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Writing Program

Caitlin Thornbrugh

headshot of Caitlin Thornbrugh

Associate Teaching Professor in English and Director of the Writing Minor

Caitlin F. Thornbrugh is a writer from Kansas City. Her work has appeared in Green Mountain Review, Parcel Literary Journal, The Paper Napkin, and Portel del Sol, among others. She was awarded a 2020 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship Honorable Mention for nonfiction manuscript-in-progress: Riparian: Where Water Meets Land. Her piece, “Ahuacatl, Agovago, Avocado: The Corrupt Alligator Pear” was a 2014 Notable Best American Essay.

As an Associate Teaching Professor of English at Northeastern University, she teaches writing courses such as Creative Nonfiction, Writing Boston, Advanced Writing for Arts, Media, and Design Students, and First-Year Writing.

Along with her colleague and collaborator Kat Gonso, she received a 2021 Faculty Innovations Grant in Diversity and Academic Excellence for their project, “Creating and Curating Knowledge: First-Generation Low-Income Student Voice and the Experiential Liberal Arts.” She was named a 2019-2020 GEO Faculty Fellow for her Dialogue Program: Food and Culture in Vietnam and Cambodia. In 2021, she received an NU LGBTQA Resource Center Gratitude Award. She is a member of Northeastern’s First Generation, Undocumented, Low-Income Network; in the classroom and in her writing, Caitlin is committed to building community and raising awareness of class, race, gender, and environmental injustice. She has presented on antiracist and inclusive global learning pedagogy for The Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research.

Her work in the Boston community includes volunteering with the Wilderness Heals-Stone House pledge hike, supporting survivors of domestic-violence. She facilitates creative writing workshops for Writers Without Margins, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding access to literary arts for everyone, including the formerly incarcerated and those in addiction recovery. She is a prose reader for Inch at Bull City Press.

  • 2020 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship Honorable Mention for nonfiction manuscript-in-progress: Riparian: Where Water Meets Land
  • Writing Residency, The Vermont Studio Center: Nonfiction, August 2018

  • Writing Residency Alumni Grant, The Dickinson House- Belgium, July 2017

  • Writing Residency, The Dickinson House- Belgium, July 2016

  • Notable Essayist in The Best American Essays 2014

  • Lambda Literary Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Writers: Nonfiction, June 2011

  •  “An Unmapping: A review of Kathryn Cowles’ Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World.” Green Mountain Review (2020)
  • “Bonville Power Lines” and “Owl Rock Camp.” Yardstick’s Art of Water Anthology (2019)

  • “Eight Minute Walk” and “Industry: A Cycle.” Paper Napkin (2019)

  • “Bodies of Water.” Dorchester Art Project: Installation (2018)

  • “Friends with the Band.” Honest Noise (2017)

  • “Phu Quoc, Vietnam.” Phnom Penh Post: Photographs (2014)

  • “Ahuacatl Agovago Avocado: The Corrupt Alligator Pear.” Parcel Literary Journal (2013)

  • “Beecher’s: A Beginning.” Portel del Sol (2010)

Related Schools & Departments

Courses

Course catalog
  • Explores how writers apply narrative strategies and techniques to factual material. Offers students an opportunity to read and write a variety of nonfiction forms (e.g., narrative essays and narrative journalism, travel and science writing, memoir, editorials, protest and political essays), as well as cross-genre and hybrid forms (e.g., nonfiction prose mixed with poetry, audio and graphic nonfiction). The topics for narrative nonfiction writing apply to a wide array of disciplines, including the humanities, the sciences, and journalism.

  • First-Year Writing

    ENGW 1111

    Designed for students to study and practice writing in a workshop setting. Students read a range of texts in order to describe and evaluate the choices writers make and apply that knowledge to their own writing and explore how writing functions in a range of academic, professional, and public contexts. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to conduct research using primary and secondary sources; how to write for various purposes and audiences in multiple genres and media; and how to give and receive feedback, to revise their work, and to reflect on their growth as writers.

  • Designed for students whose first or strongest language is not English. Students study and practice writing in a workshop setting; read a range of texts in order to describe and evaluate the choices writers make and apply that knowledge to their own writing; explore how writing functions in a variety of academic, professional, and public contexts; and write for various purposes and audiences in multiple genres and media. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to conduct research using primary and secondary sources and to give and receive feedback, to revise their work, and to reflect on their growth as writers.

  • Writing Boston

    ENGL 3375

    Explores how writing shapes the life of, and life in, the city. Considers how Boston is constructed in a range of discourses and disciplines. Offers students an opportunity to research and write about the city and participate in a community-based writing project.