Through the Center of Excellence and the Department of Languages and Literature, the creative writing program sponsors readings by writers of regional, national and international renown. Notable participants in the visiting writers series have included Richard Wilbur, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Hass, Jenny Boylan, Lorrie Moore, Stephen Dunn, Rebecca Walker, Ann Patchett, Michael Blumenthal and others. The program sponsors a campus literary magazine, The Red Mud Review, and publishes Zone 3, an international literary journal. Zone 3 sponsors annual awards in poetry (the Rainmaker Award) and in fiction (the Zone 3 Fiction Award). The creative writing faculty publishes widely and conducts workshops both on and off the APSU campus.

Scholarships are available on a competitive basis for undergraduate creative writing students, who frequently go on to publish fiction and poetry, and to pursue their own aspirations as writers. Graduate students in the Department of Languages and Literature may pursue the M.A. degree, and, if approved, may choose to write a creative thesis.