We offer the flexibility to work in multiple genres with a highly acclaimed,dedicated faculty of working writers. This is a professionally oriented writing program -- you'll explore literary history and theory, the history of film and criticism, and technical aspects of your craft, but always with an eye towards getting your work in front of an audience through either publication or production.
Our location in the beautiful Coachella Valley provides respite from urban distractions while offering its own array of cultural riches. Some writers use their time in Palm Desert as a retreat, a two-to-three year residency of literary immersion amidst the inspiration provided by the pristine mountains, desert, and hot springs that surround the campus. Some take advantage of our evening classes to continue working in their current fields while preparing for their next move.
Our students are themselves extraordinarily diverse, some having already worked for years as screenwriters but now anxious to pursue prose, while others have just earned their undergraduate degrees. The University of California at Riverside's Creative Writing Faculty is the most diverse, racially and ethnically, in the country, and the close cooperation at the Palm Desert Graduate Center of faculty in fiction, screenwriting, poetry, nonfiction, playwriting, and television writing, along with the steady stream of working professionals in all fields, guarantees a broad sense of what writing means and how it happens.