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  • Eyes Upon Texas: The Editor’s Notes
  • Charles Henry Rowell

Creative writing is thriving in Texas and has been doing so for a number of years. Thanks to the local and state arts councils and, especially, institutions of higher education, creative writing has also received a considerable public reception in various communities. Not a small number of public and private colleges and universities in Texas have made creative writing courses, workshops, and open readings available to a large cadre of people on and off campuses; they are thereby, however indirectly, expanding existing—and developing future—audiences for contemporary literature. In other words, while welcoming the general public to attend readings and open discussions of contemporary literature, Texas institutions of higher education, like those in a number of other states, now recognize creative writing as a legitimate course of study not only at the graduate but also at the undergraduate level. And wherever these creative writing programs thrive and sponsor public readings and writing workshops, they also introduce general readers to new writers whose works the same institutions make available in libraries and bookstores. The result, again, is the growth, by leaps and bounds, of a sophisticated general readership in Texas—a readership that is ready to greet the new generation of writers that the institutions and workshops are producing.

I must admit, however, that before I moved Callaloo from the University of Virginia to Texas A&M University (College Station) in 2001, my knowledge of institutionalized creative writing in Texas was limited to the nationally acclaimed and highly ranked Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, which offers the Ph. D. degree in writing and literature. But within only a few months after I moved to College Station, I discovered that the Department of Creative Writing at the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP) has a commanding reputation that is known throughout Latin America, and that the creative writing program at the University of Texas in Austin (UT), with its well-endowed James A. Michener Center for Writers, is another notable degree-granting program. UTEP’s threeyear residential MFA Program, Creative Writing in the Americas, is one of a kind: It is an international program offering bilingual courses (English and Spanish) in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and playwriting. The writing program at UT-Austin enjoys large coffers for graduate student support, and offers courses in playwriting and screenwriting, along with poetry and fiction writing tracks. These two writing programs, like that at the University of Houston, distinguish Texas, with its extraordinary diversity, as a national site that contributes immensely to the development of contemporary literature in the Americas.

Although they are not as well known as the three I have already mentioned, the creative writing programs at Texas State University (San Marcos), Rice University (Houston), North Texas State University (Denton), Texas Tech University (Lubbock), Sam Houston State University (Huntsville), Southern Methodist University (Dallas), and Texas A&M University (College Station) are helping to meet the widespread demands for course offerings in creative writing. In fact, some of them now offer graduate degrees in creative writing. I have no doubt that here in Texas the demand for additional courses and graduate [End Page 1] degrees in the field will soon spur the development of competing programs that will challenge the national jewel at the University of Houston.

Creative writing course offerings and programs have also encouraged the development of related projects within communities as well as at the institutions themselves. One such project is the creative writing workshop, whose origin might have been inspired by university courses or programs, although not always sponsored by them. These workshops are not only designed for adults but also for children, and for potential and promising young writers. I am partial, I will admit, to those sponsored by three institutions. Two of them—Rice University and Inprint, Inc., a nonprofit organization—are located in Houston. Inprint, whose mission is “to inspire readers and writers in Houston,” supports the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and offers an annual reading series and year-round workshops in a number of genres for writers and teachers as writers. Annually, Rice University mounts its Summer...

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