UCI Offers a Chance to Get With the Program

The department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Irvine, which has sponsored the Chicano-Latino Literary Contest for the past 23 years, is beginning a new chapter.

In the fall, the department will offer a master of arts degree in Spanish with a specialization in creative writing. Students will be able to write in either Spanish or English.

“It’s the first bilingual creative-writing program in the country that I know of in a department of Spanish,” says Alejandro Morales, a UCI Spanish professor. The University of Texas in El Paso offers a bilingual graduate creative-writing program, Morales says, but it is housed in the English department.

The new graduate program will consist of a two-year residence that requires the completion of 12 literature and theory courses, including two creative-writing workshops.

Morales, the author of five novels, will conduct the first writing workshop.

At the end of the second year, students must submit their thesis--a professional-quality, book-length manuscript of fiction or poetry written in Spanish or English.

The department has sent a series of flyers announcing the new graduate program to Spanish and English departments around the country.

Morales says they plan to begin with three to five students in the writing workshop “to see how it goes” but will limit it to about eight students in the future. “It’s difficult to run a workshop with a lot of students,” he says.

The department has always had an interest in creative writing. It has offered a popular two-unit graduate-level creative-writing workshop in the past--and six of the department’s nine faculty members are published novelists, poets or short-story writers who will alternate with Morales in conducting the workshop.

Morales emphasizes that the department’s graduate creative-writing program is not a new degree-granting program.

“It’s just another dimension to our master of arts in Spanish program.” With the exception of the creative-writing workshops, he says, the other required courses were already in place.

Department Chairman Juan Bruce-Novoa says the new program is unusual in several ways.

Unlike a master of fine arts degree in creative writing, which usually does not lead to a PhD., the new program will allow students to move directly to earning a PhD. in literature.

“When you get an MFA, that’s a terminal degree in most universities: It’s a line [of study] separate from the study of literature, so if you get an MFA, you usually have to go back and do a master’s in literature to go on to get a PhD. Here, we’re combining the two.”

Bruce-Novoa says few other universities offer graduate programs in creative writing in Spanish.

“What makes ours unique is that students not only can write in Spanish or English if they so choose, but they can actually mix the two.”

Applications are still being taken for the fall quarter.

Meanwhile, the department is also accepting submissions in Spanish or English for the annual Chicano-Latino Literary Contest, which is open to all U.S. residents.

The competition calls for submissions in a different genre--novel, short story, poetry or drama--every year.

This time it’s poetry.

“Having this contest has given the department national recognition,” says Morales, “and many of the writers who have won first, second or third prizes have gone on to have a successful creative-writing careers.”

The deadline for submissions is April 30. Winners will be announced in October.

First prize is $1,000 and publication of the winning work. Second prize is $500 and third, $250.

Manuscripts--a minimum of 80 pages--can be sent to Alejandro Morales, director, department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Irvine, CA 92697-5275. For more information, call Morales at (714) 824-6901.

O.C. BOOKS & AUTHORS

* Short stories by UCI writing program grads; Erotic Poetry Night in Newport Beach. E3