Careers in Writing Arts

To prepare students for a career in writing, the Writing Arts Department at Rowan University offers several areas of concentration that develop students as writers that are ready to write in a distinct professional realm. These areas of concentration include: 

• Technical and Professional Writing
• Publishing and Writing for the Public
• Creative Writing

Technical and Professional Writing

Technical and professional writers are usually specialized within a certain topic area, for instance, writing within medical contexts, scientific contexts, nonprofit contexts, or commercial enterprise contexts. Others may work to translate technical content for a range of audiences. Technical writers produce specialized documents that take complicated material and craft it for specific audiences with purpose; these audiences might include a consumer setting up a smart television, a member of a sales team who needs to grasp the technical specifications of a product to explain how it works to a client, a politicians who needs to understand the science at work in a given issue that impacts policy development, or a patient who needs to understand a medical diagnosis and the range of procedures that must be deliberated. 

 Writing Arts alumni who concentrated in Technical and Professional Writing have pursued careers in:

• Medical writing
• Data Interpreter
• Grant writing for schools or businesses
• Manual, how-to, FAQ, press release writing
• Information analytics

 Specific companies these alumni have worked for include:

• Elsevier
• Tabula Rasa HealthCare
• Anthropologie
• Specialty Pharmacy Times
• Premier Legal Marketing
• Freire Charter School
• Copper Beech Financial Group
• Underwood Memorial Hospital of South Jersey

Publishing and Writing for the Public

The concentration in Publishing and Writing for the Public prepares students for careers in editing, publishing, and working with new media. Students learn how to write within and across digital and online writing platforms such as Wordpress, and Adobe Creative Suite applications (Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere). Along with learning to work with these professional applications, students also develop critical awareness of the ethical impact writing has within the worlds in which it gets circulated.

Having focused on publishing and writing for public audiences, Writing Arts graduates with this concentration have pursued careers in:

• Book editing and publishing
• Magazine editing and publishing
• Book and magazine layout and design  
• Creating, editing, formatting, and publishing web content
• New media specialists
• Freelance blogging
• Video production
• Game designer
• Copywriting
• Social media specialist

Writing Arts alumni with the focus in New Media and Publishing have been employed by companies such as:

• Picador Press, a division of MacMillan Publishing
• Penguin Random House
• ​Mobile narrative game writer for Heartline, the second game of Lunar Rabbit Games
• Quills Edge Press
• Crenshaw Communications of New York
• Kravetz & Company Public Relations

Creative Writing

The Creative Writing Concentration in Writing Arts allows students to develop a craft-based understanding of a variety of genres of creative writing, including poetry, fiction, and writing stories for children and young adults. The market for writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in fiction is highly competitive, but the skills a student acquires with this concentration--for instance, the ability to tell stories and move audiences with such story-telling--can lead to other opportunities as well.

Writing Arts alumni with a Creative Writing concentration have pursued careers in:

• Authoring
• Ghostwriting
• Blogging and editing (self-published or not)
• Coaching/teaching writing
• Lyrical songwriter
• Public speaker or activist

Alumni have also pursued writing for platforms such as:

• Maudlin House
• The Nervous Breakdown
• Peach Magazine
• Hubpages
• Singer and songwriter for VISTA
• Self publishing and entrepreneurship

Rowan University Writing Arts Department

The most rewarding aspect of having a degree in Writing Arts is the endless possibilities for job opportunities graduates create for themselves. The Writing Arts department not only prepares students to be adaptable in their careers as writers, but also creates alumni who are self-critically aware and versatile individuals within their personal, professional, and civic lives. The lessons, lectures, readings, class discussions, and the core values they express will stay with a Writing Arts major for the rest of their lives.

In addition to the understanding of writing as an ethical, life-changing act, the Writing Arts degree prepares students for careers that entail a wide variety of writing. For example, the values and practices taught in Writing Arts courses provide skills that are easily transferable to other fields of study, such as public relations, advertising, marketing, social work, human resources, and more related to the field of communications. Many students pursue a degree in Writing Arts along with another major if they wish to have a strong command and understanding of writing and rhetoric, but also want to pursue a career path that another major could prepare them for. For example, many Writing Arts students have a dual major in Education with the goal of becoming a teacher or in dual major in Science because with the goal of becoming a doctor.

Our alumni have pursued writing careers that differ immensely, but they all have one thing in common—they are working and living amongst their passions.

One recent Writing Arts alumni said: “Lots of companies need writers, and a surprising amount of people just aren’t that great at communicating through text. If you’re passionate about something—whether it’s fashion or computers or sports or anything in between—opportunities exist in which you can write about those things. The best part? Someone will actually pay you to do it.”

Check out our alumni page to see specific career paths that undergraduate and graduate Writing Arts alumni have pursued.