Creative Writing - Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry

Overview

You’ll work one-on-one with a professional writer-mentor to improve your short stories, poems, memoir, or novel-in-progress, learning how to develop plot, character, dialogue, style and more through feedback on your own manuscript. The program is intended for those working on book-length projects, and you'll have the satisfaction of completing a large body of work which may include all or parts of a novel or memoir, a volume of short stories, or a book of poetry.

We've recently added a playwright to our list of available mentors - students have the opportunity to work through a full-length play with a playwriting mentor.

Humber is noted for its exceptional creative writing mentors, including authors of world stature. Past mentors include Martin Amis, Peter Carey, Miriam Toews, David Mitchell, Esi Edugyan, Nino Ricci, Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Hill, Anne Michaels, Edward Albee, Ha Jin and Alistair MacLeod. Recent international authors have included Jenny Offill, Nell Freudenberger and Samantha Harvey.

This is a project-based program in which you meet the learning outcomes by working through your own manuscript.

Your Career

The main goal of the Creative Writing - Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry graduate certificate program from Humber College is to improve your writing, and publication is a possibility for some. Graduates of this program may use their writing and editing skills in a wide variety of careers and professions in addition to writing books. Some of our graduates write for newspapers, magazines, television, the web and other media.

More than 300 Humber School for Writers alumni have published books. Dr. Vincent Lam, who won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his literary debut, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, is just one of our distinguished former students. Other alumni have been on the bestseller lists in Canada: Suzanne Desrochers for Bride of New France, Cathy Marie Buchanan for The Painted Girls, Shari Lapena for The Couple Next Door, and Eva Stachniak for The Chosen Maiden.