About the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics emphasizes innovative approaches to literary arts. Our programs problematize genre while cultivating contemplative and experimental writing practices. Each year, we invite more than sixty guest faculty to our internationally renowned Summer Writing Program, a colloquium of workshops, lectures, and readings. This distinguishing feature fosters an intensely creative environment for students to develop their writing projects in conversation with a community of writers.
Our curriculum includes courses in innovative prose, poetry, and cross-genre forms as well as professional development in teaching and publishing. Students are also encouraged to partake in Naropa’s contemplative and somatic curricular practices to develop integrative creative processes. We offer rigorous training in critical/creative explorations, encompassing the sociopolitical context of contemporary writing. All classes are taught by active, publishing writers, who are widely anthologized, have received numerous grants and awards, and perform and lecture internationally.
For more than four decades, our rich combination of experimentation, contemplative awareness, and student mentorship has generated innovation inside and outside the classroom.
Founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, as part of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s 100-year experiment, the Jack Kerouac School consists of the undergraduate Core Writing Seminars, a BA in Creative Writing and Literature, a residential MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics, a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing, and the Summer Writing Program. The Kerouac School continues to honor its historical roots while bringing forward new questions that both invigorate and challenge the current dialogue in writing today.
The Jack Kerouac School is part of a thriving and diverse Boulder-Denver literary arts community that hosts weekly readings, panels, and performances. This nexus of natural beauty and urbanity, located on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, provides creative nourishment and inspiration for the writer.
Alumni Accomplishments
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is proud of the accomplishments of its graduates. Please email or tag @kerouacschool to share any alumni news: recent publications, events, and other achievements!
Awards
Graduates of the Jack Kerouac School have received numerous grants and awards, including National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Fulbright fellowships, Colorado State Arts grants, Grammy Awards, Pushcart Prize, Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Writing, Raymond Carver Contest, PRISM International Short Story Award, Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest in Fiction, National Poetry Series Dana Award in the Novel.
Book Prizes
Graduates have also been the recipients of several book prizes: American Book Awards, Fence Motherwell Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, Lambda Literary Awards, Next Generation Indie Book Award, El Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, PEN/Hemingway Award, and Fordham University’s Poets Out Loud Editor’s Prize.
Selected Publications
Erik Anderson: The Poetics of Trespass (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2010).
Michelle Auerbach: The Third Kind of Horse (Beatdom Books, 2013)
Richard Froude: FABRIC: Preludes to the Last American Book (Horse Less Press, 2011).
j/j hastain: Prurient Anarchic Omnibus (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011).
Jared Hayes: The Dead Love: Hands and More Hands Together (Black Radish Books, 2012)
Tim Z. Hernandez: Breathing, In Dust (Texas Tech University Press, 2010)
Laird Hunt: Neverhome (Coffee House Press, 2014); Kind One (Coffee House Press, 2012); Ray of the Star (Coffee House Press, 2009)
Rachel Levitsky: Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)
Miranda Mellis: The Spokes (Solid Objects, 2012); None of This Is Real (Sidebrow, 2012)
Jai Arun Ravine: แล้ว and then entwine (Tinfish Press, 2011); Is This January (Corollary Press, 2010)
John Sakkis: The Islands (Nightboat Books, 2015)
Sarah Elizabeth Schantz: Fig (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
Eleni Sikelianos: Body Clock (Coffee House, 2008)
McCormick Templeman: The Little Woods (Schwartz & Wade, 2012)
Kaisa Ullsvik Miller: unspoiled air (Fence, 2008)
Chris Vitiello: Obedience (Ahsahta Press, 2012)
Contact Us
Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
phone: 303-546-3581
email: jks@naropa.edu
For Prospective Student Information, Contact Admissions:
Office of Admissions
2130 Arapahoe Avenue
Boulder, Colorado 80302
1-800-772-6951 or 303-546-3572
admissions@naropa.edu
