English & Creative Writing

Rubin Writing Semester

Hollins University offers a high-quality, semester-long program in creative writing and contemporary literature for undergraduate women at other colleges and universities who want intensive work in a lively community of writers.
   The program is named in honor of Louis D. Rubin Jr., the nation's best known scholar and publisher of Southern literature. Dr. Rubin taught English at Hollins from 1957-67. He went on to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he founded Algonquin Books, the publishing house known for championing talented Southern writers.
   Rubin Writers join other student writers and a faculty of regularly publishing novelists, short story writers, poets, and scholars.

Finding Your Voice

A front page feature in The New York Times Book Review titled "Learning to Write Can Be Fun" lauded the Hollins program for having "carved a distinctive niche in the literary-academic world. Founded by a famous critic of Southern literature, it has graduated some of the best-known younger Southern writers. Yet the program is free of any real regional identity. Instead it has committed itself to helping young writers find their voices. The result is a variegated and distinguished set of alumni."
   Among the graduates of Hollins' writing program are Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Dillard, Henry Taylor, and Natasha Trethewey and many well-known writers including Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Tama Janowitz, and Madison Smartt Bell. Kiran Desai, a 1994 graduate of Hollins University's master's program in creative writing, became the youngest woman ever to win the Man Booker Prize, second only to the Nobel Prize as the world's most esteemed and influential award in literature.
   Jeanne Larsen, whose novels Bronze Mirror and Silk Road have been Book-of-the-Month Club selections, says the Rubin Writers will participate in a supportive and stimulating community of writers. "Getting to know others who are committed to the pleasures and challenges of the writing life is one of the great benefits of studying at Hollins." Larsen adds, "Hollins writing workshops are famous for their quirky blend of support, good cheer, and honest and helpful criticism."
   The Literary Festival in March and the English department’s regular series of readings by published writers provide more opportunities to get to know how (as Gertrude Stein put it) writing is written. Anita Thompson, a graduate of Hollins and former Hoyns Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, says that Hollins "is a place where you get to work with writers -- both professors and other students -- in an 'up close and personal' setting." Thompson, who began publishing her fiction in national publications when she was a junior, adds that "Hollins gave me the chance not only to study other writers, but also to study and develop my own style."

To Apply

Admission to the Rubin Writing Semester for visiting undergraduates requires submission of a manuscript, two letters of recommendation, and a transcript. Fees include housing, meals in the dining room, 24-hour-a-day access to Hollins' computer resources, and a full semester's tuition. Each year, some fellowships are available. The program is offered during the spring term, and the application deadline is October 31.

Send application materials to: Rubin Writing Committee, Hollins University, P.O. Box 9707, Roanoke, VA 24020.

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