At Pratt, you’ll be writing from day one in a supportive, joyful, transformative environment that puts your writing practice at the heart of your studies.
Our extraordinary faculty will partner with you and mentor you, helping you to explore, refine, reimagine, and own your talents.
Beyond your deep dive into poetry, fiction, or nonfiction each semester, you’ll have the chance to take specialized classes in songwriting, journalism, ecopoetics, sci-fi, stand-up comedy, children’s book writing, and more.
Your senior thesis will be the expression of your voice, your questions, and your creative ambition. This book-length project can take the shape of a novel, memoir, screenplay, or graphic novel, or a collection of poems, short stories, or experimental essays (or a mix of forms and images).
Students in the Writing program have their own dedicated 24/7 writing spaces with desks, cozy furniture, computers, free printing, art supplies, and a library of faculty, student, and alumni publications.
“Illuminated” installation by Cassandra Bristow, BFA Writing ’22, in the new writing studios
Write at an art school.
Expand your creativity by exploring other mediums—painting, fashion, animation, and more.
Collaborate with student artists, filmmakers, and designers and find inspiration from faculty across campus.
Explore Pratt’s rich array of minors, including Art of the Book, Black Studies, Photography, Social Justice, Teaching Writing in NYC, and many others.
Write in Brooklyn. And Berlin!
Brooklyn’s literary scenes are endlessly fascinating. The borough is home to diverse literary communities and experimental, alternative publishing houses and non-profits, some of them led by our visionary faculty. (For one example, check out the *Belladonna Collaborative.)
No matter who you are or what you write, you’ll find your people in Brooklyn, and we’ll help you do that through courses like Community as Classroom.
If you’re interested in study abroad, spend a semester studying in our Pratt Berlin program.
Write your future.
Books from the bookstore Twenty Stories founded by Emory Harkins and Alexa Trembly, both BFA Writing ’16
Connect with publishers, agents, and literary professionals through our specially-tailored Writing Lives pathway and our course Writer as Worker.
Prepare for an authentic and sustainable working and writing life through our internship program.
Passionate about social justice? Pursue a self-designed community-engagement project via our innovative Fieldwork class.
Meet renowned writers and learn from their experiences through our events series.
After graduation, we help you to stay connected with us and with other amazing graduates.
Socially engaged and deeply personalized, our tight-knit writing community values a plurality of voices and approaches to writing, both on and off the page. You’ll gather with your peers twice a week for intensive studios, where feedback sessions, generative writing, inspiring reading, and collaborative thinking take place. First-year foundational courses span critical thinking, research, world literature, the elements of writing, and immersion in New York City. After your first year, dive into specialized writing electives, classes in art and design, liberal arts study, transdisciplinary minors, and opportunities to edit student publications like The Prattler and Ubiquitous. A small student-to-faculty ratio on the Brooklyn campus fosters an intimate sense of community, as do on-campus readings, our 24/7 student writing spaces, and departmental social events.
Writing in NYC
Taken in the first year, our “Community as Classroom” course will immerse you in literary series, institutions, and activities across the city, supporting your discovery of emerging artistic scenes and galvanizing literary heritage.
Career & Professional Development
We help our students build authentic, creative, and sustainable writing and working lives. Our third year course “Writer as Worker” provides concrete skills and guidance to discern, acquire, and plan for internships while in the program and meaningful employment after. Weekly visits with guest authors, agents, editors, journalists, teachers, filmmakers, and communications experts help you make informed choices about the work/life experiences you’d like to explore. You’ll gain practical survival skills for how to successfully apply for jobs, grants, fellowships, and grad school so that you can build a future that inspires you.
Internship & Fieldwork
Our dedicated internship coordinator will help you identify, apply for, and make the most of NYC internship opportunities. Our students regularly intern at publishing houses, literary agencies, film and tv studios, podcast networks, newspapers and magazines, arts organizations, and community nonprofits, gaining invaluable skills and mentors along the way. Fieldwork is a unique course offering for students who want to gain experience “in the field” that a more traditional internship can’t support: it’s an opportunity for a student to design a community-engagement project or artistic activity they otherwise couldn’t accomplish. Our credit-bearing internship and fieldwork seminars ensure your project becomes an educational opportunity through which you can discern the material realities of the writing life.
Events & Visiting Writers
Our Writer at Large program, the annual Michael Mahoney Memorial Reading, the MFA’s Writing Activisms series, and other events bring renowned writers to campus for readings, workshops, and manuscript consultations. Beyond these events, department faculty regularly invite writers to spend time with their classes. Recent guests include Ottessa Moshfegh, Ross Gay, Simone White, Layli Long Soldier, Alexander Chee, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Michelle Tea, Asiya Wadud, Chloë Bass, Sarah Thankam Mathews, and Eugene Lim.
Writing’s faculty are distinguished writers, artists, and editors who are deeply committed to nurturing the potential of each student. Bringing different views, methods, and perspectives they provide a rigorous and singular educational experience. See all Writing faculty and administrators.
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
Building your portfolio can be daunting. We’ll answer your questions and help you feel confident about the portfolio you submit with your application. Start building your portfolio, now.
You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. Check us out.
Happy Tuesday Takeover! This week, we want to look back on our summers and celebrate the start of a new school year!
Hello writers!!! It’s Anna, and I’m so excited to be back for Tuesday Takeovers! This summer, I had the privilege of staying in New York, interning with an independent theater company in Manhattan called ‘Theaterlab’. At Theaterlab, I was assigned to interview a variety of artists (dancers, directors, playwrights, and audiovisual artists) that are working under the theater’s ’Artist in Residence’ program. In conducting these interviews, I was able to write profiles on each artist and their experience with the work they are currently developing under the theater residency program. To put it plainly, I had a summer FULL of writing, and I can’t wait to get into even more this upcoming semester!👩💻
Happy first week of class! Hadley here! I spent the summer split between Brooklyn and Kansas City, Missouri (where I’m from). For the month of July, I worked for Pratt’s PreCollege program (@prattprecollege)as the writing mentor. It was so fulfilling to spend time with the brilliant work of all the talented high school students apart of the program! I participated in Pratt’s PreCollege program when I was in high school, so it was a wonderful full circle moment for me. If you know anyone interested in the PreCollege program, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions! The other half of my summer was spent with my new baby niece, Matilda (and the rest of my family)!
🐻🐻🐻Pratt Berlin alums talk about their impressions of Berlin. Rising 2nd & 3rd year WR majors and minors: applications for Spring 26 semester in Berlin are now open. Visit @pratt__berlin and click on link in bio to apply. Deadline: September 18.
We’re so happy to announce that Ross Gay will be the Writing Department’s 2025-2026 Writer at Large! Please stay tuned for more information over the next few weeks about Ross’s upcoming fall reading. Ross will also be visiting courses, and we’re excited that many of you will have the chance to engage with him in person.
Ross’s work spans forms and themes, and you can explore his writing online at rossgay.net.
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Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.
Pratt faculty members Claire Donato (@somanytumbleweeds) and Benjamin Krusling (@no_ig_benji) are reading together this Saturday, August 23rd at 5:00pm at @enochs.nyc in the city. Come check out a local reading series and celebrate the beginning of Virgo season! ♍️🔥💜
Studying abroad can be a profound and transformative experience, including at the level of cultural exchange. Yet many study abroad programs promote an experience that rarely moves beyond a simplistic cultural landscape. In Germany, that ends up being tours of beer breweries, visits to Oktoberfest, or a visit to the Brandenburg Gate for selfies.
At Pratt Berlin, however, we begin with different assumptions. First, that Germany, and Berlin specifically, is a multiethnic, multilingual space, with thriving Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, and African communities and cultural hubs (to name just a few), all of which are also German. Secondly, each semester students across their classes engage German culture and history in the most expansive way possible. Third, they not only learn German but discover new collaborations with Germans and other German students.
In Pratt Berlin’s Reporting the City class students collaborated with German students to produce a radio show and a lit mag (photo 1). Other classes featured German artist and writer Mosthari Hilal (author of Ugliness, photo 2) discussing, with Sinthujan Varatharajah, their book English in Berlin – Exclusions in a Cosmopolitan Society (photo 3), which interrogates the role of global english in advancing gentrification in Berlin.
Students also visit the little known Dong Xuan Center (photo 4), an enormous Vietnamese market, in the formally East neighborhood of Lichtenberg, while learning also of the history of Vietnamese Vertragsarbeiter (contract laborers) in the former GDR which brought tens of thousands Vietnamese laborers in the 80s. In the Fieldwork class, students intern with writers and artists living in Berlin, as well as cultural orgs. One student worked with a local Brazilian poet and activist on housing justice organizing in Berlin. Another student worked at The Pickle Bar (photo 5), an arts space founded by Slavs & Tartars that seeks to “address items of urgency in oral and cultural histories, language and gender studies across Eurasia (Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia).” & yes (last photo), students also go to Oktoberfest and have a blast! #prattberlin #prattstudyabroad
🐻🐻🐻Pratt Berlin alums on what they love about studying in Berlin. Rising 2nd & 3rd year WR majors and minors: applications for Spring 26 semester in Berlin are now open. Visit @pratt__berlin and click on link in bio to apply. Deadline: September 18.
🐻🐻🐻Pratt Berlin takeover: this week we'll be posting all things Berlin. Rising 2nd & 3rd year WR majors and minors, take note: applications for Spring 26 semester in Berlin are now open. Here Pratt Berlin alums talk about Berlin and the "real Berlin experience." Film by Haddie Webster. Visit @pratt__berlin and click on link in bio to apply. Deadline: September 18.
🐻🐻🐻A selection of readings over the years by Pratt Berlin Writing Studio students. End of the year readings have taken place at various galleries and bookstores and cafes in Berlin (final photo—after party), often in collaboration with other German writers (first photo: ROT: a collaborative magazine created by Freie Universität German student writers and Pratt writers). 🐻🐻🐻2nd and 3rd year students: applications open to spend Spring 25 in Berlin. 🐻🐻🐻Visit @pratt__berlin and click the application link in the bio. 🐻🐻🐻Deadline: Sept. 18
🐻 Applications are now open to spend your Spring 26 Semester in Berlin!
🐻 BFA Writing majors/minors in their 2nd or 3rd year are welcome to apply to spend a semester in one of Europe’s most literary and legendary cities.
🐻 Pratt Berlin offers a full 16 credit menu of classes, including core WR studios and seminars.
🐻 As one recent alum wrote: "Studying in Berlin was nothing short of life-altering. Living, writing, and coming of age in Berlin enriched my relationship with myself, my art practice, gifted me with deep, lifelong connections, and offered me the confidence to build my life wherever the wind takes me. Alongside the city of Berlin, my instructors made this one of the most rewarding semesters of my college career. Be careful! You may even come back to America with a long distance love. Berlin is full of discovery, surprise, and opportunity for exponential growth."
🐻 Visit Pratt Study Abroad to apply. DEADLINE: Sept 18. #prattberlin #prattinberlin #prattstudyabroad #prattwriting
The BFA in Writing at Pratt Institute prepares students to become highly proficient and self-sustaining creative writers. Through our studio-based approach and our commitments to inquiry, creative research, and critical self-reflection, we invite students to expand their creative range, to investigate the cultural and historical forces that have sculpted the literary traditions they seek to enter, to become expert practitioners, and to explore the other fields on offer at Pratt. Our focus is students’ creative expression, balanced with professional preparation and community engagement via hands-on courses, internships, and colloquia, so that students are prepared to navigate the changing literary landscape. Our pedagogy combines rigor with care, and the department administration and faculty work actively on behalf of students to shape their time at Pratt and to connect them to campus resources, so that—despite the solitude that sometimes attends the writing life—students feel supported and equipped to achieve their goals.
Via completion of the program, BFA Writing students will:
Expand their creative process through practices of creative making, experimentation, and play
Learn to ask and investigate a question through the refinement of curiosity, attention, and research
Acquire an eloquent critical language for discussions of their work and its place in diverse literary traditions
Demonstration through informed reading and writing practices, an understanding of the social and historical forces that have shaped their imagination
Develop expertise in a selected form or genre
Become a self-sustaining practitioner by
Learning to assemble a revised, cohesive, and polished body of work
Acquiring professional skills and knowledge that will support a working life
