About
The Kratz Center for Creative Writing is an academic program that fosters excellence in creative writing for Goucher College, the state of Maryland, and beyond. The Kratz Center brings nationally and internationally recognized authors to campus for its Fall Visiting Authors Series and its Spring Writer-in-Residence Series. These authors work closely with students to provide them with a stimulating environment in which the highest quality of writing is encouraged.
Created by a generous $1 million gift from Eleanor Kratz Denoon, a 1936 Goucher alumna, the Kratz Center, builds upon Goucher’s long-standing reputation of producing talented and distinguished writers. This list includes the following recent Goucher graduates: Jennifer Crowell, author of Necessary Madness, Christine Stewart, who received the 1998 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship for her collection of poems, and John McManus, author of a collection of short stories, Stop Breaking Down.
The following is an interview originally published in The Goucher Quarterly Magazine (January 2000) between the Kratz Center’s Co-Director, the novelist and Goucher professor Madison Smartt Bell and Rick Bader in which Professor Bell talks about the college’s new Kratz Center for Creative Writing.
The following is the introduction of David Guterson that Madison Smartt Bell offered on
September 13, 1999, in the Kraushaar Auditorium on the occasion of the Kratz Center’s first visiting author event.
The Kratz Center functions cooperatively with Goucher’s undergraduate Creative Writing Program within the English Department, enhancing and expanding the curriculum with distinguished guest writers and new course offerings.
In addition to hosting an array of master classes and symposia each semester, the Kratz Center also sponsors a student-run writing group called Word for Word that visits conferences, curates events, and holds other peer activities.
The Center offers annual Summer Writing Fellowships to Goucher creative writing students. To read detailed guidelines for the Kratz Summer Writing Fellowships, click here. Or Goucher students should email kratz@goucher.edu to receive the application form and waiver form for the Kratz Summer Writing Fellowships.
Eleanor Kratz Denoon (1915 - 2010)
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The founding donor of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing was Eleanor Kratz Denoon, class of 1936. She was a tireless champion of literature, a lifelong advocate for peace, and a beloved alumna of Goucher College. |