Creative Writing
When you major in creative writing, words are your work. At KCAI, you will link original writing and critical thinking with an in-depth studio experience of your choice.
You will explore literary genres including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, minute fiction, screenwriting, mixed genres, experimental, travel writing, essay and scholarly research, and you will experience a rigorous intellectual process that examines literature, aesthetics and philosophy while you develop technique and confidence as a writer.
Students choose from a wide variety of elective courses, including “Topics in Aesthetics: Sense & Sensibility,” “Topics in American Literature: Contemporary Drama,” “Topics in European Literature: Literature of the Holocaust,” “Topics in the Narrative: Twice-Told Tales,” “Topics in Global/Comparative Literature: The Japanese Novel,” “Creative Nonfiction Workshop: The New New Journalists.”
Paul Collins, Ben Lerner, Lore Segal, Janet Desaulniers and David Kirby are just a few of the nationally and internationally known writers who have spoken at KCAI and led workshops for creative writing majors. Recent lecturers have included author Temple Grandin, who wrote “Animals in Translation” and “Animals Make us Human” and poet Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Creative Writing Faculty
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Phyllis Moore, Ph.D., associate professor and director, School of Liberal Arts
Phyllis Moore, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the School of Liberal Arts at KCAI, is an award-winning teacher and writer...
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Phyllis Moore, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the School of Liberal Arts at KCAI, is an award-winning teacher and writer. Her poems and short stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Mississippi Review, Redbook and others. Her work has been listed in both "The Best American Short Stories" and The Pushcart Prize anthologies.
Before joining the KCAI faculty in 2003, she was co-chair of the MFA in Writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where her students nominated her twice for Outstanding Faculty of the Year. She has received arts council grants from the states of Illinois and Florida.
"A Compendium of Skirts," Dr. Moore's collection of short stories, received endorsements from authors Jane Hamilton, James McManus, Rosellen Brown and Padgett Powell, among others, and was praised by critics across the country.
Dr. Moore holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has taught literature and writing for a quarter of a century, the last 18 of which she has chosen to spend teaching at visual arts schools. She says she enjoys what her students' visual abilities bring to their writing.
Contact: 816-802-3388 or pmoore@kcai.edu
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Rush Rankin, professor
Rush Rankin, who joined the KCAI faculty in 1975, teaches creative writing, fiction, poetry and aesthetic philosophy.
Rankin...
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Rush Rankin, who joined the KCAI faculty in 1975, teaches creative writing, fiction, poetry and aesthetic philosophy.
Rankin earned a bachelor's degree from Duke University; an M.A.C.T. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa.
His book of poems, "The Failure of Grief," was published in 2000. Another book, a poetic essay on the philosophy of postmodernism, "The Postmodern Comedy," was published in 1993 by Aldus Press of Massachusetts.
He has published fiction, essays and poetry in magazines in the United States, France and England. His poetry essays and fiction have appeared in Antioch Review, Epoch, Pleiades, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Paris Review, Stand and Another Chicago Magazine. His poems have been anthologized over the years in The Carnegie Mellon Anthology, Seneca Review Anthology, A to Z, Voices from the Interior and Spud Songs. His poetry was presented in a performance in 1988, titled "GLEE" after one of his poems, at the Theater for the New City, New York. As a tribute to his teaching, he was selected to the National Faculty of the Union of Independent Colleges of Art in 1980.
Rankin's story "Smart Men," which was published by TriQuarterly in 1982, was listed by "Best American Short Stories," 1983, as one of the "distinguished" stories of the year. His essay on the poet Louise Gluck, published in New Letters Review, was selected for inclusion in the anthology "Contemporary Literary Criticism," 1987-88.
A work of aesthetic philosophy, called "In Theory," was published in January 2006 by Xenos Books with the collaboration of Chelsea Editions. Word Press also published Rankin's next collection of poems, called "Pascal's Other Wager," which appeared in December 2006. His book, "Bene-Dictions," selected by Rosanna Warren, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was published by UNT Press in 2003. Rankin's poetry has also been published in magazines in France and England, and in 2005 a translated chapter from "In Theory" appeared in Italy.
Contact: 816-802-3375 or email: rrankin@kcai.edu
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Anne Boyer, lecturer
Anne Boyer is the author of a book of poetry, "The Romance of Happy Workers" (Coffee House 2008), and the forthcoming novel...
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Anne Boyer is the author of a book of poetry, "The Romance of Happy Workers" (Coffee House 2008), and the forthcoming novel "JOAN." Her interests include small press and micro-publishing, and she has published many smaller works and chapbooks of poetry and prose, including "Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse" (Effing Press, Austin, 2006), "Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology" (Dusie Collectiv, Switzerland, 2007) and a book of conceptual work, "Art is War" (Mitzvah, Lawrence, 2008). Other forthcoming works include the cyber-opera "The 2000s" and a narrative based on Google Earth called "My Time on Earth."
Boyer is a founding editor of the poetry journal "Abraham Lincoln," and she spent some time as an active member of the FLARF collective. Her poetry and prose have been published in many journals, including Lit, The Denver Quarterly, New Letters and others, and her visual work was featured in The University of Colorado Denver's literary journal, Copper Nickel.
As well as writing poetry and prose, Boyer works in video, web installation and visual poetry. Her teaching areas include social theory, aesthetics, digital culture, creative writing and literary publishing.
Boyer earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing in 1997 from Wichita State University and a B.A. degree in English literature in 1996 from Kansas State University. Before coming to KCAI, she taught creative writing and literature in the English department at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Boyer has been teaching as a lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute since 2007, and she is the faculty advisor for KCAI's award-winning literary magazine, Spring Formal.
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Haines Eason, lecturer
Haines Eason is a graduate of the M.F.A. writing program at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared widely in...
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Haines Eason is a graduate of the M.F.A. writing program at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared widely in journals such as Boston Review, Yale Review, New England Review and Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. He contributes regularly to American Book Review and has reviewed for Colorado Review, Rain Taxi, Cutbank and elsewhere. In 2009 his chapbook, "A History of Waves," was selected by Mark Doty for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and in 2010 his full-length collection, "Traveler and Shadow," was a finalist for the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize.
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Jordan Stempleman, lecturer
Jordan Stempleman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop where he was a Leggett Schupes Fellow in Poetry. He is the author of six...
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Jordan Stempleman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop where he was a Leggett Schupes Fellow in Poetry. He is the author of six books of poetry: "Their Fields" (Moria, 2005), "What's the Matter" (Otoliths, 2007), "Facings "(Otoliths, 2007), "The Travels" (Otoliths, 2008) "String Parade" (BlazeVOX, 2008) and "Doubled Over" (BlazeVOX, 2009). He is also associate editor of The Continental Review, a video-only forum for contemporary poetry and poetics.
