Your Classes

Your Colleagues

Your Careers

Standards for Educators:

WCU’s Professional Writing program offers a unique combination of creative writing and real-world writing courses.

Career Preparation:

Students take courses that focus on editing, publishing, writing on the web, technical writing, business writing.

First-Rate Faculty:

The English Department consists of accomplished teachers who will give you the best educational experience possible. The creative writing instructors are excellent teachers and also award-winning authors who have published more than twelve volumes of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The technical writing faculty have published technical writing manuals and stay up-to-date on the latest technology so that students graduate with cutting edge experience.

Dynamic Peers:

Engl ish s tudents are winning prizes for their writing, including a prestigious national award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) for a short story by an English major. Additionally, one English class wrote, edited, and named Western’s first magazine,Imagine. Recent interns and alumni have written documentation for Volvo, written for C-SPAN, published creative work in national literary journals, and been admitted into prestigious graduate Creative Writing programs.

Spring Literary Festival:

Our annual Spring Literary Festival had been bringing local and national writers to the campus since 2003. Distinguished authors, such as Jim Harrison, Leslie Silko, Mazine Kumin, Sherman Alexie, Silas House, Elizabeth Kostova, Brett Lott, and Kathryn Stripling Byer have all been featured artists at the Spring Literary Festival. Members of the English faculty, such as Catherine Carter, Ron Rash, Deidre Elliott, Pamela Duncan, and Mary Adams, have also performed in past festival events.

Sought-After Graduates:

More employers ask for good writing than almost any other skill!

Other Choices:

Many professional writers enter the business profession or go on to graduate programs, including law and other professions.

Writing Experience:• Poems• CreativeNonfiction• Short Stories• Novels• TechnicalDocuments

English students• Designandeditwebsites• Writeandeditforpublicand

private organizations• Studyabroad• Holdexcitingstudentinternships

Careers with this degree:• Editor• TechnicalWriter• Journalist• Poet• WebDesigner• MuseumCurator• Speechwriter

E n g l i s h . WC U. e d u

English Deparment * 305 Coulter Building * Cullowhee, NC 28723 * 828.227.7264

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University Alumni David Joy graduated with with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Professional Writing. Joy was a featured artist at the tenth annual Spring Literary Festival and is seen here reading from his first published book Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey.

PROFESSIONAL WRITING