Shanghai is a strange and marvelous city — one can easily forget that one is on the water, as the name 上海 quite literally tells its residents, visitors, transients, and “floating population,” even as they’re likely to forget (if they take note at all) while craning their necks upward to catch glimpse of a streaming LED display 50 stories up advertising athletic shoes or the PRC’s core socialist values… or following their noses while slipping into a local noodle shop for a fragrant, steaming bowl of incomparable flavor and texture… or jostling with thousands of commuters to board or exit the metro… or code switching between languages and social cues in a conversation that might include a Maserati-driving financier from Hongqiao, a migrant worker on a rusting Forever-brand bicycle, a European tour group leader kitted out in fake Prada and real streetwear, and an American expat grade school kid who speaks flawless Mandarin and tops them all in the style and attitude departments (the conversation is as likely to be about where to get the best noodles as anything else).

But one is indeed on the water, both in the world’s busiest port and, even in the midst of the solid-seeming former French Concession or supertall skyscraper-studded Lujiazui, always only meters from what was once marsh or stream or canal before being paved over when China’s most cosmopolitan city (with a doff of the cap and winking apologies to Hong Kong) grew, and grew, and grew… until it hit 5 million… then 10 million… then 20… then, perhaps, 30…? (the floating population can make it hard to get a precise count).

Wait… isn’t this about creative writing? Yes, it is. Creative writing in Shanghai, at NYU Shanghai — where you can write about anything and do so in a number of languages, though you’ll have to do so amidst some of the world’s most distracting distractions. The trick? Making those distractions work for you as a creative writer: finding spaces and places to not only write over a world-class cup of coffee or tea, but to share your work with a close-reading friend before sharing it with a welcoming audience.

So, if you’re a student and you’re interested in creative writing, consider NYU Shanghai’s Creative Writing Minor (or at least trying a class or two out). And if you’re interested in writing in and across different languages, you can focus on literary translation as part of your exploration of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, drama, hybrid and experimental forms, screenwriting, sci-fi and other forms of speculative fiction….

From reconsiderations of the classics to exploration of the latest cutting-edge work emerging not only from the English-speaking world, but from the Sinophone world and the teeming global scene of writing in, among, and across multiple, multiplying languages, we are Shanghai: 下一站何其精彩, where people, languages, and creativity flow, mingle, and freak together.

Come, write with us: You can do better than this belabored working of a sloppy metaphor! Get out on the water!