The Composition of a Senior Project
Senior Projects in Prose
Written Arts Senior Project in prose (fiction/nonfiction) should be between 15,000–40,000 words (approximately 60–150 pages), with any exceptions discussed in advance with your Senior Project advisor. The Senior Project in prose should reflect sustained commitment to a manuscript. This could be a novella, a collection of interrelated short stories, a novel-in-progress, literary essays that speak to a subject (nature, birds) or experience, or a hybrid narrative that engages multiple forms and genres. Projects should be thoroughly revised and edited in advance of submission.
Senior Projects in Poetry
Length: between 40 and 55 pages. The project should be curated, an imagined book manuscript, in which you invite a reader to discover your work. What is the first poem? How does it indicate your formal interests, and your thematic concerns, which will be explored as the pages turn. You might divide the project into several sections, if that suits your sense of it. You want to think about the arc, or the movement of the work from poem to poem. It need not be strictly chronological, but rather reveal how your poems are engaged with each other, with yourself, language and the world.
All projects—in poetry or in prose—must be composed entirely during the project year.
Please note that the written arts program has a general policy prohibiting seniors from taking written arts workshops in the same genre as their project. For example, a senior writing a fiction project would not typically be permitted to take a fiction workshop, but may take a poetry or nonfiction workshop. The reason for this policy is to ensure that seniors' creative work is focused on their project, and not split between project and classwork. Seniors who wish to take a workshop and are not sure if it would align with this policy are asked to contact the written arts program coordinator, and CC the faculty member that teaches the workshop.