Stanford Creative Writing Program

Read Nicholas Jenkins’s letter to The Stanford Daily about recent Program changes and the story about the Program in The Stanford Report. 

The Stanford Creative Writing Program, founded in 1946 by Wallace Stegner, has become one of the nation’s most distinguished creative writing institutions. After almost 80 years, the program continues to evolve while also respecting its original vision of recruiting and supporting talented writers, offering exceptional creative writing instruction and mentorship, and inspiring undergraduates to develop their own unique creative written expression.

In the 1940s, E. H. Jones generously created the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, now considered the most prestigious creative writing fellowship in the U.S. for emerging writers. Dr. Jones also made possible the Jones Lectureships, which are limited, fixed-year teaching appointments, allowing exceptional Stegner Fellows some time and support to prepare a manuscript for publication, hone their teaching skills, and transition to a longer-term teaching career elsewhere.

The original framework of term-limited appointments allowed for a consistent flow of selected Stegner Fellows into the Jones Lectureship. However, over time this framework of term-limited appointments was not followed.

In the past two years, the School of Humanities and Sciences leadership and the Creative Writing Academic Council faculty have been working to formulate necessary changes in the program and to identify additional resources to meet its growing needs. A Working Group of Creative Writing Academic Council faculty held listening sessions and discussions.

Now, after thoughtful deliberation, the Working Group has recommended restoring the original intent of the Jones Lectureships: one-year appointments with the possibility of renewal for a limited term, up to a total of five years. This change will again allow Stegner Fellows the opportunity to apply to be Jones Lecturers once they have completed their fellowships. In other words, the Jones Lectureships are not being eliminated; they are only being term limited, as was the original intent of the program, so that the Stegner Fellows have an opportunity to teach Creative Writing courses at Stanford. We plan for there to be as many lecturers in the Program in five years’ time as there are today, and we expect to offer more classes then than now.

The university, school, and numerous generous donors are committed to not only the excellence of the program but also its growth. This means increasing the number of Creative Writing classes to better meet high student demand as well as ensuring competitive compensation for both the lecturers and fellows. We will provide more updates in early fall quarter about the Creative Writing Program and how it will continue to be one of the preeminent programs in the nation.

We understand that these changes to the Jones Lectureships will be met with mixed reactions. However, we firmly believe that the changes advance the program’s pedagogical mission and provide promising writers with the resources to complete their books and obtain appointments at other colleges and universities.

Throughout the history of the program, the Jones Lecturers—both those who are here now and those who have been lecturers in the past—have helped make Stanford Creative Writing what it is today, and we are truly grateful to them for their significant contributions to the program’s mission.