Mission Statement
Mission Statement
The Fiction Writing Department is unreservedly committed to the Columbia College mission. The department's goal, emerging directly from that mission, is to prepare all students for a wide range of careers in creative writing — including the writing of novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, and plays — and in jobs where effective communication, creative problem-solving, and group relationship skills are crucial factors. In particular, those aspects of the college mission having to do with accepting each student's background and working to develop each individual's voice and vision, with encouraging an understanding of the important connection between aesthetic and professional concerns, with offering the model of an inventive faculty working professionally at what they teach, with fostering a strong sense of social awareness and commitment as well as a strong training in the craft of writing, and with promoting creative applications of classroom learning and skills in a variety of careers are all central to the department's ongoing educational efforts. At the graduate level, the department will also guide committed fiction writers to advanced achievement in fiction, creative nonfiction, and playwriting and will broaden their knowledge in the theory and practice of writing and the teaching of writing.
The department offers professional development opportunities in a number of outreach initiatives designed to allow students to use their writing abilities to serve and influence the communities to which they belong. Through a variety of public events — annual Story Week and Creative Nonfiction Week Festivals; an extensive series of public readings; campus visits by renowned writers, agents, publishers and editors; the publication of Hair Trigger, our annual anthology of student writing; the seeding of student-founded magazines, and a variety of other public programming initiatives — the department seeks to influence and contribute to the literary and cultural community locally, nationally, and internationally.
The department offers professional development opportunities in a number of outreach initiatives designed to allow students to use their writing abilities to serve and influence the communities to which they belong. Through a variety of public events — annual Story Week and Creative Nonfiction Week Festivals; an extensive series of public readings; campus visits by renowned writers, agents, publishers and editors; the publication of Hair Trigger, our annual anthology of student writing; the seeding of student-founded magazines, and a variety of other public programming initiatives — the department seeks to influence and contribute to the literary and cultural community locally, nationally, and internationally.