Creative Writing

About the Program

Minor

The Creative Writing Program is an interdisciplinary minor program offered by the Office of Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Division of Undergraduate Studies in the College of Letters & Science. The approved courses students take to satisfy the minor course requirements are offered by over forty departments and programs on campus. Interested undergraduate students in any major may earn an interdepartmental minor in creative writing by completing the requirements listed in the Minor Requirements tab. For further information, please also see the Creative Writing Minor website and the program's Frequently Asked Questions pages.

There is no major program in Creative Writing.

Declaring and Completing the Minor

Information regarding declaring the minor and completing the minor, including deadlines, is available on the Creative Writing Minor website. See Declaring and Completing. 

Students who are interested in the Creative Writing minor are encouraged to subscribe to the Creative Writing minor email list serve to receive important news about the minor, including special approval courses for the minor that are not published on the website. To subscribe, email demir@berkeley.edu.

Visit Program Website

Minor Requirements

Students who have a strong interest in an area of study outside their major often decide to complete a minor program. These programs have set requirements and are noted officially on the transcript, but are not noted on diplomas.

General Guidelines

1. All minors must be declared before the first day of classes in your Expected Graduation Term (EGT). For summer graduates, minors must be declared prior to the first day of Summer Session A. 

2. All upper-division courses must be taken for a letter grade. 

3. A minimum of three of the upper-division courses taken to fulfill the minor requirements must be completed at UC Berkeley.

4. A minimum grade point average (GPA) of 2.0 is required in the upper-division courses to fulfill the minor requirements.

5. Courses used to fulfill the minor requirements may be applied toward the Seven-Course Breadth requirement, for Letters & Science students.

6. No more than one upper division course may be used to simultaneously fulfill requirements for a student's major and minor programs.

7. All minor requirements must be completed prior to the last day of finals during the semester in which the student plans to graduate. If students cannot finish all courses required for the minor by that time, they should see a College of Letters & Science adviser.

8. All minor requirements must be completed within the unit ceiling. (For further information regarding the unit ceiling, please see the College Requirements tab.)

Course Requirements

Course List

Code	Title	Units
Upper Division
Select three courses in creative writing (see below) 1
Select two courses in literature (see below)

¹

 At least two of the three writing courses must be taken at UC Berkeley.

Students may be allowed to include courses that are not on the following lists with the approval of the creative writing minor faculty advisor. It is the responsibility of the student to provide the faculty advisor with documentary evidence to support the claim of course eligibility. Contact the creative writing minor student academic advisor at demir@berkeley.edu for more information.

Creative Writing

Course List

Code	Title	Units
AFRICAM 156AC	Poetry for the People: Introduction to the Art of Poetry	4
AFRICAM 158A	Poetry for the People: The Writing and Teaching of Poetry	4
AFRICAM 158B	Poetry for the People: Practicum	4
AFRICAM 164	Spoken Word: Oral Tradition & Transformation from Poetry to Hip Hop, Standup & Beyond	3
ART 182	Creative Writing for Artists	4
ASAMST 173	Creative Writing	4
COLWRIT 130	Introduction to the Craft of Creative Writing	4
COLWRIT 131	Introduction to the Craft of Creative Nonfiction	3
COLWRIT 132	Introduction to the Craft of Short Fiction	3
COLWRIT 133	Introduction to the Craft of Dramatic Writing	3
COLWRIT 140B	Seminar-Workshop in Creative Writing	3
COLWRIT 141	Seminar-Workshop on Creative Writing: The Novel	3
COLWRIT 175	Players, Spectators & Fanatics: Writing on the Cultures of Sports	3
CRWRIT 120	Reading and Writing Poetry	3
CRWRIT 130	Creative Prose	3
EA LANG 115	Knowing Others, and Being Known: The Art of Writing People	4
EA LANG 125	The Art of Writing: Writing the Limits of Empathy	4
ENGLISH 141	Modes of Writing (Exposition, Fiction, Verse, Etc.)	4
ENGLISH 143A	Short Fiction	4
ENGLISH 143B	Verse	4
ENGLISH 143C	Long Narrative	4
ENGLISH 143E	Playwriting	4
ENGLISH 143N	Prose Nonfiction	4
ENGLISH 143T	Poetry Translation Workshop	4
ENV DES 101A	Writing about Environmental Design: Short Compositions	3-4
ENV DES 101B	Writing about Environmental Design: One Longer Composition	3-4
FILM 180	Introduction to Screenwriting	4
FILM 181	Screenwriting	4
FILM 182	TV Writing	4
FRENCH 139	Creative Writing in French	4
NATAMST 150	Native American Narratives	4
THEATER 139A	Fundamentals of Playwriting	3
THEATER 139B	Playwriting	3

Literature

Course List

Code	Title	Units
AFRICAM C143B	Research-to-Performance Laboratory	3
AFRICAM C143C	Black Theatre Workshop	3
AFRICAM 150B	African American Literature 1920 to Present	3
AFRICAM N150B	Survey of African American Literary Forms and Styles 1920 to 1980	3
AFRICAM 152F	Neo-Slave Narratives	3
AFRICAM 153C	Novels of Toni Morrison	3
AFRICAM 155	Literature of the Caribbean: Significant Themes	4
AFRICAM 159	Special Topics in African American Literature	3 - 4
AFRICAM 165	African American Poetry: Eyes on the Prize	4
AGRS 124	Classical Poetics	4
AGRS 130M	Slavery and Literature in the Greco-Roman World	4
AMERSTD C152	Native American Literature	4
ANTHRO 160AC	Forms of Folklore	4
ANTHRO 162	Topics in Folklore	4
ARABIC 104A	Modern Arabic Prose	3
ARABIC 104B	Classical Arabic Prose	3
ARABIC 105A	Modern Arabic Poetry	3
ARABIC 105B	Classical Arabic Poetry	3
ARABIC 111A	Survey of Arabic Literature (in Arabic)	3
ARABIC 111B	Survey of Arabic Literature (in Arabic)	3
ARMENI 124	Armenian Literature in Social Context	4
ASAMST 172	Asian American Literature	4
ASAMST 175	Contemporary Narratives on the Philippines and the United States	3
ASAMST 176	Genre in Asian American Literature	4
ASAMST 178	Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature and Culture	4
ASAMST 181	Chinese American Literature	4
ASAMST 183	Korean American Literature	4
BUDDSTD C140	Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts	4
BUDDSTD C141	Introductory Readings in Kanbun	4
CELTIC 119A	Welsh and Arthurian Literature of the Middle Ages	4
CELTIC 119B	Welsh and Arthurian Literature of the Middle Ages	4
CELTIC 125	Irish Literature in Translation	4
CELTIC 138	Irish Literature	4
CELTIC 139	Irish Literature	4
CELTIC 146A	Medieval Welsh Language and Literature	4
CELTIC 146B	Medieval Welsh Language and Literature	4
CELTIC 168	Celtic Mythology and Oral Tradition	4
CHICANO 141	Chicana Feminist Writers and Discourse	4
CHICANO 142	Major Chicano Writers	4
CHICANO 143	Chicano and Latin American Literature	3
CHINESE 120	Ancient Chinese Prose	4
CHINESE 122	Ancient Chinese Poetry	4
CHINESE 134	Readings in Classical Chinese Poetry	4
CHINESE 136	Readings in Medieval Prose	4
CHINESE C140	Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts	4
CHINESE 155	Readings in Vernacular Chinese Literature	4
CHINESE 156	Modern Chinese Literature	4
CHINESE 157	Contemporary Chinese Literature	4
CHINESE 179	Exploring Premodern Chinese Novels	4
CHINESE 180	The Story of the Stone	4
COLWRIT 140A	Readings on Creative Writing	3
COM LIT 100	Introduction to Comparative Literature	4
COM LIT 100A	Introduction to Comparative Literature: Literature and Philosophy	4
COM LIT 100B	Introduction to Comparative Literature: Society and Culture	4
COM LIT 100C	Introduction to Comparative Literature: Literary and Cultural History	4
COM LIT 100D	Introduction to Comparative Literature	4
COM LIT 120	The Biblical Tradition in Western Literature	4
COM LIT 151	The Ancient Mediterranean World	4
COM LIT 152	The Middle Ages	4
COM LIT 153	The Renaissance	4
COM LIT 154	Eighteenth- and 19th-Century Literature	4
COM LIT 155	The Modern Period	4
COM LIT 156	Fiction and Culture of the Americas	4
COM LIT 156AC	On line: Fiction and Culture of the Americas	4
COM LIT 165	Myth and Literature	4
COM LIT 171	Topics in Modern Greek Literature	4
COM LIT 190	Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature	4
DUTCH 140	Topics in Dutch Literature	3
DUTCH C164	DUTCH C164 The Indonesian Connection: Dutch (Post)colonial History and Culture in Southeast Asia	4
EA LANG 105	Dynamics of Romantic Core Values in East Asian Premodern Literature and Contemporary Film	4
EA LANG 106	Expressing the Ineffable in China and Beyond: The Making of Meaning in Poetic Writing	4
EA LANG 108	Revising the Classics: Chinese and Greek Poetry in Translation	4
EA LANG 111	Reading Global Politics in Contemporary East Asian Literature	4
EA LANG 116	Modern East Asian Fiction	4
EA LANG 117	Lu Xun and his Worlds	4
EA LANG 160	Neurodiversity in Literature	4
EA LANG 162	Science Fiction in East Asia	4
ENGLISH 100	The Seminar on Criticism	4
ENGLISH 107	The English Bible As Literature	4
ENGLISH 110	Medieval Literature	4
ENGLISH 111	Chaucer	4
ENGLISH 112	Middle English Literature	4
ENGLISH 114A	English Drama	4
ENGLISH 114B	English Drama	4
ENGLISH 115A	The English Renaissance	4
ENGLISH 115B	The English Renaissance	4
ENGLISH 117A	Shakespeare	4
ENGLISH 117B	Shakespeare	4
ENGLISH 117F	Shakespeare and Film	4
ENGLISH 117J	Shakespeare	4
ENGLISH 117S	Shakespeare	4
ENGLISH 117T	Shakespeare in the Theatre	4
ENGLISH 118	Milton	4
ENGLISH 119	Literature of the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century	4
ENGLISH 120	Literature of the Later 18th Century	4
ENGLISH 121	Romantic Period	4
ENGLISH 122	Victorian Period	4
ENGLISH 125A	The English Novel	4
ENGLISH 125B	The English Novel	4
ENGLISH 125C	The European Novel	4
ENGLISH 125D	The 20th-Century Novel	4
ENGLISH 125E	The Contemporary Novel	4
ENGLISH 126	British Literature: 1900-1945	4
ENGLISH 127	Modern Poetry	4
ENGLISH 128	Modern Drama	4
ENGLISH 130A	American Literature: Before 1800	4
ENGLISH 130B	American Literature: 1800-1865	4
ENGLISH 130C	American Literature: 1865-1900	4
ENGLISH 130D	American Literature: 1900-1945	4
ENGLISH 131	American Poetry	4
ENGLISH 132	American Novel	4
ENGLISH 133A	African American Literature and Culture Before 1917	4
ENGLISH 133B	African American Literature and Culture Since 1917	4
ENGLISH 133T	Topics in African American Literature and Culture	4
ENGLISH 134	Contemporary Literature	4
ENGLISH 135AC	Literature of American Cultures	4
ENGLISH C136	Topics in American Studies	4
ENGLISH 137A	Chicana/o Literature and Culture to 1910	4
ENGLISH 137B	Chicana/o Literature and Culture Since 1910	4
ENGLISH 137T	Topics in Chicana/o Literature and Culture	4
ENGLISH 138	Studies in World Literature in English	4
ENGLISH 139	The Cultures of English	4
ENGLISH 152	Women Writers	4
ENGLISH 153T	Topics in Asian American Literatures and Cultures	4
ENGLISH 165	Special Topics	4
ENGLISH 165AC	Special Topics in American Cultures	4
ENGLISH 166	Special Topics	4
ENGLISH 166AC	Special Topics in American Cultures	4
ENGLISH N166	Special Topics	6
ENGLISH 170	Literature and the Arts	4
ENGLISH 171	Literature and Sexual Identity	4
ENGLISH 172	Literature and Psychology	4
ENGLISH 174	Literature and History	4
ENGLISH 175	Literature and Disability	4
ENGLISH 176	Literature and Popular Culture	4
ENGLISH 177	Literature and Philosophy	4
ENGLISH 178	British and American Folklore	4
ENGLISH 179	Literature and Linguistics	4
ENGLISH 180A	Autobiography	4
ENGLISH 180C	Comedy	4
ENGLISH 180E	The Epic	4
ENGLISH 180H	Short Story	4
ENGLISH 180J	The Essay	4
ENGLISH 180L	Lyric Verse	4
ENGLISH 180N	The Novel	4
ENGLISH 180R	The Romance	4
ENGLISH 180S	Satire	4
ENGLISH 180T	Tragedy	4
ENGLISH 180Z	Science Fiction	4
ENGLISH 190	Research Seminar	4
ETH STD 100	Comparative Ethnic Literature in America	4
ETH STD N100	Comparative Ethnic Literature in America	3
ETH STD 174	Existential Panic in American Ethnic Literature	4
ETH STD 175	Literature from Ethnic Movements	4
FRENCH 112A	Medieval Literature	4
FRENCH 112B	Medieval Literature	4
FRENCH 114A	Late Medieval Literature	4
FRENCH 116A	Sixteenth-Century Literature: Marot to Montaigne	4
FRENCH 117A	Seventeenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 117B	Seventeenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 118A	Eighteenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 118B	Eighteenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 119A	Nineteenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 119B	Nineteenth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 120A	Twentieth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 120B	Twentieth-Century Literature	4
FRENCH 121A	Literary Themes, Genres, and Structures	4
FRENCH 121B	Literary Themes, Genres, and Structures	4
FRENCH 122A	Literary Criticism	4
FRENCH 122B	Literary Criticism	4
FRENCH 123	Prose Fiction	4
FRENCH 124A	Modern Theatre	4
FRENCH 126	Senior Seminar	4
FRENCH 140A	French Literature in English Translation	4
FRENCH 140B	French Literature in English Translation	4
FRENCH 140C	French Literature in English Translation	4
FRENCH 140D	French Literature in English Translation	4
FRENCH 150A	Women in French Literature	4
FRENCH 150B	Women in French Literature	4
FRENCH 151A	Francophone Literature	4
FRENCH 151B	Francophone Literature	4
FRENCH 172A	Psychoanalytic Theory and Literature	4
FRENCH 174	Music and Literature	4
FRENCH 175A	Literature and the Visual Arts	4
FRENCH 176	Philosophy and Literature	4
FRENCH 185	Literature and Colonialism	4
GWS C146A	Cultural Representations of Sexualities: Queer Literary Culture	4
GERMAN 108	Literary Translation	4
GERMAN 110	The Literature of the Middle Ages	3
GERMAN 112	Early Modern Literature	4
GERMAN 123	From 1800 to the Present	3
GERMAN 131	Goethe	4
GERMAN 140	Romanticism	4
GERMAN 147	German Drama and Opera	4
GERMAN 148	Topics in Narrative	4
GERMAN 151	Eighteenth- to 21st-Century German Poetry	3
GERMAN 152	Modern Literature	4
GERMAN 155	Kafka	4
GERMAN 156	Literature in the Digital Age	4
GERMAN 160E	Holocaust: Media, Memory, Representation	4
GREEK 100	Plato and Attic Prose	4
GREEK 101	Homer	4
GREEK 102	Drama and Society	4
GREEK 105	The Greek New Testament	4
GREEK 115	Archaic Poetry	4
GREEK 116	Greek Drama	4
GREEK 117	Hellenistic Poets	4
GREEK 120	Herodotus	4
GREEK 121	Thucydides	4
GREEK 122	Attic Oratory	4
GREEK 123	Plato and Aristotle	4
GREEK 125	Greek Literature of the Hellenistic and Imperial Periods	4
HEBREW 104A	Modern Hebrew Literature and Culture	3
HEBREW 104B	Modern Hebrew Literature and Culture	3
ITALIAN 104	Reading Italian Literature	4
ITALIAN 109	Dante's Commedia (in Italian)	4
ITALIAN 110	Literature and Culture of the 13th and 14th Centuries	4
ITALIAN 112	Sixteenth-Century Literature and Culture	4
ITALIAN 115	Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture	4
ITALIAN 117	Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature	4
ITALIAN 120	Topics in Italian Studies	4
ITALIAN 130A	Dante's Inferno (in English)	4
ITALIAN 130B	Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso (in English)	4
ITALIAN 163	Special Topics in Italian Literature	4
JAPAN 130	Classical Japanese Poetry	4
JAPAN 132	Premodern Japanese Diary (Nikki) Literature	4
JAPAN 140	Heian Prose	4
JAPAN 144	Edo Literature	4
JAPAN 155	Modern Japanese Literature	4
JAPAN 159	Contemporary Japanese Literature	4
JAPAN 170	Classical Japanese Literature in Translation	4
JAPAN 173	Modern Japanese Literature in Translation	4
JAPAN 177	Urami: Rancor and Revenge in Japanese Literature	4
JAPAN 180	Ghosts and the Modern Literary Imagination	4
JAPAN 181	Reframing Disasters: Fukushima, Before and After	4
KOREAN 101	Fourth-Year Readings: Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 130	Genre and Occasion in Traditional Poetry	4
KOREAN 140	Narrating Persons and Objects in Traditional Korean Prose	4
KOREAN 150	Modern Korean Poetry	4
KOREAN 153	Readings in Modern Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 155	Modern Korean Fiction	4
KOREAN 157	Contemporary Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 170	Intercultural Encounters in Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 172	Gender and Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 174	Modern Korean Fiction in Translation	4
KOREAN 180	Critical Approaches to Modern Korean Literature	4
KOREAN 188	Cold War Culture in Korea: Literature and Film	4
LATIN 100	Republican Prose	4
LATIN 101	Vergil	4
LATIN 102	Lyric and Society	4
LATIN 115	Roman Drama	4
LATIN 116	Lucretius, Vergil's Georgics	4
LATIN 119	Latin Epic	4
LATIN 120	Latin Prose to AD 14	4
LATIN 121	Tacitus	4
LATIN 122	Post-Augustan Prose	4
LATIN 140	Medieval Latin	4
LATIN 155A	Readings in Medieval Latin	4
LGBT 146	Cultural Representations of Sexuality	4
LGBT C146A	Cultural Representations of Sexualities: Queer Literary Culture	4
MELC 105	Ancient Mesopotamian Literature	3
MELC 113	Gilgamesh: King, Hero, and God	4
MELC 132	Biblical Poetry	4
MELC 139	Modern Jewish Literatures	4
MELC 150A	Arabic Literature in Translation	3
MELC 150B	Arabic Literature in Translation	3
MELC 152	Cultural Encounters in Modern Arabic Literature	3
MELC 154	Narratives of Identity in Israeli and Palestinian Fiction	4
MELC 155	The Thousand and One Nights in World Literary Imagination	3
MELC 165	Film and Fiction of Iran	4
NATAMST C152	Native American Literature	4
PERSIAN 101A	Readings in Persian Literature	3
PERSIAN 101B	Readings in Persian Literature	3
PERSIAN 102A	Readings in Classical Persian Prose	3
PERSIAN 102B	Readings in Classical Persian Prose	3
PERSIAN 103A	Classical Persian Poetry	3
PERSIAN 103B	Classical Persian Poetry	3
PERSIAN 104A	Contemporary Persian Literature	3
PERSIAN 104B	Contemporary Persian Literature	3
PERSIAN 105	Modern Analytical Prose in Persian	3
PORTUG 107	Introduction to Portuguese Literature and Culture	4
PORTUG 128	Modern and Contemporary Brazilian Literature	4
PORTUG 135	Studies in Luso-Brazilian Literature	4
RHETOR 112	Rhetoric of Narrative Genres in Nonliterate Societies	4
RHETOR 121	Rhetoric of Fiction	4
RHETOR 122	Rhetoric of Drama	4
RHETOR 124	Rhetoric of Poetry	4
RHETOR 125	Poetics and Poetry	4
RHETOR 127	Novel, Society, and Politics	4
RHETOR 129	Rhetoric of Autobiography	4
RHETOR 129AC	Autobiography and American Individualism	4
RHETOR 130	Novel into Film	4
RHETOR 131T	Genre in Film and Literature	4
RHETOR 156	Rhetoric of the Political Novel	4
SANSKR 101C	Intermediate Sanskrit: Sahitya (Literary Sanskrit)	5
SCANDIN 106	The Works of Hans Christian Andersen	4
SCANDIN C107	Plays of Ibsen	4
SCANDIN C108	Strindberg	4
SCANDIN 116	Studies in Prose	4
SCANDIN 120	The Novel in Scandinavian	4
SCANDIN 125	Old Norse Literature	4
SCANDIN 150	Studies in Scandinavian Literature	4
SCANDIN 160	Scandinavian Myth and Religion	4
SCANDIN C160	Scandinavian Myth and Religion	4
SCANDIN 165	Scandinavian Folklore	4
SCANDIN 170	Arctic Folklore and Mythology in Nordic Lands	4
SLAVIC 131	Literature, Art, and Society in 20th-Century Russia	4
SLAVIC 132	Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the English Novel	4
SLAVIC 133	The Novel in Russia and the West	4
SLAVIC 134A	Gogol	4
SLAVIC 134C	Dostoevsky	4
SLAVIC 134D	Tolstoy	4
SLAVIC 134E	Chekhov	4
SLAVIC 134F	Nabokov	4
SLAVIC 134G	Tolstoy and Dostoevsky	4
SLAVIC 134N	Studies in Russian Literature	4
SLAVIC C134N	Russia and Asia	4
SLAVIC 139	Post-Soviet Cultures	4
SLAVIC 147A	East Slavic Folklore	3
SLAVIC 147B	Balkan Folklore	3
SLAVIC 150	Polish Literature and Intellectual Trends	3
SLAVIC 151	Readings in Polish Literature	4
SLAVIC 170	Survey of Yugoslav Literatures	3
SLAVIC 171	Advanced Readings in Yugoslav/Post-Yugoslav Studies	3
SLAVIC 181	Readings in Russian Literature	4
SLAVIC 182	Pushkin	4
SLAVIC 188	Russian Prose	4
SEASIAN 128	Introduction to Modern Indonesian and Malaysian Literature in Translation	4
SEASIAN 129	Mainland Southeast Asian Literature	4
SEASIAN 130	Articulations of the Female in Indonesia	4
SEASIAN 148	Philippines: History, Literature, Performance	4
SEASIAN 152	Filipino Mythology	4
SEASIAN 170	Narratives of Vietnam and Vietnamese Diaspora	4
SPANISH 104A	Survey of Spanish American Literature	4
SPANISH 104B	Survey of Spanish American Literature	4
SPANISH 107A	Survey of Spanish Literature	4
SPANISH 107B	Survey of Spanish Literature	4
SPANISH 111A	Cervantes	4
SPANISH 111B	Cervantes	4
SPANISH 115	Spanish Poetry	4
SPANISH 131	The Spanish American Short Story	4
SPANISH 135	Studies in Hispanic Literature	4
SPANISH 135W	Studies in Hispanic Literature - Writing Intensive	4
SPANISH 142	Spanish-American Fiction in English Translation	4
TAMIL 101A	Readings in Tamil	4
TAMIL 101B	Readings in Tamil	4
THEATER C107	Plays of Ibsen	4
THEATER C108	Strindberg	4
THEATER 126	Performance Literatures	4
THEATER C183C	Black Theatre Workshop	3
TURKISH 101A	Readings in Modern Turkish	3
TURKISH 101B	Readings in Modern Turkish	3