sessions and discussed his literary works and paintings. 

The list of distinguished guests who have visited includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Foundation "genius grants," and the Nobel Prize. Robert Frost gave a poetry reading at the college, as did Robert Bly. William Styron has visited on numerous occasions, as has alumnus Charles Wright ('56). A.R. Ammons, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Seamus Heaney, Reynolds Price and Lee Smith have all come to campus to read and teach. Recent visitors have included Marjorie Agosin, Dorothy Allison, Aliki Barnstone, Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Frank Bidart, Ralph Black, Robert Olen Butler, Fred Chappell, The Hon. Martin Clark ('81), Lucille Clifton, Wanda Coleman, Michael Cunningham, Clyde Edgerton, Alice Fulton, David Galef, Diana Hume George, Nikki Giovanni, Garrett Hongo, Wayne Koestenbaum, Paul Krugman, Catherine Landis ('77), John Lane, Campbell McGrath, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, Jacqueline Osherow, Richard Powers, Anna Rabinowitz, Janisse Ray, Ishmael Reed, Salman Rushdie, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Writing Contests
The English Department sponsors three yearly contests for student writers, each judged by an illustrious visiting writer.  Novelist Heidi Julavits will judge this year's Charles E. Lloyd and R. Windley Hall contests and offer a reading from her work on Thursday, March 22, 2012; and award-winning poet Srikanth Reddy will select the Vereen Bell winners and give a public reading on Tuesday, April 3, 2012.  Both programs will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the C. Shaw Smith 900 Room of the College Union and will be free and open to the public.
                                                               
The Vereen Bell Memorial Award in Creative Writing
The Vereen Bell Memorial Award in Creative Writing is given annually to a member of the senior, junior, or sophomore class who has done the best work in fiction, poetry, or drama.  The award is given in memory of Vereen Bell of the Class of 1932, a promising and successful young novelist and short story writer who gave his life for his country in the second battle of the Phillipine Sea during World War II.

The Charles E. Lloyd Award for Nonfiction
The Charles E. Lloyd Writing Award is given to a member of the sophomore, junior, or senior class for excellence in the field of nonfiction. Essays submitted for the award may include both formal, scholarly essays and personal essays. The award is given in memory of Professor Charles E. Lloyd, Professor of English at Davidson for many years and twice coach of championship College Quiz Bowl Teams.

The R. Windley Hall Award for First-Year Writing
The R. Windley Hall Writing Award is presented to the member of the first year class at Davidson College who submits the best piece of fiction, poetry, or nonfiction prose.  The award is given by his family and friends in memory of R. Windley Hall, a graduate student of the Class of 1963 whose life was cut short on January 18, 1967, while he was a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

Student Publications
Opportunities for students to write for student publications abound.  The annual creative writing magazine, Hobart Park, is student-run and edited, as are the student newspaper, The Davidsonian, and the alternative magazine, Libertas.

Informal writing groups, workshops, and salons are frequent, and student-run. Creative writers enjoy a dynamic and supportive community among their peers on campus.