English and Creative Writing

WPI students can complete their HUA requirements with five courses on literature and/or creative writing and one EN capstone seminar.

Fulfill Your HUA Requirement: 

Step One: Take Five (5) Humanities and Arts Courses:

+ three English and/or Creative Writing (EN) courses (that's your "depth”)

+ one non-EN HUA course (that's your “breadth”)

+ one course in any HUA discipline, including another EN course

Step Two: After you complete these five (5) courses, take an EN seminar (HU3900) as your HUA capstone. These small-group courses allow you to further explore an EN area of study or to experience a new topic that excites you.

NOTE: Make sure to reach out to the professor who teaches your desired seminar as soon as possible. The professor must give you permission to register for the course. Because seminars are capped at twelve students, they fill quickly.

Humanities & Arts’ curriculum offers a wide range of courses. You’ll find everything from Greek tragedy to experimental science fiction. Read and write poetry, short stories, novels, and discover some new cutting-edge, fantastical, or just downright weird genres. 

These groups, organized by theme, are meant to help you select your “depth” courses according to your interests. But your path through the EN discipline can be as unique as you are. Combine courses from different groups to design a learning experience that truly sparks your curiosity.

The EN faculty at WPI is made up of award-winning writers and scholars whose work is recognized nationally and across the globe.

Student Group

For a tech school, WPI boasts an impressive number of literature fans and creative writers. We love our well-rounded student body.

hex literary magazine

Launched in 2022, the award-winning hex literary is WPI’s first international literary journal publishing professional writers. Each Tuesday, hex publishes new flash (each piece fewer than 1000 words) speculative (engaging with the fantastic, sci-fi, horror, or fantasy) fiction or prose poetry. Pieces originally published on hex have been selected for inclusion in anthologies including Best Short Fiction and Best Microfiction and have been selected for inclusion in a forthcoming Bloomsbury textbook about speculative fiction. Follow on Bluesky and Instagram @hexliterary. 

Join the editorial staff of hex literary magazine (and fulfill your HUA Capstone, too) by applying to the hex literary magazine Editing Inquiry Practicum, HU3910, in eProjects. The course serves as the capstone to the humanities and arts course sequence. It is offered each spring, usually in D term. Student hex staffers perform essential roles at the magazine, including selecting pieces for publication, conducting interviews with established authors, and serving on project teams, including event planning, copyediting, social media management, chapbook creation, marketing, and creative writing community outreach.  

Faith Crosby '27, mechnical engineering: Her poem "Not Yet" was named a semi-finalist in Eber & Wein's anthology Figments of Twilight (2025).

Adeline Wong '22, computer science, founding associate editor of WPI's hex literary magazine: Published “Top 11 Reasons Being a Ghost is Better Than Being Human, Actually (via FizzRoll.net)” in Embodied Exegesis, Neon Hemlock Press, 2024 and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackened Husk of a Planet.” Strange Horizons, 2024.

Regina Valencia '24, aerospace engineering: Received honorable mention for the 2024 Bishop Manuscript Prize by the Worcester County Poetry Association.

"Being a student in this department was such a deeply influential experience--the faculty are all wonderful people and dedicated to helping students hone our craft. It was here that I learned how to pursue writing as both a passion and a profession, a pursuit that I'm still following several years after graduating.” 

-Adeline Wong '22