As of September 2026, the Creative Writing BA Honours is a direct entry program from high school.
Bachelor of Arts (BA) - Honours
Learn how to transform the world through writing.
The goal of the Creative Writing Program at York University is to help you galvanize your innate creativity and to articulate that creativity through language. Creativity, from our perspective as teachers, means the powerful, human curiosity that drives us to encounter, explore, and express the world in new ways—ways that are both intrinsic to our particular identities and which also take account of broader contexts.
We treat creativity as a set of practices for negotiating the world by more fully inhabiting ourselves within it. These practices involve play, experiment, risk, failure, and resistance to the imposed expectations of a culture that often discourages these approaches. Creativity is openness to change and strangeness. It is the essential, empathic ability to adopt multiple perspectives—to apprehend simultaneously the self and the other and to understand the links between them.
Are you a future student?
OUAC Code: YFC
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What you’ll learn
- Gain hands-on practices to develop and hone your writing skills, whether for publication or to simply to increase your command over language.
- Develop core critical thinking strategies and techniques to engage thoughtfully with texts and media of all sorts.
- Learn communication, research, organizational, management and teamwork skills prized by today’s employers.
Hands-on experiences
- Get an intimate, dynamic view of Canada’s literary scene from faculty who are practicing professional writers, editors and publishers.
- Attend the Rishma Dunlop Reading Series where you’ll hear contemporary Canadian and international writers in conversation and reading or performing their work.
- Connect with our Writers-in-Residence for one-on-one feedback on your stories, poems and personal essays.
Where you start
You’ll enter the program with your own unique life experiences and varying levels of knowledge about the craft of writing. Here, you’ll develop your skills in prose fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction through focused training in writing and critical reading practices, grounded in historical, political and social contexts. You’ll be part of a vibrant writing community, engaging in class discussions, workshops, experiential and collaborative learning experiences. Our monthly reading series and Writer-In-Residence program connect you with authors, editors, publishers and agents from across Canada and around the world. We also honour and celebrate student writing through multiple annual awards.
Where you'll end up
By the end of the program, you’ll have a strong understanding of the current landscape of Canadian literature and the publishing world. You’ll be prepared to pursue creative writing professionally or through further study at the graduate level. Many of our graduates have gone on to become well-published and highly decorated members of the Canadian literary community. Others have transferred the writing and critical thinking skills they learned in the program to the fields of law, entertainment, health, education and business, among a vast array of other professions. Above all, this program helps you learn how to create space for yourself as a thinker and writer, and how to navigate those spaces conscientiously, empathically and thoughtfully, wherever life takes you.
The Creative Writing cohorts at York are always small. This allows for more individualized feedback from professors and peers on your writing, and fosters greater personal growth as a writer. It also generates a sense of community and belonging which is often lacking in larger programs. Studying Creative Writing enabled me to learn how to approach literature through the perspective of the writer, something that isn't explored in most English classes where various literary theories and external perspectives are placed on texts.
— Ekraz Singh
Alumna, Creative Writing '13
Questions?
For information about the Creative Writing program, please email Creative Writing Program Coordinator Pasha Malla at pmalla@yorku.ca.
Interested in this program?
As a future student if you fill out this form you will be entered into a draw for a chance to win 1 of 5 $100 YU Bookstore gift cards. See full contest details.
