Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars

Founded in 1947, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars is an academic program offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in writing in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. It is the second-oldest creative writing program in the United States.

Notable faculty of the program have included Edward Albee, John Barth, Madison Smartt Bell, J. M. Coetzee, Mary Jo Salter, Stephen Dixon, Mark Hertsgaard, Brad Leithauser, John Irwin, J.D. McClatchy, Alice McDermott, Mark Crispin Miller, Andrew Motion, Wyatt Prunty, David St. John, Mark Strand, Robert Stone, and David Yezzi.

Writer Eric Puchner currently chairs the program, which has a strong reputation. It has been ranked "One of the Top Ten Graduate Programs in Creative Writing" by The Atlantic, and in 2020 was ranked as the #1 creative writing program by creativewritingmfa.info. In 1997, U.S. News & World Report ranked the program second in the United States out of sixty-five eligible full-residency MFA programs. In 2011, Poets & Writers ranked Hopkins seventeenth nationally out of 157 eligible full-residency MFA programs. The long respected Science Writing program was closed down in 2013 as an on-campus program, but was re-established as an online/low residency program shortly thereafter.

Degree programs

 * Writing Seminars B.A. Degree
 * MFA in Fiction and Poetry

Notable graduates
The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars has produced many prominent authors and writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gina Apostol, John Astin, Jami Attenberg, Beth Bachmann, Russell Baker, Ned Balbo, John Barth, Frederick Barthelme, Jill Bialosky, Jeffrey Blitz, Paul Harris Boardman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Lucie Brock-Broido, John Gregory Brown, Vikram Chandra (novelist), Iris Chang, Wes Craven, Erica Dawson, Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, Louise Erdrich, Nell Greenfieldboyce, Martha Grimes, Rachel Hadas, Gil Scott-Heron, Lawrence Hill, Richie Hofmann, Jay Hopler, Kimberly Johnson, Pagan Kennedy, Porochista Khakpour, Wayne Koestenbaum, Tim Kreider, Phillis Levin, David Lipsky, Rosemary Mahoney, Emma Marris, Michael Martone, P.J. O'Rourke, ZZ Packer, Molly Peacock, Joanna Pearson, Hollis Robbins, Deborah Rudacille, Tom Sleigh, Elizabeth Spires, Lorin Stein, Susan Stewart, Rosanna Warren, Rachel Wetzsteon, Greg Williamson, and Jenny Xie.

Turnbull Lectures
The Writing Seminars hosts the Turnbull Lectures, a yearly lecture series on the topic of poetry. The series was established in 1891 and has run almost continuously between the years 1891-1984 and 2000–present. Over the history of the series, lectures have been given by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, Jacques Derrida, Helen Vendler, and many others. Recent lecturers have included Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Richard Wilbur, Paul Muldoon, Stanley Plumly, Edward Mendelson, and Edna Longley.