About the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

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.