Our nationally-acclaimed Writing Program fosters best practices in writing across disciplines and career specializations.
We believe that good writing means cogent thinking. Writing cannot be contained within a single silo, with immutable rules; it is a living practice that evolves and adapts itself across the range of human endeavor to meet society’s needs. As such, our curriculum supports the passions of our students -- be they in business and law; in media and the arts; or in health, science, and high tech.
Undergraduate courses train students first in critical writing, research, and analysis. Later courses apply that to academic, professional, and civic contexts, and to the study of writing as a discipline. Students may gear their writing to the Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences, or tailor it to fields as specific as the environment, gender studies, and Chicano/a studies. Many delve into the art and craft of writing—from creative nonfiction to copyediting.
We offer a Professional Writing Minor and collaborate with the College of Creative Studies in the Writing and Literature major.
Writing Program News & Features
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, has shaken the academic world for better and for worse. On the UC Santa Barbara campus, undergraduate student Scarlett Adams offers a glimpse of how students and professors have approached the AI tool in different ways — from banning it, introducing it, or guiding students on how to use it, as since this technology is here to stay.
The UC Santa Barbara Writing Program is beginning a creative nonfiction initiative in which 19 students will work with faculty members to create multimedia stories about their COVID-19 pandemic experiences.
UCSB Writing and Literature student Via Bleidner has her first book coming out on August 10, 2021. The book is a collection of short stories and personal essays detailing her life growing up in Calabasas. Bleidner recently sat down for an interview to discuss her journey to becoming a published student author.
Three University of California professors are lead researchers for the Wayfinding Project, a multi-year study of how writing affects the lives of recent college graduates. UC Santa Barbara Writing Program professor Karen Lunsford discusses the the project’s recent findings, as well as what is in store for the future.
At her virtual Friday evening book launch, UC Santa Barbara writing lecturer and former ballerina Ellen O’Connell Whittet spoke to over a hundred colleagues, friends, family, and students over Zoom about her new memoir: What You Become in Flight. O’Connell Whittet described how ballet normalizes “sacrificing the body, to contort it into something perfect” and why a career-ending injury made her consider how this principle impacted her life.
Originally a literary arts magazine club, The Catalyst magazine now offers a four-unit course at UCSB, providing creative collaboration as a means to fulfill the unit requirement. UC Santa Barbara undergraduate student Renee Whalen delves into how mixing poetry and art in this course changed her relationship with writing.
Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker columnist discusses how she uses narrative techniques with historical arguments to explain modern political and social issues. The presentation was sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s History Department.
The Professional Writing Minor at UC Santa Barbara.held its annual information session last week, marking a pivotal moment for its applicants: It’s time to start preparing to apply for the coming year. The Minor has launched a new Journalism track, and now offers students a choice of six distinct areas of professional focus. The other tracks are: Business Communication, Civic Engagement, Multimedia Communication, Professional Editing, and Science Communication. Read more about this popular program here.
Greg Silver, a student in the Writing Program, shares a deeply personal journey about how he came to love writing.
A new chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has been started at UCSB. President and vice president, Fabiola Esqueda and Noey Padilla, sat down to discuss what this organization means to them and the Latinx community on campus.
As the number of international students at UCSB have doubled over the past 5 years, Kristen Dunkinson works specifically with international students at Campus Learning Assistance Services (CLAS) in order to help them with their writing.
Fourth-year English major and writing minor William Kang reflects on his writing experience at UCSB, including his position as a tutor at Campus Learning Assistance Services.
Fourth-year Communication student Madison Terry discusses how a Magazine Writing course in UC Santa Barbara’s Writing Program shifted her outlook on the written word and inspired her interest in pursuing professional writing.
History of Art and Architecture professor Claudia Moser and Writing Program lecturer Christian Thomas have received a $94,000 grant from UC Santa Barbara’s Innovative Learning Technology Initiative (ILTI) to develop an interactive, game-based course called Rome: The Game. The lower division course, which will be available to students in winter 2021, is an introduction to the art, archaeology, and history of ancient Rome, with an emphasis on writing and research.
The job of an environmental journalists is to take the scientific language of research studies and clarify it in a concise manner for the general public. It is their responsibility to inform the public on the current state of the environment.
In a recent interview, Kayla Curtis-Evans shared what drew her to pursue this field and what she plans to achieve in the future.