Harvard’s creative writing program has new home atop campus

Faculty and students have settled into the new home of creative writing atop Lamont Library. The bright, windowed fourth-floored space featuring a workshop conference room and faculty offices is a move up from the basement of the Barker Center, where most of the program, which is part of the English Department, was previously housed. Michael Pollan, Claire Messud, Musa Syeed, and Darcy Frey are among those who lead small workshops in genres such as fiction, playwriting, nonfiction, screenwriting, and poetry.

“Creative writing has long been at the heart of the Harvard art-making community,” said Frey. “With the Lamont space, we’re now at the heart of the actual campus. A writer — student or otherwise — would be hard put to find more inspiring views than the ones we have from our fourth-floor aerie: sunlight, clouds, the tops of steeples. We feel like we’re looking out on a sky painted by Constable.”

Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence,” is professor of the practice in Harvard’s creative writing program.

Claire Messud, author of “The Emperor’s Children” and “The Woman Upstairs,” is a senior lecturer in the English Department and host of the Writers Speak series at the Mahindra Humanities Center.

Comfortable chairs for reading are situated at the end of the corridor.

Darcy Frey teaches the writers’ workshop “The Art of the Personal Essay” in the conference room.

Jamie Halper ’20 (left) and Katherine Li ’21 focus during Frey’s writers’ workshop.

White boards await students’ stories.

Students, including Pranati Parikh ’21 (right), discuss each other's work.

A smartphone decorated with text from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” sits on writing materials during class.

Ph.D. student Grigori Guitchounts (left) and Meena Venkataramanan ’21 discuss personal essays around the conference room table.

The broad vista from the program’s new space may inspire young writers.