Tracking Creative Charisma in the Romance Languages

Move over, English Department. There’s a new set of creative writers on campus.

In the past few years, faculty and students in the

Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

have increased their creative output to astounding numbers. Of the 13 current tenure-track faculty in the department, six have published books of creative writing.

The department’s creative prominence was recently highlighted in Maga, an important literary magazine in Panamá. Professors Nicasio Urbina, Armando Romero, Associate Professors Carlos Gutiérrez and María Paz Moreno, and graduate students Paola Cadena Pardo, María Clemencia Sánchez and Manuel Iris were all featured in the

65th edition of Maga

.

“Thanks to our Taft Research Seminar, the editor of Maga—Jaramillo Levi—visited UC to lead a seminar on Central American short stories,” says Associate Professor Carlos Gutiérrez. “Once he met with people from the department and realized our heavy creative writing focus, he invited us to collaborate on the issue.”

Spanish creative writing programs are a new trend popping up at American universities. While the University of Cincinnati has focused heavily on academic and literary writing for years, starting fall quarter the department will formally offer a creative writing track for graduate students as well. Gutiérrez says it will be one of three universities in the U.S. to offer the concentration.

“We’re already blessed with a wonderful group of scholarly students that are very interested in creative writing. We have very accomplished and published poets and narrators, and we think this new track is going to be a unique tool to give us an identity as a department,” he says.

With professors like Armando Romero, the first creative writer in the department and author of some 20 books of narrative and poetry, Romance Languages at UC has already created a splash in Hispanic literary scenes.

“I was working on my MA in Spanish at the New Mexico State University when I was told by one of my professors about the ‘creative charisma’ of this program, even when it did not have a creative writing program at the moment,” says Manuel Iris, a PhD student in the department. Iris is a first- and second-place winner of the National Award of Poetry in Mexico and has published two books of poetry.

“The creation of the MA in creative writing was a natural step that is great because it is not starting from zero, but from a long tradition of creative writing and academia as complementary fields in our department,” Iris continues. “I know it sounds contradictory but it’s true: the Romance Languages department at UC will have the newest, yet one of the most experienced, creative writing programs of Spanish in the U.S.”