Read, write and rejoice.
Indulge your love of reading and polish your prose. When it comes to literary inspiration, our 27,000-acres of pure sublimity puts Walden Pond to shame. At the same time, the world’s largest campus is home to an intimate community built on mentorship and exchange. This means constant opportunities to have your work carefully considered—and to explore your fascinations to their fullest.
Reading critically and writing well are two of the most highly valued skills to any employer (in any profession). Understanding people and creative problem solving are two more. As an English major, you’ll distinguish yourself by the strength of your discernment and expression.
Small class sizes mean rare access to visiting writers and scholars—whether in workshops or one-on-one over lunch. Gain relevant experience through (paid) work for our newspaper, literary magazine, Writing Center, two campus museums or library.
English FACULTY
Dana Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing Dr. Sandra Meek has taught writing at Berry since 1996 and is the founding member of Berry’s creative writing program. She has published more than 200 poems in literary journals and is the author of Still (Persea Books, 2020), named a “New & Noteworthy Poetry Book” by The New York Times Book Review. Other titles by Dr. Meek include An Ecology of Elsewhere (Persea, 2016), Road Scatter (Persea, 2012), Biogeography, winner of the Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press, 2008), Burn (2005) and Nomadic Foundations (2002), as well as an edited anthology, Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad (Ninebark, 2007). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, she has three times been awarded Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry and twice the Peace Corps Writers Award in Poetry.
With 88 miles of trails and forest, stream, lake and mountain ecosystems, our 27,000-acre campus is a boon to writers and readers alike. Archives, museums, libraries, a community of fellow scholars and writers and glorious nature—it’s all here.
English Courses
Learn the technical and rhetorical elements of writing in online environments, including how to present information in online formats for a variety of purposes, audiences and clients.
Selected readings and advanced work in creative writing, poetry or prose, centered on landscape and the environment. May be offered as a residential or a study abroad course.
Consider the work of Stephen King—popular and literary at the same time—to explore the increasingly blurred line between “literary” and “genre” fiction.
English LIVES
It’s true — one class can change your life. Just ask Bailey Merlin ’15, an admissions and outreach coordinator for the Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery program at Harvard Medical School, who is also pursuing a Master of Science in the Media, Medicine and Health program. She says taking the Writing in Community course taught by Sandra Meek, Dana Professor in English and Creative Writing, set her career path.
Merlin explains that professors in the English department demonstrated dedication to students by meeting them on an individual level. She adds, “It’s crazy to think that because of one class I took my junior/senior year, I got into the medical side of the world and became interested in improving health.”
Related Programs
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