Welcome!
What’s your writing dream? Poems anchored in imagery, charged with light? A play to makes us laugh and cry for these perilous times? A memoir of your immigrant journey against impossible odds? The next great American novel?
Let the AFA or Certificate in Creative Writing at Anoka-Ramsey Community College help you get there. With campuses on the Mississippi River in Coon Rapids and the Rum River in Cambridge, ARCC offers inspirational settings and support from award-winning, published faculty to help you find your voice.
Our AFA, which can be completed in-person or fully online, culminates in two classes: A Writer’s Life, which gives students hands-on career exploration and publishing knowledge, and Manuscript Development, a one-on-one independent study with an accomplished writer. Our AFA program also has strong transfer partnerships with Augsburg University, Metropolitan State University, Hamline University, and University of Wisconsin-Superior. Our Certificate is a streamlined degree that consists of our core creative writing classes without the 40-credit Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (MnTC).
Students in both programs are connected to our vibrant literary community through our Two Rivers Reading Series on the Coon Rapids campus, Minnesota Writers Series on the Cambridge Campus, Careers in Writing speaker series, and internship and volunteer opportunities. Students graduate from our degrees with greatly improved writing skills that prepare them for the job market and four-year degree programs.
Faculty and Student News!
Faculty Member Scott Wrobel published his short story “Charcoal” in the Blue Lake Review! You can read it here: http://bluelakereview.weebly.com/charcoal.html
The English Department swept PTK’s 2020 Golden Chalk teaching awards. Professor Jasmin Ziegler received the Silver Chalk award, and Chris McCarthy received the Golden Chalk award.
Madelynne Rootes, a writing tutor and an AFA in Creative Writing student at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, was accepted into the summer 2020 Northwoods Writer’s Conference at Bemidji State University. She will study with fiction writer Scott Russell Sanders.
Professors Paige Riehl, Tracy Youngblom, and Kathryn Kysar all had poems published in the anthology Rocked by the Waters: Poems of Motherhood edited by Athena Kildegaard and Margaret Hasse.
Professor Kathryn Kysar was awarded a writing residency at Tofte Lake Center in Ely, Minnesota, which she will be taking in summer 2021.
Creative Writing 