university of southern california phd in creative writing and literature

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Fully Funded PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at University of Southern California

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The University of Southern California (USC), located in Los Angeles, California, currently offers an all-encompassing and fully funded Ph.D. program that integrates creative writing and literature. This program is designed for students who aspire to explore both critical analysis and creative expression in their academic pursuits.

PhD Program Requirements

To be eligible for admission, prospective students need to demonstrate a strong foundation in their chosen genre—fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Successful candidates exhibit exceptional talent and a commitment to advancing both their creative and scholarly capacities.

PhD Funding Coverage

Admitted students to the Ph.D. program at USC benefit from robust financial support, which includes:

Fellowships: Merit-based financial awards that recognize outstanding academic and creative achievements.

Teaching Assistantships: Opportunities for students to gain valuable teaching experience while receiving financial support. Teaching assistantships cover full tuition remission, health benefits, and provide a stipend.

Full Tuition Remission: The program covers the entire cost of tuition, alleviating the financial burden on students.

Health Benefits: Admitted students receive comprehensive health benefits, ensuring their well-being throughout the duration of the program.

Stipend: In addition to tuition remission and health benefits, students receive a stipend to support their living expenses during their academic journey.

Application Requirement

Applicants are required to submit a comprehensive application package, including:

Writing Samples: A portfolio showcasing the applicant’s proficiency in their chosen genre. This is a crucial component that allows the admissions committee to assess the candidate’s creative abilities.

Academic Records: Transcripts from previous academic institutions, highlighting the applicant’s academic achievements and qualifications.

Letters of Recommendation: Typically, three letters of recommendation from individuals who can speak to the applicant’s academic and creative potential.

Statement of Purpose: A thoughtful and articulate statement outlining the applicant’s motivations, academic interests, and goals within the program.

Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV): An overview of the applicant’s academic and professional background, including any relevant publications, awards, or experiences.

Application Deadline

December 1, 2024

Application Fee

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Home / About / About the PhD Creative/Critical Writing Concentration

• About the PhD Creative/Critical Writing Concentration

UC Santa Cruz offers a concentration in Creative/Critical Writing for Literature Ph.D. students. This is an individualized course of study in which students can write a creative dissertation with a critical introduction or a cross-genre creative/critical project. Our students have completed speculative novels, collections of poems and personal essays, experimental memoirs, biographies, cross-genre work and translations of works of poetry and prose. Descriptions of previous qualifying exam and dissertation topics can be found with student bios here .  

In addition to taking critical literature courses, entering students take four graduate creative/critical writing classes (two “Creative Writing Studio” courses and two “Methods and Materials” courses taught by creative writing faculty ). The “Creative Writing Studio” is a mixed-genre class that moves beyond the classic workshop mode to give students time to focus on their creative work in a supportive community. The “Methods and Materials” class is a seminar that examines one form, topic, and/or theme. Students can respond creatively, critically or creative/critically. Past classes have focused on autobiographical experiments, race and the lyric essay, the artist’s statement, and James Baldwin’s sentences. 

The concentration works to create community while at the same time gives our students opportunities to join with creative and critical colleagues within and beyond the department and division. There are opportunities for internships, fellowships, and graduate students often introduce and meet with writers through the Living Writers Series . Graduate students can also pursue designated emphases in programs and departments such as Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Education, Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, Latin American and Latino Studies, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, and the History of Art and Visual Culture. (A full listing of programs and departments offering a Designated Emphasis can be found here .) 

The program also offers opportunities for pedagogical training. Graduate students in the Creative/Critical Writing Concentration have the opportunity to teach undergraduate introductory and intermediate creative writing courses annually. 

Although our program is fairly new, UCSC has a rich history of Creative/Critical writers and teachers, such as George Hitchcock, bell hooks, Harriet Mullen, Gloria Anzaldua, Nathaniel Mackey, Angela Davis, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Peter Gizzi. 

Graduate Students Describe the Program: 

• "The Creative/Critical Program facilitates a deep exploration of the critical and intellectual apparatuses involved in the creative process. Prospective students should prepare to excavate their creative practice and process to see how their work speaks to broader critical conversations and how to deepen the questions their work asks and the questions they ask of their work and process. We interrogate connections between ourselves, our work, and the world around us.”
• “ What I love about the C/C program, and the UCSC literature department more broadly, is the way it works to break down barriers between the creative and the critical--not just bringing the critical into the creative, but the creative into the critical. It has both helped me to bring a more personal approach--a personality--to my critical writing and more complex ideas to my creative writing.”
• “ We practice thinking both creatively and critically and those are often two siloed modes of thinking that we bring together.”
• “ In the Graduate Creative/Critical Writing Concentration I've gained mentors, colleagues, and friends who are committed to innovation and pushing the limits of critical and creative writing as we know it. The community has welcomed me with open arms and emboldened me to develop my craft beyond what I thought was possible in literature. Joining this program out of an M.F.A. was the best thing I could have done for my creative practice and my personal and professional development.”

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Last modified: May 13, 2021 128.114.113.82

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Home / Graduate / Prospective Student Information / Creative/Critical Writing Concentration

• Creative/Critical Writing Concentration

Prospective Student Information

UC Santa Cruz offers a concentration in Creative/Critical Writing for Literature Ph.D. students. This is an individualized course of study in which students can write a creative dissertation with a critical introduction or a cross-genre creative/critical project. Students have completed speculative novels, collections of poems and personal essays, experimental memoirs, biographies, cross-genre work, and translations of works of poetry and prose. Descriptions of previous qualifying exam and dissertation topics can be found with student bios here .  

Creative/Critical Writing Concentration Overview (please refer to the Literature Ph.D. Program overview for more information) Entering students complete all the requirements for the Literature Ph.D. with the addition of a creative/critical enhancement to their degree in the form of original creative work, with a critical introduction, and, if desired, work in poetics, translation, form and/or critical writing from the perspective of writerly practices.

Admissions For applicants to the Creative/Critical Writing concentration, the department requests the following additional materials: 20-25 pages of prose (at least one complete piece and an additional sample preferred), or 10-12 pages of poetry. The writing can be poetry, prose fiction, creative non-fiction or hybrid/cross-genre.

Requirements The general requirements for all Ph.D. students apply to the Creative/Critical Writing concentration:

• The Proseminar , Literature 200, to be taken in Fall Quarter of the first year;
• A one-quarter Pedagogy of Teaching/Teaching Assistant Training, Literature 201, to be taken prior to or in conjunction with the first Teaching Assistant appointment;
• One course must focus on pre-modern literature and culture. This course may, but need not, be in the student’s area of concentration; it may also be used to satisfy one of the non-English-language course requirements.
• A minimum of two courses must be in a non-English language literature.
• Four courses must be Creative/Critical concentration-designated courses (Graduate Creative Writing Workshops and Methods and Materials); 
• One two-credit advising course, Literature 291F, per quarter;
• Three quarters of supervised teaching experience; Creative/Critical Writing concentration only: Of the three quarters of supervised teaching experience required, at least two will be in the undergraduate creative writing concentration;
• The Literature Department’s intensive three-week Graduate Summer Language Program or equivalent;
• A qualifying exam portfolio (includes an oral component);
• A prospectus outlining and defining the dissertation project;
• A dissertation (written in conjunction with Literature 299, Thesis Research).

Qualifying Examination and Dissertation At least one member of the QE committee, normally the chair, must be from among the participating core faculty in Creative Writing, and at least one departmental member of the committee will not be one of these.  Students in the concentration will meet the requirements of the (revised) Ph.D. program Qualifying Examination, with the choice to substitute original creative work for the Qualifying essay requirement. This work may also be, if the student chooses, a hybrid creative/critical work.

Ph.D. candidates in the Creative/Critical concentration may choose one of two options for the dissertation:

• A book-length original creative project—novel, novella, collection of poems, collection of stories, creative nonfiction, or a hybrid/experimental form (including but not limited to digital/new media, performance/performativity/screenplay, the lyric essay) with a critical chapter or chapters totaling at least 75 pages exploring the historical, methodological, and/or theoretical foundations of the creative work;
• A dissertation on theory, form, poetics or literary history; a translation of a creative work with a 30-50-page, substantive, critical introduction; a critical edition.

Faculty The following faculty are participating Creative Writing faculty mentors: Christopher Chen Micah Perks Jennifer Tseng Rob Wilson Ronaldo Wilson

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Last modified: January 17, 2022 128.114.113.82

The Creative Writing minor emphasizes the production of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and other forms of creative writing. It is designed as a complementary program of study, intended to add opportunities for creative activity onto students’ other academic interests. Students minoring in Creative Writing acquire a basic familiarity with literary history, study modern or contemporary literature and complete beginning, intermediate and advanced courses in the art and craft of creative writing.

When selecting courses, students should consult a faculty adviser in the Department of English, Comparative Literature and Linguistics. A “C” (2.0) or better is required in all courses applied to the minor.

Required Courses (9 units)

• ENGL 105 - Introduction to Creative Writing (3)
• ENGL 306 - Intermediate Creative Writing (3)
• ENGL 404T - Advanced Creative Writing (3)

Analysis of Literary Forms or Survey Course (3 units)

• CPLT 324 - World Literature to 1650 (3)
• CPLT 325 - World Literature from 1650 (3)
• ENGL 211 - British Literature to 1760 (3)
• ENGL 212 - British Literature from 1760 (3)
• ENGL 221 - American Literature to 1865 (3)
• ENGL 222 - American Literature from 1865 (3)
• ENGL 300 - Analysis of Literary Forms (3)

Modern or Contemporary Literature Course (3 units)

• ENGL 462 - Modern British and American Fiction (3)
• ENGL 463 - Contemporary Fiction in English (3)
• ENGL 464 - Modern British and American Drama (3)
• ENGL 465 - Contemporary Drama in English (3)
• ENGL 466 - Modern British and American Poetry (3)
• ENGL 467 - Contemporary Poetry in English (3)

Electives (6 units)

• two 300-level or higher Compartive Literature or English courses not used to fulfill the requirements above

Total (21 units)

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Center for Writers

The Creative Writing Program

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The Center for Writers offers both MA and PhD degree paths where creative writing students study alongside literary scholars and take courses from literature and creative writing faculty at the forefront of their fields. What sets this program apart from others is the spirited and collaborative relationship between faculty from different creative and literary backgrounds and the graduate students with whom they work. Students specialize in their chosen genre of fiction or poetry, but also gain expertise in particular fields of literary studies based on theme and historical period. We offer a robust and immersive graduate experience which involves taking coursework and teaching undergraduate students, as well as participating in the myriad facets of our program culture including public readings, social gatherings, professionalization workshops, and fundraisers. We also offer at least one summer graduate course, intersession courses in January or May, and an exciting British Studies program every summer.  

The MA degree in Creative Writing is a two year program that mostly consists of creative writing workshops and electives, along with at least three courses in literature and theory. Students in the MA program must write and complete an original creative thesis which they defend in the last semester of their tenure. The PhD degree is a three year program, with competitive funding for a fourth year if available. PhD students enroll in workshops, creative writing electives, and theory and literature courses, enjoying a rigorous but balanced path to completion. PhD students take a qualifying exam at the end of their first year and a written comprehensive exam when they have completed coursework. These exams are designed to underscore the students’ breadth of knowledge and give them the opportunity to read deeply in their chosen fields. The PhD student writes and defends an original dissertation at the end of their degree, working with a committee of creative writing and literature faculty.

Great writing is made from good writing. We hope to celebrate what you do well, and at the same time open space in front of you, as best we can, so that what you’ve done becomes what you could do. 

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Fully funded phd in creative writing and literature at university of southern california.

• Post published: May 10, 2023
• Reading time: 5 mins read

Are you looking to take your education and career to the next level? Do you have a passion for research and a desire to make meaningful contributions to your field of study? If so, a Funded PhD programs may be the perfect choice for you.

Attention all aspiring scholars and researchers! The University of Southern California is accepting applications for our prestigious funded PhD programs. Apply to the University of Southern California ‘s PhD program today and take the first step towards a rewarding and fulfilling academic career.

About Fully Funded PhD in Creative Writing and Literature 

The University of Southern California (USC), located in Los Angeles, California, offers a fully funded PhD in creative writing and literature. Students accepted into this program participate in a series of writing workshops led by our internationally acclaimed creative writing faculty. Students must apply in only one genre: fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The Ph.D. program emphasizes both literature and creative writing, culminating in a dissertation that blends critical analysis with creative creativity. 

Eligibility Criteria 

• Earned master’s degree prior to entering the PhD.
• You are expected to have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 and subject-specific GPA of 3.5 or above.
• English language proficiency requirements (non-native English speakers)

PhD Funding  Coverage

Admitted students are provided with financial assistance and support in the form of fellowships and teaching assistantships, which include full tuition remission, health insurance, and a stipend.

Explore Open Funded PhD Position Here

Application requirement .

• Official transcripts from previously attended college/ university.
• English language proficiency test scores such as TOEFL, IELTS, etc. (for non-native English speakers only)
• Entrance test scores, GRE*, GMAT* or other accepted scores*
• Research proposal
• Statement of purpose
• Writing samples
• Letters of recommendation
• Up-to-date resume
• Copy of passport
• Financial documents including bank statements

*Please check if GRE, GMAT is need at official university website.

Application Deadline

The application deadline is December 1.

PhD Career: What are the Career Option?

How to apply funded phd program.

Applications are submitted through the online Graduate Application portal. Please upload all required documents on your Graduate Application.

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University of Southern California BA in Creative Writing

Creative Writing is a concentration offered under the writing studies major at University of Southern California. We’ve pulled together some essential information you should know about the bachelor’s degree program in creative writing, including how many students graduate each year, the ethnic diversity of these students, and more.

If there’s something special you’re looking for, you can use one of the links below to find it:

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Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

BA in Creative Writing & English

Develop your creativity and gain practical skills with a creative writing degree program –featuring 100% online classes – through a bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.

How Much Does a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing from USC Cost?

Usc undergraduate tuition and fees.

Part-time undergraduates at USC paid an average of $1,995 per credit hour in 2019-2020. This tuition was the same for both in-state and out-of-state students. The average full-time tuition and fees for undergraduates are shown in the table below.

Learn more about USC tuition and fees.

Does USC Offer an Online BA in Creative Writing?

USC does not offer an online option for its creative writing bachelor’s degree program at this time. To see if the school offers distance learning options in other areas, visit the USC Online Learning page.

USC Bachelor’s Student Diversity for Creative Writing

Male-to-female ratio.

Women made up around 73.5% of the creative writing students who took home a bachelor’s degree in 2019-2020. This is in the same ballpark of the nationwide number of 72.8%.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

Around 47.1% of creative writing bachelor’s degree recipients at USC in 2019-2020 were awarded to racial-ethnic minorities*. This is higher than the nationwide number of 26%.

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

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• O*NET Online

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Books | These Southern California writers and artists…

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Subscriber only, books | these southern california writers and artists found success and fulfillment after other careers.

DENISE DI NOVI

“Don’t waste any more time.”

Finding and developing material for major Hollywood movies, securing talent to tell the stories, and shepherding the creative process is a highly collaborative endeavor that Denise Di Novi is spectacularly familiar with. She’s produced more than 40 movies, including such screen gems as “Edward Scissorhands,” “Little Women,” “Batman Returns” and “Message In A Bottle.”

In contrast, the painting she has been creating is solitary work, perhaps sometimes only viewed by an audience of one, and not a venture in which millions of dollars are at stake.

Di Novi has been making art pieces for about four years, first picking up a magic marker when her husband died in March 2020.

“Creating art was the only time I felt OK,” she says, adding, “when people say ‘oh wow, you started out of nowhere,’ they’re missing something. I’ve been a filmmaker for over 30 years and it’s a visual art and I’m a creative producer. I could never work in a field that wasn’t creative; it’s the breath of life to me. So whatever form creativity takes, it’s what gives me fulfillment.”

Coinciding with her personal loss was the start of the Covid lockdowns. Her business life slowed, but working on canvas began to increasingly help with her grief. “So, I figured that maybe painting would help even more so. I got a bunch of paints and canvas and became obsessed. Painting after painting. No stopping. It saved my life.”

She wants people who aspire to creative expression to know that they don’t necessarily have to give up what they’re already doing. “There are ways to pivot without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I get up at 5 a.m. and paint, or do it at night instead of going out,” she says. “There are slower days I may have with my ‘regular’ work, so I’ll paint then or on weekends. Doing something new can give you your life back.”

As she delves ever deeper into her own work, her advice is this: “Do whatever you feel you’re going to regret if you don’t do it. Don’t waste any more time. And, whatever you do, don’t think it will be great unless you’re doing it for yourself first and it will have purity of intention and an authenticity that will attract other people.”

She recently switched from working with acrylics to combining them with oil paints and new, multilayered works are in the offing. “I am going to have a show, and share my story, not because I want to be a famous artist — though that would be nice — but because it could be helpful to people.”

Her latest screen venture, a TV spy thriller series called “The Veil,” starring Elizabeth Moss, will start airing soon on F/X. “I painted in my hotel room during the six months we were on location filming it.”

HELENKAY DIMON

“Before you make the jump, make sure you have a support system.”

Becoming a writer wasn’t a childhood dream for Helenkay Dimon. She wanted to be secretary of State. Instead, she became a divorce lawyer in Washington DC — and might have remained one if not for a cohort who advised that dealing with couples battling over custody and finances was not a career to expect happy endings from.

“He handed me three romance novels and they literally changed my life,” she says. “I started toying with writing romance novels because bringing people together sounded so much more appealing.”

She put divorce wars behind her in 2007. “Doing so gave me an opportunity to craft happy endings.” She cites those she’s crafted as the most fulfilling aspect of work that’s produced more than 40 books and novellas. “Creating a world in my head is something I really enjoy doing.”

Leaving her practice to immerse herself in what’s usually a financially unstable profession was less of a worry for her than it is for so many who undertake such a challenge.

“It wasn’t easy to walk away from a career that I had built; I had made partner before I left. But it was easy, in some ways, because my husband has a job with benefits and a steady income, so I didn’t have to worry about such questions as ‘how am I going to pay for insurance, how am I going to put food on the table?’ Before you make the jump, make sure you have a support system.”

Still, she didn’t leave the courtroom for a writing desk in one clean break. “I wrote my first three novels while still at the law firm,” she says, “writing from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.”

When her husband got a job offer in San Diego, prompting them to move from the East Coast, she didn’t take the California bar exam and that threw her, she recalls, “into the deep end of ‘I have an opportunity to try something new that’s really scary.’ Had I taken the bar, I probably would have continued to both lawyer and write and made sure I felt secure. After all, nobody tells you that after you get your publisher’s advance, you may have to wait 700 years before getting royalty checks.”

For those considering switching careers from the stable to one full of creative promise but also of high anxiety, she offers some practical advice. “Sometimes, with these career pivots, some of us who have made them are not as good as we should be about telling people that they have to be practical. Writing is a hard gig whether it’s screenwriting, writing a book, writing magazine articles. It’s constantly moving to get things out there. Nobody is waiting for your work.”

Dimon excels in getting things out. Fans can look to two new titles in 2025: one a rom-com written under her given name, the other a thriller using her nom de plume of Darby Kane. The screen adaptation of her first Kane title, “Pretty Little Wife,” is currently in development at Amazon Studios.

W. BRUCE CAMERON

“The secret to my success is failure.”

He’s not a psychic, but when author W. Bruce Cameron sits down to write he already knows the last word he’s going to spell out. He meticulously outlines and sets up every story he tells. But Cameron’s writing career, which includes more than 38 published books, did not start out so well-planned.

He spent 15 post-college years climbing up the corporate ladder of General Motors. “I quit GM to go off on an entrepreneurial streak, burning and blowing up about seven companies just learning how different life is when you’re not working for the world’s largest corporation but rather for yourself.”

There were partner issues. Of course, no such problems were in his way when, as a middle-aged man, he went to work for himself, putting pen to paper.

It’s not that writing was new for him. As a kid, reading popular books, he announced he would write a New York Times best-seller one day. That utterance was prophetic, but the prophecy would not materialize for decades. “I wrote my first book in college, but I knew it was going to be terrible.” That didn’t stop him nor, during his GM years, did writing eight books that went unpublished. “The secret to my success,” he says, “is failure.”

He became a newspaper columnist after finishing another unpublished book and deciding that no one was ever going to publish him. “I was trying to come up with whatever would sell, and nothing would. Then I decided I would just write for myself; it turned out that I was funny.”

A sample of his humor made it to an editor of The Rocky Mountain News, and it became syndicated as “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.” Its success led to development as a TV series which prompted his move to Los Angeles to work on the show.

His 13th book, “A Dog’s Purpose,” spawned a trilogy that reached best-selling status and two movies. A cascade of other books (adult, young adult, and children’s books) followed.

For those considering leaving their corporate (or other “regular” jobs) to become full-time writers, Cameron has some advice. “Throttle back so you don’t work from 9 to 5, give yourself space to breathe, and then recognize you may never make a dime doing it.”

Fulfillment, he ponders, may well take motivation not reliant on success but on one’s own healthy ego. “If you can find satisfaction and stand back from your work and be able to say I don’t care if anyone buys it, I’m really happy with it — then there you go, that’s the fulfillment. I am forcing myself to recognize that fulfillment comes from having finished a project that I really enjoyed writing.”

His prodigious output is not about to slow down. There’s a new title coming out in August, and another in October. He’s recently finished yet another book, about zombies, and is well on the way to doing something his agent isn’t advising: “I am trying to reinvent the monster genre for YA readers.”

MARY CAMARILLO

“Be an energetic networker.”

With her high school years marked by writing poetry, editing the school’s literary magazine and contemplating publishing an underground newspaper, one might think that Huntington Beach’s Mary Camarillo would have gone off to college with pencils sharpened, a bit of a revolutionary’s fire in her heart, and the dream of a writing career firmly affixed in her mind. “But I was more concerned about security at the time,” she says.

She waited decades, until she retired at 60, before dedicating herself to fiction writing.

The author of two novels — 2021’s “The Lockhart Women” and “Those People Behind Us,” which was published this past October — went to work at the post office instead of going to college. “I didn’t plan on making a career there, but I stayed for many reasons. The benefits are generous, there were 10 paid holidays and, eventually, five weeks of vacation.”

She married a coworker, went to night school, got a degree in business administration, a CPA license, and a certificate in Internal Auditing while moving up the ladder at the mail service’s Office of the Inspector General.

“I did a lot of writing and editing of audit reports, and that weirdly gave me the idea to try my hand at fiction. I noticed similarities. Audit reports concern a problem and require identifying cause and effect, as in why the bad thing happened and who the heck cares?”

Camarillo is currently at work on her third novel, with about 40,000 words written so far. Realizing that a lot of them will get cut, she says, “I can’t add much more about it yet other than it will be about people who have a problem. The fiction I like to read and write is about people who make bad decisions and have problems.”

Considering what brings her fulfillment, Camarillo harks back to her childhood which is when she realized she was in awe of creative people. “Actors, poets, designers, people who make things that are beautiful, especially people who make music. So, discovering that I can write stories makes me feel that I am at least a tiny part of a bigger world. And that is very fulfilling; it’s thrilling to me.”

For those looking to switch careers that will take them from the steadfastness of a secure job to what sometimes feels like the freefall (or ascent) that is the writer’s life, Camarillo advises to be “a good literary citizen. And what I mean by that is you need to read, you need to write reviews, show up at readings, support your local bookstore, be a champion for your library, start a book club. Be an energetic networker.”

All of that has worked for her in terms of the business of writing. As for what advice she can offer about what’s needed to write a book, “It’s all about perseverance. And stubbornness. When I get stuck, I go for a walk. It always seems to help.”

MONICA EDWARDS

“You’ve got to try it, or you’ll never know.”

This summer, when Monica Edwards gets into the driver’s seat of her Sprinter van, she’ll truly be taking destiny into her own hands. Customized into a mobile art studio, it will be headed around the country on a trip that gives deep meaning to the term “joy ride.” When her hands are not on the steering wheel, they’ll be grasping paints and wielding brushes as she gazes out of the parked van’s slid-back door, taking in the color and light which this much-honored plein air (outdoor) painter thrives on.

Edwards, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer about a year and a half ago, is not fixated on her illness but is excited to embark on an ultimate road trip. “My days always start with meditation and a prayer,” she says. And then they’re spent in a fervor of inspiration and creativity.

Segueing from a 14-year career in info-graphic design with the Orange County Register to that of a full-time artist included some unusual stops. The advent of the internet changed the nature of her newspaper job, prompting her to get as far from computers as she could. Follow-up work included animal caretaking at Disneyland, goat wrangling at the OC Zoo, tour guiding in Alaska and even, briefly, that of a flight attendant. “But I finally made it back to my first love, art.”

Commercial art had been her calling. While pursuing a BFA at Cal State Long Beach, she supported herself with freelance medical filmstrip, children’s book, and courtroom graphics gigs as well as a job at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. Her passion for plein air painting began in 2000, when after leaving her newspaper job, a friend gifted her with an easel and a book about the genre.

“I dabbled. I loved it, but to get good, you really need to dedicate time. About six years ago, I decided I would give myself 100% to this passion. In the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of many noteworthy ‘wins’ and exhibitions, and the passion for painting only increases every day.”

The question of what constitutes fulfillment for her turns her cheerily philosophical. The artist, whose work has been seen at Laguna Beach’s Art-A-Fair and Festival of the Arts, and is currently exhibited at Studio 7 in Laguna Beach and Costa Mesa’s Randy Higbee Gallery, says “that just putting two colors together makes my head spin in a way that makes me giddy. It can be the simplest aesthetic values that bring me complete joy. And what’s to say that that has lesser value than trying to express some conceptual, real truism?”

She advises those considering making art a full-time pursuit to get their overhead down.

“Know why you want to do it; is it going to serve you in the long run or is it just a whim. On the other hand, you’ve got to try it, or you’ll never know. Give yourself a deadline, perhaps. And if you like living indoors, you better have a Plan B,” she says with a mischievous but sweet laugh.

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Undergraduate majors in English are required to take 40 units (usually 10 courses) for a BA in English with an emphasis in either literature or creative writing.

All majors must take three introductory courses:

• ENGL 261g English Literature to 1800 Units: 4
• ENGL 262g English Literature since 1800 Units: 4
• ENGL 263g American Literature Units: 4

Additional Requirements

Students should take at least two introductory courses before enrolling in upper-division literature courses or creative writing workshops.

Majors emphasizing English literature must take seven upper-division courses, including two courses in literature written before 1800, one course in 19th-century literature, one course in American literature, and two electives.

Majors emphasizing creative writing must take seven upper-division courses, including two introductory creative writing workshops in poetry and prose, and a third workshop at the 400-level. The remaining upperdivision courses must include one course in literature written before 1900, one course in literature written after 1900 and one elective.

All major students must complete ENGL 491 Senior Seminar in Literary Studies   .