Containing Multitudes

In the 1930s, the man who would become the Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress applied to The Harvard Advocate—and was rejected.

“I wasn’t a very good writer then; perhaps I should have been turned down,” Robert Lowell said in an interview with the Paris Review in 1961. Though the rejection must have stung at the time, it did not deter Lowell from a career in poetry.

But the Advocate, the oldest continually published college literary magazine in the country, has had a history of publishing famous Harvard wordsmiths, from T.S. Eliot to John Ashbery. Other student-organized institutions here have trained their shares of notable writers—John Updike was a member of a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, David Sanger wrote for The Crimson, and E.E. Cummings helped to found the Harvard Monthly.

At Harvard today, student life is very much focused on extracurriculars, and to some students, these activities are just as important as—or even more important than—their classes. In the hypersocial setting of undergraduate life at Harvard, creative writing’s careful introspection and editing play out in ways beyond the often-solitary acts of producing original works. The Harvard students today who work together in writing classes and student-run publications are participating in a long and illustrious literary tradition at the College.

In the absence of a perfect formula for fostering future Pulitzer winners, the writing scene at Harvard is multi-faceted, varied, and as often as not, a collective rather than a solo pursuit.

THE ALLURE OF THE WRITING WORKSHOP

“Harvard is a great place to be a writer,” says Stephen L. Burt, director of undergraduate studies in the English Department. In his office on the second floor of the Barker Center, the massive bookshelves stretch from floor to ceiling. He is said by his students to be one of the most exuberant and engaging professors at Harvard, and from the way he talks about the English Department, he certainly displays the same enthusiasm for which he is known.

According to Burt, between 120 and 150 students take one of the 14 writing workshops offered by the English Department each semester. Less than half of enrollees are English concentrators, a dynamic that Burt says is maintained purposefully so that workshop participants can share feedback from many different perspectives. Admission to one of these coveted writing workshops is based on an application that includes a writing sample and personal statement.

“One of the many things I think we do right is to make the creative writing courses selective,” Burt says. Without this discretion, he explains, it would be more difficult to ensure accurate and careful grading necessary in order to offer the class for credit. Currently, courses are offered in playwriting, screenwriting, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Burt says that the department promotes creative writing as an academic pursuit, but at the same time the professors realize how important out-of-class writing can be to a writer’s development. Professors are aware of the student publications, and there is no notion that academic workshops take precedent over publications like the Advocate.

Amy C. Robinson ’15, an English concentrator, is taking her third creative writing workshop in the department. She says the structure and rigor of the workshops have made these classes her favorites at Harvard so far.

But the application required to get into the classes can be a source of frustration for some students. Dennis A. Sun ’15, a Crimson designer, is one student who, after applying to a fiction-writing workshop two semesters in a row without success, decided to do something about it. Last year, Sun founded the Harvard College Writers’ Workshop with a few of his friends.

“The reason we started the workshop was to fill this hole in the creative writing community at Harvard,” Sun says. Sun had read on the English Department's website to work on his writing and then apply again the next semester, but he felt he lacked the peer input he needed to improve, a sentiment that was echoed by a few of his friends. The workshops he designed are meant to introduce students to creative writing in a more relaxed atmosphere. “We’re trying to make writing more accessible for students. The Advocate can be a very daunting place when you’re just starting to figure out how to use language in the artistic sense.”

The group started to have organized workshops led by a student moderator last semester, along with all-night writing events, and though Sun—a human developmental and regenerative biology concentrator—plans to pursue scientific research after college, he regards the Writers’ Workshop as very significant to his time as an undergraduate. “Being able to read other people’s writing is really rewarding—you get to see how people your age handle the same problems you’re struggling with in writing,” Sun says.

Since starting the group last fall, Sun has taken a writing workshop through the English Department and agrees that the level of rigor he found there made his application process worth the hassle. However, he still sees value in the Writers’ Workshop he helped to form as a way for students to get their feet wet with writing.

PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION

Many students who end up taking advantage of the writing workshops Harvard has to offer also spend their extracurricular time perfecting their writing skills. Robinson’s interest in writing translates outside the classroom as well; last semester she was co-president of Tuesday Magazine, Harvard’s general interest student publication. In that position, she edited her peers’ work, publicized for submissions, and scraped together money to be able to print their publication. Robinson says that sometimes Tuesday was more stressful—and took up more of her time—than some of her academic courses.

Looking forward to her plans after graduating, Robinson thinks that the experience she gained in working for Tuesday has prepared her for a career as writer or editor at a magazine.

Liza M. Batkin ’15, who writes and edits for the Advocate, decided not to pursue creative writing as a part of her concentration. Instead, she says that she feels more at home with the type of critical writing she found in the Literature Department. “I found that writing an essay itself could be a creative act,” Batkin says.

Being a part of a literary magazine has provided her with an additional group of critical thinkers, and she spent her summer working for N+1, a literary journal based in New York that was founded in part by Advocate alumni.

“Sometimes it feels like creative production and academic pursuit are not in tune with each other,” Batkin says about academic life at Harvard. But, she says, with outlets outside of class, one can stay engaged in literary critique without going straight into academia after graduation.

Zoe K. Hitzig ’15—a Crimson Arts writer who is also the publisher of the Advocate—also values the skills she is learning as a student publisher of a major literary magazine. Though it is at times hard to balance studying for a test and making sure that a publication comes out on time, she’s not sorry that she chose to take on a leadership position. “A lot of members on the Exec board [of the Advocate] approach their positions as semi-professional,” Hitzig says. “There’s definitely a sense of responsibility...that puts the Advocate above academics in some sense.”

WORKSHOPS AS COLLABORATION

In addition to the pre-professional experience of working for the Advocate, Hitzig spoke highly of the community she has found there and mentioned that student editors often circulate their own writing, hoping for feedback and an intellectual conversation about the craft.

The Advocate has even started running student-led workshops for writers, whether they are members of the publication or not. Over Wintersession, Hitzig says, many students showed up to participate in workshops designed to reflect the varied academic pursuits of Advocate members.

Unlike Harvard’s writing workshops, the Advocate had poets edit with fiction writers, a unique dynamic that Hitzig says helps to integrate different literary forms in a way that was very valuable for those who attended. The workshops were so successful that the students hosted another round over the summer, and they were able to reach out to the community of Harvard researchers in the math and science departments who were on campus for the summer, people who Hitzig says wouldn’t otherwise be encouraged to write in their free time.

“People learn so much through their peers here, whether you’re formally part of an institution or not,” Hitzig says, pointing out that even if students are not part of a publication, it is still possible for them to be inspired by the kind of work that fellow writers are interested in studying.

Satire V takes the collaborative essence of a writing workshop to the extreme. Opening a copy of the comedic publication, you won’t find any individual bylines. Instead, students writing for the group come up with topic ideas collectively, edit over an email list, and then publish the humor pieces anonymously online. Alicia V. Mergenthaler ’15, one of two editors-in-chief, likes that articles for Satire V undergo so much editing.

“This fully collaborative process is really great,” Mergenthaler says. “Usually the piece is edited before it gets to the editors.”

Mergenthaler has been writing and editing for Satire V for three years and studies economics. Gus A. Mayopoulos ’15, the current president of the publication, studies history. Both see their participation in “Satire V” as an opportunity to parody serious communications like a Harvard University Police Department alert email, a letter from the Dean, and the Crimson.

GOING IT ALONE

On the Office of Student Life website, there are over 15 writing-related groups, and these are only the officially recognized ones; that number does not include organizations like The Crimson that sustain themselves independently from the College. But even with the plethora of ways to get involved in writing with other students, there are those who choose to approach creative writing in a more individual setting.

“I personally never enjoyed creative writing classes,” Riley K. Carney ’15 says. “I like getting feedback when [I’m] ready for it.” Starting at age 15, Carney has published five books in her fantasy series.

For that reason, Carney decided not to add creative writing courses to her academic schedule, preferring to take her own time to produce stories. She is working on her next novel, a departure from her usual work that she describes as “a political thriller with a hint of mystical noir.” Even though she is constantly creating fiction, Carney chose to study government at Harvard, and she says she plans to write a thesis.

“You have to find a daily balance,” she says. “If I want to write, I have to write.” She blocks out mornings to work on fiction and will produce anywhere from 300 words to five pages in one day. This time commitment is something that other student writers find challenging. Hitzig says that dividing her time between academics and her work at the Advocate is not always easy.

For some, writing is a very individual craft—even after countless edits and critiques, the greatest sense of achievement might arise from quietly perfecting a poem or successfully helping a character to reach her goal. Others find the workshop environment necessary to jumpstart the creative process. “I don’t think I’d be able to motivate myself to write without a class,” Robinson says.

Whether writing is a social or solitary pursuit, Harvard provides environments primed for both dispositions in the hopes that the next Thoreau, Cummings, or Updike will emerge from its halls.

—Staff writer Virginia R. Marshall can be reached at virginia.marshall@thecrimson.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following corrections:

CORRECTION: September 24

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Dennis A. Sun '15 applied to creative writing workshops four semesters in a row and was told by the English Department to improve his writing; Sun applied two semesters in a row and read on the English Department's website that he should improve. The article also incorrectly named Sun's group as the Harvard Writers' Workshop, not the Harvard College Writers' Workshop.