Welcome to the website of The Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College.
Founded by Madison Smartt Bell and Elizabeth Spires, the Kratz Center is one of Maryland’s premier undergraduate academic centers devoted to the study and presentation of creative writing.
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We can also be found on X, Facebook, and Bluesky. Current students and alums, feel free to join our Facebook group page.
The Kratz Center is proud to present its 2025 Blueprint Reading Series guests:
Abbey Mei Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller, and a firestarter. Her short story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster, was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and was a finalist for the 2018 Phillip K. Dick Award. She has received fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Tin House, Millay Arts, the Vermon Studio Center, and the McKnight Foundation.
Aaron Coleman is a poet, translator, educator, and scholar of the African Diaspora. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Cave Canem, the Fulbright program, and the American Literary Translators Association. His debut poetry collection, Threat Come Close, won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.
Curated by Edgar Kunz.
The Kratz Center is proud to host Goucher Alum and Kratz Spring Writer in Residence Sarah Pinsker for a reading and book signing for her new novel: Haunt Sweet Home.
This event is free and open to the public.
Photograph by Adan Rodriguez
2024 Denoon winners (l-r) Frances McPheely and Hope Kamal.
The Eleanor Denoon ’36 Poetry Prize is sponsored by the Kratz Center in memory of its founding donor, Eleanor Denoon. It is given annually to Goucher undergraduates “for serious, sustained work in poetry.”
