Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Prose and Poetry | Northwestern SPS - Northwestern School of Professional Studies
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Program Overview
Mfa in prose and poetry.
Northwestern’s part-time Master of Fine Arts in Prose and Poetry program provides students the opportunity to grow as artists within the specializations of fiction, nonfiction, popular fiction, poetry, and publishing and professional development. A dual-genre specialization is also offered. The small-group workshop format allows for individual attention from published, award-winning faculty . Students also have the opportunity to learn the ropes in teaching writing, publishing, and editing. Flexible scheduling – with courses offered evenings and weekends on Northwestern’s Chicago and Evanston campuses as well as online and in hybrid format – gives students the opportunity to balance their professional, personal and writing lives. While earning their degrees, students connect with other writers at readings and other events in an artistic community that extends beyond the University into Chicagoʼs vibrant literary scene.
About the MFA in Prose and Poetry
Prose and poetry program goals, curriculum for mfa in prose and poetry, mfa in prose and poetry courses, prose and poetry faculty, mfa in prose and poetry admission, tuition and financial aid for prose and poetry, registration information for prose and poetry, careers in prose and poetry.
I feel like there's a distinctive Chicago quality to the program, a kind of Midwestern stealth sheen of genuine kindness that nourishes some wild, subversive, tremendously exciting work. It's a unique combination, and one singularly fertile for creativity.”
Students form lasting bonds with each other and with their professors. The years students have spent in the SPS creative writing program, some have told me, are the most creatively rewarding ones they've experienced.”
Teaching in Northwestern's part-time writing program has been a career highlight for me. The program is enriched by its students who come from various backgrounds and careers. The diversity of passions, insights and life experiences helps to create a truly unique and rewarding learning experience.”
- To help students determine the strengths and weaknesses of their writing, and learn how to evaluate criticism of their work
- To teach students how to take their writing apart, re-think and revise it
- To show students how to experiment with different styles and forms
- To guide students in creating a publishable manuscript or portion of one
- To teach students how to read literature as a writer and a critic
- To train students to teach creative writing, informed by current pedagogy and classroom experience
- To give students the opportunity to edit an international literary magazine with their peers
- To provide students with the tools to create strong applications for jobs in teaching, publishing, and editing
The 15-course curriculum includes workshops in a concentration, electives, and two thesis courses to complete the MFA program experience. Required courses vary by specialization .
Electives are chosen from the graduate course offerings in the Master of Arts in Literature program, creative writing special topics courses (MCW 490) and the seminars and internships (practica) in teaching and publishing. Since good writers also need to be good readers, students must take electives in literary studies. Recent electives include courses on reading poetry; the narrator in fiction, nonfiction and poetry; and writing humor. Independent studies round out the program and provide an opportunity to strengthen writing portfolios.
The final project of the MFA program is a creative thesis, an original work of high literary merit (judged on the basis of art as well as craft). The creative thesis is structured and revised under the supervision of a faculty member (or faculty mentor) and a second reader. The project may be one long piece or a series of shorter pieces. It may include or be an expansion of work written during the student's course of study as long as it represents a culminating effort to shape stories, prose pieces, a long piece, or a group of poems into a coherent, self-sufficient work. This large-scale project supplements the smaller-scale study of craft with the invaluable experience of creating a larger work. And for students who plan to pursue book-length publication after graduation, the master's creative thesis may be the first version of a work in progress.
Explore MFA in Prose and Poetry Courses . You can narrow your course search by day, location or instructor.
Learn from a faculty of esteemed writers in small-group workshops where instructors facilitate discussions that help students examine and address strengths and weaknesses in their writing as well as open up possibilities for re-thinking and revising. Get to know the instructors on our Prose and Poetry Faculty page.
Candidates for admission to the MFA program must hold a bachelor's degree from a regionally accredited institution or its foreign equivalent and possess a strong academic record, preferably in English, writing or related fields. In evaluating MFA applicants, the admissions committee will look for evidence of the ability to create a more sustained final project, for interest in an interdisciplinary program and for interest in learning how to teach. For a complete list of requirements, see the admission page for SPS graduate programs.
Students interested in the Litowitz Creative Writing Graduate Program should visit the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences website for admission information.
Tuition for the MFA in Prose and Poetry program at Northwestern is comparable to similar US programs. Financial aid opportunities exist for students at Northwestern. Complete details can be found on the Prose and Poetry Tuition and Financial Aid pages.
Already accepted into the MFA in Prose and Poetry program? Get ahead and register for your classes as soon as possible to ensure maximum efficiency in your progress.
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Northwestern University’s MFA in Prose and Poetry is an arts degree. Students pursue the degrees in order to become better writers, able to create prose and poetry that draw on a full range of the craft. On a more practical level, MFA students become better writers, which prepares them for a variety of careers. For details visit the Prose and Poetry Career Options page.
Find out more about Northwestern's MFA in Prose and Poetry
MFA Program in Creative Writing
The Creative Writing Program offers the MFA degree, with a concentration in either poetry or fiction. MFA students pursue intensive study with distinguished faculty committed to creative and intellectual achievement.
Each year the department enrolls only eight MFA students, four in each concentration. Our small size allows us to offer a generous financial support package that fully funds every student. We also offer a large and diverse graduate faculty with competence in a wide range of literary, theoretical and cultural fields. Every student chooses a special committee of two faculty members who work closely alongside the student to design a course of study within the broad framework established by the department.
Students participate in a graduate writing workshop each semester and take six additional one-semester courses for credit, at least four of them in English or American literature, comparative literature, literature in the modern or Classical languages or cultural studies (two per semester during the first year and one per semester during the second year). First-year students receive practical training as editorial assistants for Epoch, a periodical of prose and poetry published by the creative writing program. Second-year students participate as teaching assistants for the university-wide first-year writing program. The most significant requirement of the MFA degree is the completion of a book-length manuscript: a collection of poems or short stories, or a novel, to be closely edited and refined with the assistance of the student’s special committee.
MFA program specifics can be viewed here: MFA Timeline Procedural Guide
Special Committee
Every graduate student selects a special committee of faculty advisors who works intensively with the student in selecting courses and preparing and revising the thesis. The committee is comprised of two Cornell creative writing faculty members: a chair and one minor member. An additional member may be added to represent an interdisciplinary field. The university system of special committees allows students to design their own courses of study within a broad framework established by the department, and it encourages a close working relationship between professors and students, promoting freedom and flexibility in the pursuit of the graduate degree. The special committee for each student guides and supervises all academic work and assesses progress in a series of meetings with the students.
At Cornell, teaching is considered an integral part of training for a career in writing. The field requires a carefully supervised teaching experience of at least one year for every MFA candidate as part of the program requirements. The Department of English, in conjunction with the First-Year Writing Program, offers excellent training for beginning teachers and varied and interesting teaching in this university-wide program. These are not conventional freshman composition courses, but full-fledged academic seminars, often designed by graduate students themselves. The courses are writing-intensive and may fall under such general rubrics as “Portraits of the Self,” “American Literature and Culture,” “Shakespeare” and “Cultural Studies,” among others. A graduate student may also serve as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate lecture course taught by a member of the Department of Literatures in English faculty.
All MFA degree candidates are guaranteed two years of funding (including a stipend , a full tuition fellowship and student health insurance).
- Graduate Assistantship with EPOCH . Students read submissions, plan special issues and assume other editorial and administrative responsibilities.
- Summer Teaching Assistantship, linked to a teachers' training program. Summer residency in Ithaca is required.
- Teaching Assistantship
- Summer Fellowship (made possible by the David L. Picket ’84 Fund and The James McConkey Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Award for Summer Support, established by his enduringly grateful student, Len Edelstein ’59)
Optional MFA Lecturer Appointments Degree recipients who are actively seeking outside funding/employment are eligible to apply to teach for one or two years as a lecturer. These positions are made possible by an endowment established by the late Philip H. Freund ’29 and a bequest from the Truman Capote Literary Trust.
Admission & Application Procedures
The application for Fall 2024 admission will open on September 15, 2023 and will close on December 15, 2023 at 11:59pm EST. Please note that staff support is available M-F 9am-4pm.
Eligibility : Applicants must currently have, or expect to have, at least a BA or BS (or the equivalent) in any field before matriculation. International students, please verify degree equivalency here . Applicants are not required to take the GRE test or meet a specified GPA minimum.
To Apply: All applications and supplemental materials must be submitted on-line through the Graduate School application system . While completing your application, you may save and edit your data. Once you click “submit,” your application will be closed for changes. Please proofread your materials carefully. Once you pay and click submit, you will not be able to make any changes or revisions.
DEADLINE: Dec. 15, 11:59 p.m. EST . This deadline is firm. No applications, additional materials or revisions will be accepted after the deadline.
MFA Program Application Requirements Checklist
- Academic Statement of Purpose Please use the Academic Statement of Purpose to describe, within 1000 words: (1) your academic interests, (2) your academic background, preparation, and training, including any relevant professional experiences, (3) your reasons for pursuing graduate studies in this specific program, and (4) your professional goals.
- Personal Statement Your Personal Statement should provide the admissions committee with a sense of you as a whole person, and you should use it to describe how your background and experiences influenced your decision to pursue a graduate degree. Additionally, it should provide insight into your potential to contribute to a community of inclusion, belonging, and respect where scholars representing diverse backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn and work productively and positively together. Writing your Personal Statement provides you with an opportunity to share experiences that provide insights into how your personal, academic, and/or professional experiences demonstrate your ability to be both persistent and resilient, especially when navigating challenging circumstances. The statement also allows you to provide examples of how you engage with others and have facilitated and/or participated in productive collaborative endeavors. Additionally, it provides you with an opportunity to provide context around any perceived gaps or weaknesses in your academic record. Content in the Personal Statement should complement rather than duplicate the content contained within the Academic Statement of Purpose, which should focus explicitly on your academic interests, previous research experience, and intended area of research during your graduate studies. A complete writing prompt is available in the application portal.
- Three Letters of Recommendation Please select three people who best know you and your work. Submitting additional letters will not enhance your application. In the recommendation section of the application, you must include the email address of each recommender. After you save the information (and before you pay/submit), the application system will automatically generate a recommendation request email to your recommender with instructions for submitting the letter electronically. If your letters are stored with a credential service such as Interfolio, please use their “online application delivery” feature and input the email address assigned to your stored document, rather than that of your recommender’s. The electronic files will be attached to your application when they are received and will not require the letter of recommendation cover page. Please do not postpone submitting your application while waiting for us to receive all three of your letters. We will accept recommendation letters until December 30,11:59pm EST . For more information please visit the Graduate School's page on preparing letters of recommendations .
- Transcripts Scan transcripts from each institution you have attended, or are currently attending, and upload into the academic information section of the application. Be sure to remove your social security number from all documents prior to scanning. Please do not send paper copies of your transcripts. If you are subsequently admitted and accept, the graduate school will require an official paper transcript from your degree-awarding institution prior to matriculation.
- English Language Proficiency Requirement All applicants must provide proof of English language proficiency. For more information, please view the Graduate School’s English Language Requirement .
- Fiction applicants: Your sample must be between 6,000 and 10,000 words, typed, double-spaced, in a conventional 12- or 14-point font. It may be an excerpt from a larger work or a combination of several works.
- Poetry applicants: Your sample must be 10 pages in length and include a combination of several poems, where possible.
General Information for All Applicants
Application Fee: Visit the Graduate School for information regarding application fees , payment options, and fee waivers . Please do not send inquires regarding fee waivers.
Document Identification: Please do not put your social security number on any documents.
Status Inquiries: Once you submit your application, you will receive a confirmation email. You will also be able to check the completion status of your application in your account. If vital sections of your application are missing, we will notify you via email after the Dec. 15 deadline and allow you ample time to provide the missing materials. Please do not inquire about the status of your application.
Credential/Application Assessments: The admission review committee members are unable to review application materials or applicant credentials prior to official application submission. Once the committee has reviewed the applications and made admissions decisions, they will not discuss the results or make any recommendations for improving the strength of an applicant’s credentials. Applicants looking for feedback are advised to consult with their undergraduate advisor or someone else who knows them and their work.
Review Process: Application review begins after the submission deadline. Notification of admissions decisions will be made by email or by telephone by the end of February.
Connecting with Faculty and/or Students: Unfortunately, due to the volume of inquiries we receive, faculty and current students are not available to correspond with potential applicants prior to an offer of admission. Applicants who are offered admission will have the opportunity to meet faculty and students to have their questions answered prior to accepting. Staff and faculty are also not able to pre-assess potential applicant’s work outside of the formal application process. Please email [email protected] instead, if you have questions.
Visiting: The department does not offer pre-admission visits or interviews. Admitted applicants will be invited to visit the department, attend graduate seminars and meet with faculty and students before making the decision to enroll.
Transfer Credits: Transfer credits are not available toward the MFA program.
Admissions FAQ
For Further Information
Contact [email protected]
MFA in Creative Writing Graduation Readings
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Ellen Bryant Voigt speaking at the MFA Program’s 40th Anniversary Gala
The mfa program for writers.
In 1976, Ellen Bryant Voigt, renowned poet and master teacher, founded the nation’s first low-residency creative writing program. In 1981, the program relocated from Vermont’s Goddard College to one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, Warren Wilson College. Today, forty-five years after its inception, the prestigious MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College remains one of the top writing programs in the nation. Students of the program range in age from their early twenties to mid-sixties, in profession from teacher and journalist, doctor and bartender, to lawyer and lumberjack, and join us from all over North America, Europe, and Asia. Our faculty have won virtually every major honor in the country, including MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes, and the National Book Award. Several have served as state poets laureate, and two have been named national poets laureate. Our alumni have published hundreds of books, and their work has been featured in The New Yorker and on the front page of The New York Times Book Review .
About the Program
An alternative to the wholly residential workshop, the program is structured to meet students’ needs, to help them recognize specific strengths and address specific weaknesses in their work, and to encourage them to see themselves as active participants in the creation and study of literature.
Every six months, students from across the globe gather here on campus to form a cohesive, non-competitive community that offers camaraderie, direction, and inspiration. The four-semester course of study toward the Master of Fine Arts degree is carried out by alternating on-campus residency sessions with semesters of independent study under close faculty supervision. The residencies, attended by all faculty and students, are ten days long and take place two times a year, once in early January, and once in early July.
Readings, lectures, classes, workshops, meetings, informal exchange, and conferences all aide in fostering a strong sense of community among peers. In the classes and team-taught workshops, students will find an environment that is non-competitive, while our low student-faculty ratio (never more than 5:1) ensures that each student will receive personalized attention that will help provide direction for the semester.
Following the residency, correspondence between the student and the faculty supervisor occur at regular, contracted intervals. This individualized course of study and thorough engagement with faculty, occurring within the context of one’s ongoing adult life, make the Program useful to writers at all stages of their development.
The Master of Fine Arts degree at Warren Wilson represents the study of literature from within the writer’s perspective. It is not, however, a technical or narrow degree. The reading and analytical components of each Semester Project, and the variety of classes and workshops offered during the residency periods, provide opportunities for unusually well-integrated, humanities-based curricula–without sacrifice of direct manuscript, work, and criticism.
The Program’s commitment to active teaching and active learning is unshakeable. While the balanced study of literature and the craft of writing does make its graduates attractive candidates for teaching positions, no one should apply to the program if he/she seeks the degree mainly for employment purposes. Likewise, while our graduates publish their work widely, no one should apply seeking only an editor for projects in progress. Our goal is not to supply credentials or technical support but to assist students with their education and their development as writers.
Degree Requirements
The student’s record must indicate the following:.
- Full participation in five residency sessions
- Successful completion of four semester projects, with a minimum accumulation of 60 graduate hours
- Work with at least four different faculty supervisors
- Broad reading in literature and contemporary letters, as demonstrated by a comprehensive bibliography of usually at least 50-60 entries
- The ability to write clear prose, and to articulate cogent response to work by other writers, as demonstrated every semester in brief bibliographical annotations or their approved equivalent
- A substantial analytical essay (30-50 pp.) of intelligence and insight
- A Thesis Manuscript of poetry (30-50 pp.) or fiction (70-100 pp.) of high quality
- An objective assessment of that manuscript by faculty and peers in a one-hour Thesis Interview
- A one-hour graduate class taught to peers during a residency period
- A public reading of his/her work during residency
The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College
701 Warren Wilson Rd. Swannanoa, NC 28778 [email protected] (828) 771-3715
STUDENT ACCOUNTS STUDENT ACCESS FACULTY ACCESS
MFA Programs: What Are They, And Can They Help Improve Your Poetry?
Often called the field’s terminal degree, a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing has become an increasingly popular option for poets, especially for those wanting to enter academia.
The number of MFA programs has tripled since the ‘90s, and The New York Times reported that an estimated 4,000 people graduated with this degree in 2015. While these numbers continue to surge, so does the contentious debate about whether MFAs are really “worth it.” The answer varies from writer to writer (I especially like this podcast episode from Lit Hub that dives into the topic). Only you can answer that question for yourself — let Read Poetry help!
What Is It?
An MFA is a program where writers apply in a genre (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and, less commonly, screenwriting or playwriting), then take craft classes and workshops once admitted, as well as more general literature courses. Most programs take two or three years.
Just like the field of writing itself, MFAs have a wide array of options: Low-residency programs involve mostly online work, often requiring only monthly or even more infrequent visits to an institution’s campus, while traditional full-residency programs thrive on weekly, in-person classes. By the end of their MFA, students must turn in and defend a thesis — usually, a book-length manuscript in their desired genre.
How Do I Apply?
Different programs have different requirements. First, decide where you’d like to apply to an MFA (potential students usually submit materials to more than one school to increase their chances). I recommend doing this based on faculty. Where do your favorite writers teach?
You can also research what schools bring great visiting writers to campus for readings and talks. Secondly, I advise looking carefully at funding. Though you might think that a graduate degree comes with a dizzying amount of dollar signs, that’s not always the case. In fact, fully-funded programs — which can be among the most competitive — cover the cost of tuition, and even pay students a small stipend to attend. In exchange, these students usually teach classes to undergrads or edit for a campus publication.
All schools will require a writing sample, though lengths vary. Usually, poetry applicants show off 10 to 15 of their best poems. It’s important to remember that no matter what components an application demands, this always stands out as the most important.
You’ll also need a personal statement: a breakdown of your writing influences, why you want to study writing at the graduate level, and more (check out this thorough personal statement guide ). Track down undergrad transcripts, an updated resume, and reach out to those former professors and mentors for up to three reference letters. Lastly, some programs require the GRE (yep, if the acronym tipped you off, it’s basically the ACT’s bigger, more difficult sibling).
What Are The Benefits?
Though an MFA can bring job prospects, strengthen your skills as a writer, and help you make talented connections, most graduates emphasize this overarching pro: Dedicated time to write. Workshops give you a deadline and inspiration, as well as a group of other invested students to provide feedback.
Grad school can also open doors in academia and publishing. An MFA in poetry, along with several publications, makes someone a strong candidate to become a professor in the genre.
Lastly, students typically graduate with a high quality, publishable manuscript, the pay-off for all that hard work.
Happy application season!
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Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts Degree
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Hone Your Craft in the Capital City
For more than 30 years, writers have come to American University to develop their work and exchange ideas in the District’s only creative writing MFA program. Our graduate workshops provide a rigorous yet supportive environment where students explore a range of approaches to the art and craft of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
As an MFA student at American, you are free to pursue a single genre or explore several. You will acquire a deeper understanding of your own work and hone your skills in a collaborative setting.
A Program of Study That Gets Results
This two-year, 36-credit-hour MFA program integrates writing, literary journalism, translation, and the study of literature to prepare students for a range of career possibilities. Write, give feedback, and receive guidance from a close-knit community of respectful peers and faculty. In the MFA program, you'll find lawyers, military veterans, musicians, teachers, and business executives who are passionate about the written word.
Connect with accomplished professors and the resources you need to reach your goal. Our faculty members have been featured in a variety of media and publications including the New Yorker , the New York Times , National Public Radio, Bill Moyers & Co., and the Washington Post.
Prominent Authors Dedicated to Your Success
Our faculty of award-winning poets, novelists, translators, and nonfiction writers will help you help you hone your craft and pursue your career as a writer. You will receive instruction and guidance from successful authors published by university presses and major publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, Scribner, Vintage Books, Viking Press, and WW Norton. Our active and engaged faculty members are regularly featured in top media outlets such as The New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New Republic ; in literary journals like Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah ; and on television and radio.
A City For Writers
Living and learning in the nation's capital provides numerous benefits for MFA students. We partner with organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts, Library of Congress, 826DC, Writopia Labs, and Folger Shakespeare Library to facilitate opportunities for our students.
Our students have recently published books with WW Norton, Copper Canyon, University of Wisconsin Press, and MIT Press. They have been featured on This American Life , Poets & Writers , in Creative Nonfiction , Psychology Today , and more.
We Know Success
97% of graduates are employed, in grad school, or both 6 months after graduation.
Our alumni have gone on to work for organizations including:
- Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington
- EEO ClassIn
- Fulbright Association
- Goodwin University
- PEN/Faulkner Foundation
- Shout Mouse Press
- Street Sense Media
- The Building People
- W. W. Norton & Company, Inc
Publications
Folio is a nationally recognized literary journal sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences at American University in Washington, DC. Since 1984, we have published original creative work by both new and established authors. Past issues have included work by Michael Reid Busk, Billy Collins, William Stafford, and Bruce Weigl, and interviews with Michael Cunningham, Charles Baxter, Amy Bloom, Ann Beattie, and Walter Kirn. We look for well-crafted poetry and prose that is bold and memorable.
News & Notes
Writers Series Brings Leading Authors and Thinkers to Campus this Fall
Recent award-winning publications by our MFA alumni :
- Valzhyna Mort won the 2021 International Griffin Prize for her third poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), which was named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by The New York Times.
- Field Study by Chet’la Sebree won the 2020 Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award; Mistress won the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize.
- "The Niece" by Yohanca Delgado was selected for the Distinguished Stories list in Best American Short Stories 2020 .
- Trouble Sleeping by Abdul Ali won the 2014 New Issues Poetry Prize.
- Daydreamers by Jonathan Harper was named a Kirkus Indie Books of the Month Selection.
Rachel Louise Snyder recounts how her mother’s death left her unmoored and untoward in her new memoir .
Kyle Dargan served as editor for The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer with Janelle Monáe.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Literature) won the 2023 NAACP Image Award for fiction for her most recent novel, Take My Hand .
Ralvell Rogers MFA, Creative Writing
More about ralvell.
MFA Creative Writing candidate Ralvell Rogers is making his mark on the literary world.
My time at AU has been brilliant in the fact that I've already learned much about what it means to be a Writer with a capital "W" and more importantly, a literary scholar. Though there is an obvious focus on our course work, it's been made clear to me that our work isn't exactly all that matters in the classroom. We are continuously connecting our work in class to the lives that we live on a daily basis and the world that we all live in, and I think that is very important for writers and entrepreneurs in the publishing sector because we are essentially the historians of our respective generations.
He is the author of The Kansas City Boys Choir: Providing Hope for Tomorrow , which has been endorsed by luminaries Kevin Powell, G.S. Griffin, and Congressman Emanual Cleaver II. Ralvell has also established his own publishing company, Ambitious Stories, LLC, out of Kansas City, MO. He founded it earlier this year to focus on "often unheard, yet riveting and inspiring stories from the heart."
Valzhyna Mort MFA Creative Writing
More about valzhyna.
Alumna Valzhyna Mort has gained international acclaim for her third poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), which won the 2021 International Griffin Prize and was named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by the New York Times . Publishers Weekly called this work in their starred review, "poems of reclamation and resurrection; to live in them is to confront the hard work of witness." The New Yorker wrote in its review, "Memory, metaphor, and myth intermingle to sometimes nightmarish effect in this collection by a Belarus-born poet. Mort excavates the individual and communal traumas wrought by a violent and repressive national history, and calls herself 'a test-child exposed to the burning reactor of my grandmother’s memory.'" Mort teaches poetry, literature, and translation at Cornell University.
Look inside the Creative Writing MFA
For more than 40 years, writers have come to American University to develop their work and exchange ideas in the District’s only creative writing MFA program.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the application deadline for a merit award.
The application deadline is February 1. All applications are automatically considered for merit awards. After February 1, the program continues to consider applications, but cannot guarantee those applicants will be considered for merit awards.
What is the MFA thesis?
The required MFA thesis consists of an original, book-length manuscript. It may be a novel, a novella, a memoir or collection of stories, creative nonfiction, or poems. The thesis is due approximately a month before the end of the student's final semester.
How long does it take to earn the MFA degree at American University?
Most students complete the 36-credit degree in 2 years. Full-time study is 9 credits (3 classes) per semester. Others pursue their degree part-time, taking 1-2 classes per semester as best fits their schedules. All workshops, and many literature courses, are offered at night, so that students with full-time jobs can still complete their coursework.
What does the admissions committee look for in an applicant's writing sample?
The committee regards the writing sample as the most important part of the application. It's therefore important that you pay close attention to the manuscript guidelines (see below). Send what you feel is your strongest work that shows your demonstrated talent. It is not important to the committee whether or not work has been previously published.
Those submitting applications in poetry should send no more than 12 poems or 15 pages (with no more than one new or continuing poem per page). If submitting fiction/nonfiction, please submit 15-25 pages. While the catalog calls for a 25-page writing sample, we value quality over quantity. We are interested in seeing only your very best work, which can consist of one or more stories or works of creative nonfiction or an excerpt from a novel. If you send an excerpt from a novel, please include a brief description of the work as a whole.
Still have questions? Email [email protected] .
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Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
Program Overview
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a two year program offering a degree in either Poetry or Prose, and is a part of the English Department's Creative Writing Program. Founded in 1947 by Theodore Roethke, the Creative Writing Program's tradition of transformative workshops continues with our current faculty: David Bosworth , David Crouse , Rae Paris , and Maya Sonenberg (Prose), and Linda Bierds , Andrew Feld , Richard Kenney, and Pimone Triplett (Poetry). They include among their many honors fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The list of our alumni publications represents a significant chapter in the history of American literature. The program has been ranked among the top ten in the country.
Students participate in writing workshops in prose and poetry, and undertake coursework in literary periods and types, and critical theory. MFA candidates also present a Creative Manuscript (minimum 30 poems,100 pages of 5 short stories and/or personal essays, or 150 pages of a novel or book-length essay), a Critical Essay (20-30 pages, addressing the student's relationship to his or her reading based on the student's own writerly concerns and studies), and an oral presentation (a discussion with and/or questions from the candidate's thesis committee on the creative manuscript, critical essay, and/or the writing process and which may include a reading from the candidate's Creative Manuscript).
The program admits only ten to twelve students each year. The relatively small size of our program (20-25 students) allows for close associations to develop among students and faculty. The first year is devoted to participation in workshops and literary seminars, and the second year allows for concentrated work on a creative manuscript and critical essay under the supervision of one of our regular faculty.
Students are funded through Teaching Assistantships, Fellowships, and a long-standing relationship with the Amazon Literary Partnership.
Students also enjoy Seattle's lively literary and arts scene. Seattle is home to numerous reading series, the Seattle International Film Festival, and many highly-acclaimed theater companies. Surrounded by spectacular scenery, Seattle is minutes away from hiking, skiing, and boating.
Learn more about UW's Creative Writing Program .
Application Information
Application materials are due January 2 (or the first business day after January 1 st ). Initial offers of admission are usually made by mid-March.
- How to Apply
- Application Checklist
Funding Opportunities
We offer a funding package to all admitted MFA students for two academic years. Learn more about the funding package and other funding opportunities here: MFA Funding and Support .
MFA Degree Requirements & Program Guide
The MFA is designed to be completed within six full-time quarters (two academic years). MFA students can refer to the MFA Degree Requirements and MFA Program Guide .
Land Acknowledgement
The Creative Writing Program acknowledges that the University of Washington, like all of our businesses, institutions and our lives, exists on Indigenous land. Such land acknowledgements are necessary as we push for justice and liberation in institutions and a broader society that continues to live out the settler colonial legacies of land theft, genocide, and enslavement. This Duwamish territory, and we are grateful to be here.
Departmental Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Justice
The UW English Department aims to help students become more incisive thinkers, effective communicators, and imaginative writers by acknowledging that language and its use are powerful and hold the potential to empower individuals and communities; to provide the means to engage in meaningful conversation and collaboration across differences and with those with whom we disagree; and to offer methods for exploring, understanding, problem solving, and responding to the many pressing collective issues we face in our world--skills that align with and support the University of Washington’s mission to educate “a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship.”
As a department, we begin with the conviction that language and texts play crucial roles in the constitution of cultures and communities, past, present, and future. Our disciplinary commitments to the study of English (its history, multiplicity, and development; its literary and artistic uses; and its global role in shaping and changing cultures) require of us a willingness to engage openly and critically with questions of power and difference. As such, in our teaching, service, and scholarship we frequently initiate and encourage conversations about topics such as race and racism, immigration, gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, and colonialisms. These topics are fundamental to the inquiry we pursue. We are proud of this fact, and we are committed to creating an environment in which our faculty and students can do so confidently and securely, knowing that they have the backing of the department.
Towards that aim, we value the inherent dignity and uniqueness of individuals and communities. We acknowledge that our university is located on the shared lands and waters of the Coast Salish peoples. We aspire to be a place where human rights are respected and where any of us can seek support. This includes people of all ethnicities, faiths, gender identities, national and indigenous origins, political views, and citizenship status; nontheists; LGBQTIA+; those with disabilities; veterans; and anyone who has been targeted, abused, or disenfranchised.
English Department Diversity Plan
The English department seeks to promote inclusion, diversity, and equity, especially racial equity, by recruiting, retaining, and supporting a diverse population of faculty, students, and staff in ways that counter ongoing legacies of systemic inequity and settler colonialism, and their organizing epistemologies.
The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish people of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations. The Department's promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion values endeavors that build on this recognition as a means of transforming our research, pedagogy, and/or service.
Read more about the UW English Department's commitment to diversity, equity, and justice .
Contact an advisor
- For questions about the MFA program, please contact [email protected]
- Visit our FAQ page
- Meet our Graduate Staff
- Newsletter
- Program Information
- Degree Requirements
- MFA Admissions and Recruitment
- MFA Application Information
- Publications
- Fiction Students
- Poetry Students
The M.F.A. centers around the Graduate Writers' Workshop, a group which meets each quarter in poetry and fiction, in which faculty and students share in criticism and discussion of student writing. There are twelve MFA students in poetry and twelve in fiction, half in their first year and half in their second year in the Writing Program. About two-thirds of the Writing Program student's work consists of participation in the Workshop; the other third is devoted to graduate-level seminars offered by the MFA faculty and other faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature and other graduate programs. The aim of the Programs in Writing is the training of accomplished writers who intend to make their writing their life. What we expect of our students is passionate precision, character, and stamina. What we want most for our students is that each will sooner or later write something that lasts. Successful writing, we think, is writing that succeeds itself each time it is read with interest and care by a succession of new readers. To facilitate such writing, the faculty has kept the Writing Program small in order to ensure the high quality of the students as well as to permit much teaching on a one-to-one basis. All students consult frequently with the staff for assistance with their work. In recent years, visiting writers and lecturers have included: Ralph Angel, John Ashbery, Wilton Barnhardt, John Calvin Batchelor, Ethan Canin, Jennifer Clarvoe, Killarney Clary, Gwyneth Cravens, Stuart Dybek, Robert Farnsworth, Amy Gerstler, Louise Glück, Jay Gummerman, Ursula Hegi, Brenda Hillman, Rust Hills, T.R. Hummer, Cynthia Huntington, P.D. James, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Margot Livesey, Thomas Lux, Lynne McMahon, Heather McHugh, Maile Meloy, Jeredith Merrin, Josephine Miles, Wright Morris, Howard Moss, Carol Muske-Dukes, Robert Olmstead, Ann Patchett, Bette Pesetsky, Martha Rhodes, Mark Richard, Mary Robison, Thomas Sanchez, Sherod Santos, Christine Schutt, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, Alan Shapiro, Jim Shepard, Mona Simpson, Ted Solotaroff, Pamela Stewart, Robert Stone, Mark Strand, Melanie Thernstrom, Lawrence Thornton, Brad Watson, Joy Williams, and William Wiser.
Contact MFA Programs in Writing: Phone 949-824-6718, Email: [email protected] .
Meet Our Students
Alumni Publications
Graduates of the Programs in Writing have gone on to publish works of fiction, poetry, and nonficiton, and have received distinguished prizes and fellowships such as the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, PEN/Faulkner Award, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, National Endowment for the Arts Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, Art Seidenbaum Award, Mary McCarthy Prize, Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Prize, Kathryn A. Morton Prize, Staige D. Blackford Prize, Tufts Poetry Award, The Nation Discovery Award, and the Ken Kesey Award.
Upcoming Events
Contact mfa programs in writing.
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Creative Writing, M.F.A
School of humanities and social sciences, program overview.
This small, highly personal two-year program confers Master of Fine Arts degrees in fiction, playwriting, and poetry. It offers single-discipline and inter-genre workshops, literature seminars, small-group reading tutorials, and one-on-one tutorials, all of which emphasize relationships between students and eminent faculty. Additionally, students have the opportunity to work on our literary journal, The Brooklyn Review , and give public readings and performances in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The program offers fellowships and prizes. Students may also teach undergraduate courses for the English Department.
Where You'll Go
Our graduates have had their work published widely and have won competitions sponsored by the Iowa Review , the Colorado Review , the Mississippi Review , and Zoetrope, among many others. They have had books published, received major prizes, founded presses and literary journals, and been included in numerous anthologies, including The Best New Young Poets , Best American Short Stories , Best American Nonrequired Reading , O. Henry , and Pushcart . Our playwrights have won Obie Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Pulitzer Prize; started theater companies; and had their plays produced in the United States and abroad.
Program Details
The program information listed here reflects the approved curriculum for the 2023-2024 academic year per the Brooklyn College Bulletin. Bulletins from past academic years can be found here .
Program Description
Our small, highly personal two-year program confers a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing in fiction, poetry, or playwriting. The program offers single-discipline and inter-genre workshops, literature seminars, small-group reading tutorials, and one-on-one tutorials, which all emphasize relationships between eminent faculty members and students. Additionally, students have the opportunity to work on The Brooklyn Review and give public readings/performances in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The program offers some fellowships as well as prizes and a winter writing residency at the Espy Foundation in Oysterville, Washington. Students may also teach undergraduate courses for the English Department.
Our graduates have had their work published widely and have won competitions sponsored by the Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, the Mississippi Review , and Zoetrope. They have been included in The Best New Young Poets anthology and The Best American Short Stories . Our playwrights have won Obies, started theater companies, and had their plays produced here and abroad.
Matriculation Requirements
Fiction and Poetry: Applicants must offer at least 12 credits in advanced courses in English. Thirty pages of original fiction or 20 pages of original poetry must be submitted for evaluation.
Playwriting: Applicants must offer at least 12 credits in advanced courses in English or theater. One original full-length play or two or more original one-act plays must be submitted for evaluation.
Applicants who do not meet course requirements but whose manuscripts show unusual talent are considered for admission. Manuscripts should be submitted directly to the deputy chair in the English Department at the time of application. Applications are not considered for spring semester admission.
Foreign applicants for whom English is a second language are required to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) with a score of 650 on the paper-based test or 280 on the computer-based test or 114 on the internet-based test before being considered for admission.
General matriculation and admission requirements of Graduate Studies are in the chapter “Admission.”
Program Requirements (36 Credits)
Thirty-six credits are required for the degree: 24 credits in the respective creative writing specialization, plus 12 credits in literature courses.
Students may substitute for no more than two such courses any two 7000-level courses from the departments of Art; History; Modern Languages and Literatures; Philosophy; Speech; Television, Radio and Emerging Media; or Theater, or the Conservatory of Music, or another department with the approval of the deputy chair for graduate studies (these courses may also be taken through e-permits at other CUNY branches, including the Graduate Center, or through individual or small group tutorials). Students may substitute one writing workshop or tutorial outside of their major writing specialization for one literature course.
Permission to register for any of these substitute courses may be required from the graduate deputy chair of the appropriate department.
A substantial manuscript must be submitted and filed according to instructions available from the deputy chairperson. Students specializing in fiction or poetry must submit original creative writing, in publishable form, such as a novel or collection of stories or poems. Students specializing in playwriting must submit a full-length play or a number of one-act plays, in producible form, that would constitute a theatrical production. In cooperation with the Theater Department, efforts are made to produce the student’s major work.
Students choose a specialization in one of the following:
Playwriting
Recommendations.
Students are urged to take one workshop, one tutorial, and one literature course each semester in order to complete the program in four semesters. A reading knowledge of a foreign language is strongly recommended.
Student Learning Outcomes
Department goal 1: read and think critically..
Program Objective 1: Learn to read literature with a focus on the ways in which form serves content.
Program Objective 2: Use close reading effectively to identify literary techniques, styles, and themes.
Program Objective 3: Learn to read and comment constructively and critically on the creative writing of peers in the workshop context.
Department Goal 2: Understand how language operates.
Program Objective 1: Demonstrate knowledge of literary tropes and techniques (for example: metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, word play, and sonic effects such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhythm, etc.)
Department Goal 3: Express ideas–both orally and in writing–correctly, cogently, persuasively, and in conformity with the conventions of the discipline.
Program Objective 1: Create original examples of creative writing that demonstrate complexity through attention to rhetoric, syntax and tone.
Program Objective 2: Comment and write cogently and persuasively about classmates’ writing in the workshop context.
Program Objective 3: Demonstrate the ability to respond to constructive criticism from instructor and peers by effectively revising writing assignments.
Program Objective 4: Demonstrate the ability to use the currently accepted conventions of standard English mechanics and grammar, with an eye toward how those standards can be stretched in order to achieve innovative modes of expression.
Department Goal 4: Conduct research.
Program Objective 1: Learn how to research and seek out historical and contemporary literary voices relevant to their individual voice.
Program Objective 2: Make use of the opportunities that Brooklyn College and New York City afford by attending readings, plays, literary panel discussions, and submitting to literary magazines.
Outcomes for demonstrating achievement of objectives
Written work (including poems/stories/plays, in-class writing exercises, short written reflections on literary techniques used by published writers, workshop responses for peers, revised writing samples, etc.)
Contributions to class discussions and workshops
Attendance at readings, panels, performances or a related research project (such as researching literary magazines/submitting one’s work); documented via written summary of the activity handed into instructor
Admissions Requirements
- Fall Application Deadline—January 15
- Spring Application Deadline—The program does not accept applications for spring
Supporting Documents for Matriculation
Submit the following documents to the Office of Graduate Admissions:
- Transcripts from all colleges and universities attended. Applicants who earned a bachelor’s degree outside the United States need to submit a Course by Course International Transcript Evaluation. See Graduate Admissions for more information.
- Two letters of recommendation.
- A manuscript of original work in your intended genre (for fiction, about 30 pages; for poetry, about 20 pages; for playwriting, one full-length play, or two or more one-act plays).
- A personal statement (one–two pages).
Required Tests
- F-1 or J-1 international students must submit English Proficiency Exam. TOEFL- 79, IELTS- 6.5, PTE- 58-63, Duolingo 105-160.
Refer to the instructions at Graduate Admissions .
Geoffrey Minter
[email protected] 718.951.5000 x3651 3149 Boylan Hall
Or contact:
Office of Graduate Admissions
222 West Quad Center 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210 P: 718.951.4536 E: [email protected]
Office Hours
Mondays–Fridays, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
To make an appointment with a graduate admissions counselor, visit:
BC Admissions Appointment Tool
Specializations
English 7910X to be taken in the first semester. English 7912X to be taken four times, but not more than once in any semester; English 7911X once in the second semester; English 7913X to be taken two times in the second year, but not more than once in any semester.
Joshua Henkin, Coordinator
The M.F.A. fiction specialization at Brooklyn College is a two-year course that maintains an enrollment of 30 students. While every member of the ongoing and visiting faculty works according to their methods, we are united in our conviction that newer writers need a balance of encouragement and serious, thoroughly considered feedback.
The curriculum is designed sequentially. Students take a workshop every semester. The specialization typically offers two traditional short fiction workshops and one novel-writing workshop in the fall and three short fiction workshops in the spring. The novel-writing workshop is meant to address the particular needs of students who are writing novels and who would prefer to receive input on longer sections than a traditional workshop allows.
First-year students take a craft course in the short story in the fall and a reading seminar in the spring. The reading seminars, led by faculty members, discuss classic and contemporary literature from a writer’s point of view. If a traditional literature course is devoted, for instance, to understanding why Faulkner and García Márquez are considered great writers, the reading seminars are more concerned with how writers like Faulkner and García Márquez achieved their effects.
Second-year students take, along with their workshops, a one-on-one revisions/thesis tutorial in the fall and in the spring. The first is devoted to helping students with work that has already been discussed in their workshops, the second to helping them look over what they’ve done during their time at Brooklyn College, toward the completion of their theses. Both represent the specialization’s desire to give each student individual attention outside of the workshops.
We who teach in the fiction-writing specialization do so in part because we want not only to be useful to younger writers but to know them. We care about each student we admit. We are trying, to the best of our abilities, to maintain the M.F.A. program we wish had been available to us.
Over the course of the last decade, our graduates have published more than 50 books, including Helen Phillips’s The Need (Longlisted for the National Book Award); R.O. Kwon’s The Incendaries (National Bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Best First Book Prize); Garrard Conley’s Boy Erased ( New York Times Bestseller; adapted for film starring Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and Lucas Hedges); Jai Chakrabarti’s A Play for the End of the World (Longlisted for the PEN Faulkner Award, winner of the National Jewish Book Award); Thomas Grattan’s The Recent East (Longlisted for the PEN Hemingway Award) and Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets (National Book Award Finalist and New York Times Bestseller).
English 7932X to be taken four times, but not more than once in any semester; English 7933X to be taken four times, but not more than once in any semester.
The playwriting specialization at Brooklyn College was started over 30 years ago by Jack Gelber, one of America’s most important experimental writers. Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney continued that tradition for a 20 year period, while seeking to embrace the widest definition of that concept. Now, Dennis A. Allen II and Sibyl Kempson are serving as interim leaders of this innovative course of study.
The playwriting specialization is dedicated to the proposition that writing for the theater is not a business of finished thought and dead rules. Rather, we endeavor to pursue kinds of writing that involve an ongoing conversation with theater of the past and (hopefully) the future. To this end, we encourage our M.F.A. playwrights to become students of the theater in every sense: to follow the current scene as well as study the classics from as many traditions as possible; to study the techniques of making theater as well as theory; and lastly, to become as well-read as possible in all the written arts, with special emphasis on what is most contemporary, most challenging, most alive. It is our conviction that each generation must reinvent a theater appropriate to the time; a theater the time deserves; a theater that refuses to settle for the merely tendentious, and the dreary dead hand of the already known.
We are looking for aspiring writers who follow the theater because they love theater and all that pertains to theatricality. Theatricality diversely considered, rotated in four-dimensional space. We are looking for writers unwilling to settle for less. We believe the gathering of diverse people, ideas, and cultures strengthens both our insights into the work we present on stage and our relationships with each other.
Talk to a Playwright
If you have questions you would like to ask students in the specialization, feel free to contact the following:
- Frank Boudreaux
- Leslie Gauthier
English 7922X to be taken four times, but not more than once in any semester; English 7923X to be taken four times, but not more than once in any semester.
Julie Agoos, Coordinator
Since its inception, the Brooklyn College Master of Fine Arts specialization in poetry has balanced a firm grounding in the history and tradition of the craft with cutting-edge experimental writing. Moderately priced and highly selective, this two-year specialization offers intensive workshops (limited to 10 students), private tutorials, and courses in the history and craft of the genre.
Attracting a diverse student body from all across the country, it has graduated such writers as John Yau, Sapphire, Paul Beatty, David Trinidad, Star Black, Karen Kelley, Tom Devaney, and Anselm Berrigan. Brooklyn’s “experimental tradition” is best exemplified by the late-modernist masters John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg, both of whom taught in the specialization. Other teachers have included Mark Strand, William Matthews, Ann Lauterbach, Douglas Crase, David Shapiro, C. K. Williams, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Joan Larkin, and, more recently, Ron Padgett Joshua Clover, Marjorie Welish, and LaTasha N. Diggs.
At present, the permanent staff includes Julie Agoos, author of Echo Systems (2015), Property (2008), Calendar Year (1996), and Above the Land (1987), for which she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; Ben Lerner, author of The Lichtenberg Figures (winner of the Hayden Carruth Award from Copper Canyon Press, a Lannan Literary Selection, and one of 2004’s best books of poetry, according to Library Journal ), Angle of Yaw (Copper Canyon, 2006, and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award), and Mean Free Path (Copper Canyon, 2010); and Mónica de la Torre, author of Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat, 2020), The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017), Public Domain (Roof Books, 2009), and Talk Shows (Switchback Books, 2006).
Recent alumni of the M.F.A. poetry specialization have received such major recognitions as selection for The National Poetry Prize Series ( Courtney Bush , i love information , selected by Brian Teare, NY: Milkweeds, 2023), the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry ( Sahar Muradi , OCTOBERS , selected by Naomi Shahib Nye, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023), and the 2022 APR/Honickman First Book Prize ( Chelsea Harlan , Bright Shade , selected by Jericho Brown, Philadelphia: The American Poetry Review, 2022). Others have received international honors for poetry and journalism ( Mohammed El-Kurd, RIFQA , Haymarket Books, 2022, Winner of The Calgary Peace Prize); for translation (Matthew Reeck , winner of the 2020 Albertine Prize for “Muslim”: A Novel , by Zahia Rehmani, Deep Vellum, 2019); for YA fiction ( Victoria Bond , winner of the 2020 John Steptoe/Coretta Scott King New Talent Author Award for Zora and Me (trilogy), with illustrator TR Simon, MA: Candlewick Press, 2020, 2018, 2011); and for books on art (John Yau, Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art , Black Sparrow Press, 2023, deemed a “revelatory volume” by Publishers Weekly, among other ravishing reviews). Our alumni currently occupy major Fellowships at the New York Public Library (Alexandra Kamerling, 2023 NYPL Dance Research Fellow), and the Library of America (Susana Plotts-Pineda, 2023 Latino Fellow), and have written, directed, and premiered feature film documentaries ( Jodie Childers , with Dan Messina, director and cinematographer of Down by the Riverside , 2023 World Premiere, Woodstock Film Festival; Tom Devaney , Bicentennial City , Green House Media, 2020). Recent and forthcoming publications include Claire DeVoogd , VIA (Winter Editions, 2023), Anselm Berrigan , Pregrets (Black Square Editions, 2021), Katherine Duckworth , Slow Violence (NY: Beautiful Days Press, 2023), Marcella Durand, To Husband Is to Tender (Black Square Editions, 2021), Tom Devaney , Getting to Philadelphia (Hanging Loose Press, 2020), Tom Haviv , Flag of No Nation (Jewish Currents, 2019), Gracie Leavitt , Livingry (Nightboat, 2018), Kennia Lopez , The Exodus (Tolson Books, 2020), Chime Lama , Sphinxlike (Finishing Line, 2023), Sharon Mesmer , Greetings from My Girlies Leisure Place (Bloof Books, 2015), Jed Muson , Commentary on the Birds (Rescue Press, 2023), Joshua Wilkerson , Meadowlands/Xanadu/American Dream, Beautiful Days Press, 2022), John Yau , Tell It Slant , Omnidawn, 2023); Charles Theonia , Gay Heaven Is a Dance Floor but I Can’t Relax , Archway Editions (March, 2024), and Zohra Saed with Sahara Muradi , eds., One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2022).
Talk to a Student
If you have questions you would like to ask students in the specialization, feel free to contact any of the following, all of whom are currently or recently enrolled:
- Jackie Braje
- Melina Casados
- Anneysa Gaille
- Monique Ngozi Nri
- Suchi Pritchard
Departmental Information
Application process, how do i apply.
For comprehensive application information and the link to the online application, visit the Admissions page .
What is your rate of acceptance?
In recent years, we have received approximately 500 applications for 15 spots in fiction, approximately 120 applications for 10 spots in poetry, and approximately 70 applications for five spots in playwriting.
When will I find out if I was accepted?
Though it varies year to year, we plan to notify applicants in March and early April. We appreciate your patience.
Do you require the GRE?
I’m not sure if i have the 12 credits of advanced english requested on your admissions page. what should i do.
As per our Admissions page, “Applicants who do not meet course requirements but whose manuscripts show unusual talent are considered for admission.”
May the 30-page fiction manuscript consist of multiple works?
Yes, your 30-page fiction manuscript may come in any form you wish (short stories, excerpt(s) from a novel, flash fiction, or any combination of the above, up to 30 pages). We simply recommend that you send in whatever you think is your very strongest work.
How should the 20-page poetry manuscript be formatted?
You may format your poetry as you see fit. Please do not exceed 20 pages.
What should be in the personal statement?
Your one- to two-page personal statement should serve as a way for us to get to know you and come to understand why you want to pursue an M.F.A. at Brooklyn College.
Who should write my recommendation letters?
Your two recommendation letters should come from people familiar with your writing, such as professors, mentors, and/or employers.
How should recommendation letters be submitted?
They should be submitted online (this will be an option when you’re completing the online application). For more information, refer to the Supporting Documents page.
Do I need to send in transcripts from all of the institutions where I took undergraduate classes?
We require transcripts from all colleges and universities that you attended.
What is an official transcript?
Transcripts must arrive in envelopes sealed by the institution’s registrar office. Your college institution should mail transcripts to the Brooklyn College Office of Admissions.
I am an international student. Is it true that I have to have my international transcripts evaluated before my application will be complete?
Yes (though please note that students who received degrees from universities in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are exempt from this requirement). For all other international applicants, see more information about the required international transcript evaluation.
Do international students with undergraduate degrees from U.S. universities need to take the TOEFL?
Once you have received a B.A. from a U.S. university, you no longer need to submit your TOEFL scores to apply to the M.F.A. program.
May I apply to two different genres?
No, you may only apply to one genre per year.
What are the program codes for Fiction, Playwriting, and Poetry?
- Fiction—324
- Playwriting—325
Is there any way I can check my application status online?
Yes. Once you’ve completed your application, you may check online for status updates .
I was not accepted to your program. Can you provide feedback on my application?
Because of the large number of qualified applicants, we may not be able to accept very strong candidates, nor can we offer specific feedback on individual applications. Note that the manuscript is by far the most important element of the application. We encourage interested applicants to reapply in the future.
How do I reapply?
As per the Graduate Admissions Office website , “To reapply, you need to complete and submit a new graduate degree application online. You do not need to resubmit any supporting documents (i.e. transcripts, letters of recommendation) if you applied within the last two years.” The $125 application fee is waived for re-applicants for up to one year. (If you applied for fall 2014 entry, for instance, you may reapply for fall 2015 without paying an additional fee.) You must send a new personal statement and manuscript to the Department of English each time you reapply.
Getting to Know the Program
Do you hold an open house.
Yes. Information will be available soon.
May I speak to a current or recent student?
Yes. Please see the student and alumni lists within each specialization.
May I come and visit an M.F.A. class?
In most cases, prospective students are permitted to visit classes once they’ve been accepted into the program.
Can you send me printed materials about the M.F.A. program?
Comprehensive information about our program, including the online application, is available on our website and on the more general Brooklyn College website under “Graduate Programs” and “Admissions.”
May I take a class in the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program as a nonmatriculated student?
Because of the small size of our program, only students matriculated in our M.F.A. program may take our graduate creative writing classes.
Where can I obtain information pertaining to international students?
The Brooklyn College Office of International Student Services will assist you with immigration issues, financial aid, and housing.
Financial Information
What is the cost of tuition.
Up-to-date tuition information is available on the Bursar’s website .
How many credits are required for the M.F.A. program?
Unlike other masters students, M.F.A. students take a nine-credit-per-semester load. Tuition should be calculated based on nine credits per semester.
Do you offer funding?
Yes. In addition to the salary for teaching undergraduate composition, our graduate students are eligible to receive some departmental funding. There is no special application for this funding; all admitted students will be considered automatically. The Office of Financial Aid primarily helps students obtain federal student loans and, if they are eligible, Work-Study funding. All students must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) , which can be submitted online.
Do you offer teaching opportunities?
Yes. Students who wish to teach while they are enrolled in the M.F.A. program, but who don’t have prior composition teaching experience at the college level, are required to take English 7506, Practicum in Teaching College-Level Composition (which counts toward the M.F.A. degree requirements as an elective). The course includes a tutor-internship in an instructor’s classroom. After completing 7506, students may be assigned to teach their own section of a composition course, English 1010 or English 1012. The salary for one section of English 1010 or English 1012 is $6,875. Students may teach for up to three years, starting while they are students in the program and continuing after they graduate. There are also teaching opportunities at other CUNY schools.
I am an international student. How would this affect my employment opportunities at the university?
International students on F-1 Student Visas are permitted to work or teach up to 20 hours per week while they are in the program, and eligible to continue doing so, full-time, for one year after graduation, if the work is in the field for which they received the degree.
Do you offer a part-time, low-residency, or online option?
Do you offer a health insurance plan.
Health insurance is available via the New York State of Health Insurance Exchange , as per the Affordable Care Act, where you can search for insurance plans.
- Brooklyn College students are profiled in Poets & Writers ‘ “MFA Nation” feature .
- Fiction student Jai Chakrabarti talks about his M.F.A. experience in Litbridge’s “Interview with Brooklyn College.”
- Fiction director Josh Henkin discusses the Brooklyn College M.F.A. as part of The Coffin Factory ‘s “MFA Corner.”
- Flavorwire’ s list of “The 25 Most Literary Colleges in America” ranks Brooklyn College at #3.
- The Masters Review Blog profiles the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program .
- The New York Times profiles playwriting director Mac Wellman in two articles: “Mac Wellman, a Playwriting Mentor Whose Only Mantra Is Oddity” and “At Brooklyn College, Learning From Mac Wellman.”
- Brooklyn Magazine ‘s list of “The 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” features M.F.A. fiction alumni Halimah Marcus and Ben Samuel, playwriting alumnus Scott Adkins, and faculty members Ben Lerner (poetry) and Erin Courtney (playwriting).
- Ploughshares explores the Brooklyn writing scene in its “Literary Boroughs” feature .
From the Literary Scene:
- The Brooklyn Review
- Recommended Reading
- Poets & Writers Daily News
Program Awards
2019–20 program awards.
Zoya Haroon received the 2020 Ross Feld Award.
Chelsea Baumgarten received the 2020 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2020 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Taylor Clarke, DJ Kim, and Sally Helm (fiction, first year); David Olesky, Elizabeth Robau, and Jessica Shabin (fiction, second year); Noelle Viñas (playwriting, first year); Michael Shayan (playwriting, second year); Chime Lama and Peter Soucy (poetry, first year); and Alexandra Kamerling and Kennia Lopez (poetry, second year).
2018–19 Program Awards
Nalea Ko received the 2019 Ross Feld Award.
Jill Winsby-Fein received the 2019 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2019 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Chelsea Baumgarten, Avi Cummings, and Adrienne Wong (fiction, first year); Drew Pham, Erica Recordon, and Wesley Straton (fiction, second year); Nazareth Hassan (playwriting, first year); Arika Larson (playwriting, second year); Kennia Lopez and Charles Theonia (poetry, first year); and Adam Bangser and Henry Peterson (poetry, second year).
2017–18 Program Awards
Sameet Dhillon received the 2018 Ross Feld Award.
Jenzo Duque received the 2018 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2018 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Jivin Misra, Erica Schecter, and Wesley Straton (fiction, first year); Sam Baldassari, Maddie Crum, and Alyssa Northrop (fiction, second year); Eri Borlaug (playwriting, first year); Jerry Lieblich (playwriting, second year); AJ Stoughton and Oscar Vargas (poetry, first year); and Laura Amelio and Marko Gluhaich (poetry, second year).
2016–17 Program Awards
Alexander Celia received the 2018 Ross Feld Award.
Alexandra Kessler received the 2017 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2017 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Sandra Hong, Jess Silfa, and Stephen Snyder (fiction, first year); Joyce Li, Anna Marschalk-Burns, and Jon Sands (fiction, second year); Jerry Lieblich (playwriting, first year); Zach Rufa (playwriting, second year); Erika Kielsgard and Amanda Killian (poetry, first year); and Jenny Stella and Mike Smith (poetry, second year).
2015–16 Program Awards
Alexander Kessler received the 2017 Ross Feld Award.
Jane Pek received the 2017 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2016 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Isabella Moschen, Kristen Olds, and Kelly Suprenant (fiction, first year); Nate Bethea, Casey Gonzalez, and Eric Boehling Lewis (fiction, second year); Corinne Donly (playwriting, first year); Paul Hufker (playwriting, second year); Rami Karim and Leah Williams (poetry, first year); and Courtney Bush and Stacy Skolnik (poetry, second year).
2014–15 Program Awards
Jacob Kaplan received the 2015 Ross Feld Award.
Lindsay Whalen received the 2015 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2015 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Heloise Cormier and Paul Hufker (playwriting); Tom Haviv, Emily Heilker, James Loop, and Sahar Muradi (poetry); and Ben Cake, Molly Dektar, Eve Gleichman, Jacob Kaplan, Ilana Papir, and Jane Pek (fiction).
Courtney Bush received the 2015 Creative Writing Scholarship for Poetry. Mike Mikos received the 2015 Creative Writing Scholarship for Playwriting. Lisa Skapinker Metrikin received the 2015 Creative Writing Scholarship for Fiction.
2013–14 Program Awards
Marie Avetria received the 2014 Ross Feld Award.
Amanda DeMatto received the 2014 Carole and Irwin Lainoff Prize.
The 2014 Himan Brown Awards in Creative Writing went to: Heloise Cormier and Frances Koncan (playwriting); Georgia Faust, Sahar Muradi, Liz Roberts, and Ryan Schaefer (poetry); and Alice Broussard, Eve Gleichman, Laura Horley, Laura Macomber, Matthue Roth, and Joshua Sperling (fiction).
James Loop received the 2014 Creative Writing Scholarship for Poetry. Mike Mikos received the 2014 Creative Writing Scholarship for Playwriting. Molly Dektar received the 2014 Creative Writing Scholarship for Fiction.
Selected Student Publications
Greg ames, m.f.a. fiction 2002.
- Buffalo Lockjaw , 2009
Mark Ari, M.F.A. Fiction 1985
- The Shoemaker’s Tale , 2000
Rilla Askew, M.F.A. Fiction 1989
- Strange Business , 1992
- The Mercy Seat , 1997
- Fire in Beulah , 2001
- Harpsong (Stories and Storytellers Series), 2007
- Kind of Kin , 2013
Paul Beatty, M.F.A. Poetry 1989
- Big Bank Take Little Bank , 1991
- Joker Joker Deuce , 1994
- The White Boy Shuffle , 1996
- Tuff , 2001
- Slumberland , 2008
- The Sellout , 2015
Lauren Belski, M.F.A. Fiction 2010
- Whatever Used to Grow Around Here , 2012
Adam Berlin, M.F.A. Fiction 1991
- Headlock , 2000
- Belmondo Style , 2004
- Both Members of the Club , 2013
- The Number of Missing , 2013
Anselm Berrigan, M.F.A. Poetry 1998
- They Beat Me over the Head With a Sack , 1998
- Integrity & Dramatic Life , 1999
- Zero Star Hotel , 2002
- Some Notes on My Programming , 2006
- To Hell With Sleep , 2009
- Free Cell , 2009
- Notes from Irrelevance , 2001
- Loading , 2013
- Primitive State , 2015
- Come in Alone , 2016
Marie-Helene Bertino, M.F.A. Fiction 2007
- Short story: ‘North Of’, 2008
- Safe As Houses , 2012
- 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas , 2014
Star Black, M.F.A. Poetry 1984
- October for Idas , 1997
- Double Time , 1997
- Balefire , 1999
- Ghostwood , 2003
- Velleity’s Shade , 2010
Victoria Bond, M.F.A. Poetry 2005
- Zora and Me (co-author), 2010
Thomas Bradshaw, M.F.A. Playwriting 2004
- Play: ‘Strom Thurman is Not a Racist’, 1985
- Play: ‘Cleansed’, 1985
- Play: ‘Phophet’, 2006
- Play: ‘Purity’, 2007
- A new play for the anthology , 2008
- Play: ‘Southern Promises’, 2008
- Play: ‘The Bereaved/Mary’, 2009
- Play: ‘Intimacy’, 2014
- Play: ‘Dawn’, 2010
Joanna Cantor, M.F.A. Fiction 2011
- Alternative Remedies for Loss , 2018
Maisy Card, M.F.A. Fiction 2010
- These Ghosts Are Family , 2020
Bryan Charles, M.F.A. Fiction 2003
- Grab On To Me As Tightly As If I Knew The Way , 2006
- Pavement’s Wowee Zowee (33 1/3) , 2010
- There’s a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From: A Memoir , 2010
Erin Courtney, M.F.A. Playwriting 2003
- Play: ‘Demon Baby’, 2006
- Play included in anthology of 7 edgy works, 2008
Amanda Davis, M.F.A. Fiction 1998
- Circling the Drain , 2000
- Wonder When You’ll Miss Me , 2003
Molly Dektar, M.F.A. Fiction 2015
- The Ash Family , 2019
Tom Devaney, M.F.A. Poetry 1998
- The American Pragmatist Fell In Love , 1999
Heidi Diehl, M.F.A. Fiction 2011
- Lifelines , 2019
Marcella Durand, M.F.A. Poetry 1995
- Western Capital Rhapsodies , 2001
- Traffic & Weather , 2008
- Area , 2008
Juliet Escoria, M.F.A. Fiction 2011
- Black Cloud , 2014
- Witch Hunt , 2016
- Juliet the Maniac , 2019
Amy Fox, M.F.A. 2005
- Screenplay: ‘Heights’, 2005
- Screenplay: ‘Equity’, 2016
James Franco, M.F.A. Fiction 2010
- Palo Alto: Stories , 2010
- Strongest of the Litter : (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series), 2012
- 113 Crickets: Summer 2012 , 2012
- Actors Anonymous , 2013
- Directing Herbert White : Poems, 2014
- A California Childhood , 2014
- Straight James / Gay James , 2016
Elizabeth Gaffney, M.F.A. Fiction 1997
- Metropolis: A Novel , 2005
- When The World Was Young , 2015
Sean Garritty, M.F.A. Poetry 2006
- Lie Nearest Truth , 2011
Thea Goodman, M.F.A. Fiction 1995
- The Sunshine When She’s Gone , 2013
CJ Hauser, M.F.A. Fiction 2009
- The From-Aways , 2014
Elliott Holt, M.F.A. Fiction 2006
- Short story: ‘Fem Care’, 2011
- You Are One of Them , 2013
Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, M.F.A. Fiction 2008
- Electric Literature (Founders) , 2009
Tanwi Nandini Islam, M.F.A. Fiction 2009
- Bright Lines , 2015
Amelia Kahaney, M.F.A. Fiction 2006
- The Brokenhearted , 2013
Andrew Kaufman, M.F.A. Poetry 1986
- Earth’s Ends , 2004
- Both Sides of the Niger , 2013
John M. Keller, M.F.A. Fiction 2004
- A Bald Man With No Hair and Other Stories , 2012
- Know Your Baker , 2013
- The Box and the Briefcase, the Moleque and the Old Man and the First Coming of the Second Son of God , 2014
- Abracadabrantesque , 2015
- Johnny Allan , 2019
Stellar Kim, M.F.A. Fiction 2005
- Short story: ‘Findings and Impressions’, 2007
Suki Kim, M.F.A. Fiction 1997
- The Interpreter , 2003
- Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite , 2014
Amy King, M.F.A. Poetry 2000
- Antidotes for an Alibi , 2006
- I’m The Man Who Loves You , 2007
- Slaves to Do These Things , 2009
- I Want to Make You Safe , 2011
Kristen Kosmas, M.F.A. Playwriting 2011
- The Mayor of Baltimore and Anthem , 2013
R.O. Kwon, M.F.A. Fiction 2008
- The Incendiaries , 2018
Gracie Leavitt, M.F.A. Poetry 2011
- Monkeys, Minor Planet, Average Star , 2014
Marlene Lee, M.F.A. Fiction 2010
- The Absent Woman , 2013
Halimah Marcus, M.F.A. Fiction 2012
- Short story: ‘Swimming’, 2010
Sharon Mesmer, M.F.A. Poetry 1990
- The Empty Quarter , 2000
- Half Angel Half Lunch , 2002
- In Ordinary Time , 2005
- The Virgin Formica , 2008
Emily Mitchell, M.F.A. Fiction 2005
- The Last Summer of the World , 2007
- Viral: Stories , 2015
Cristina Moracho, M.F.A. Fiction 2008
- Althea & Oliver , 2014
Stephen Motika, M.F.A. Poetry 2010
- Western Practice , 2012
Christina Olivares, M.F.A. Poetry 2010
- No Map of the Earth Includes Stars , 2015
Jeffrey Oliver, M.F.A. Fiction 2002
- Failure to Thrive , 2011
Helen Phillips, M.F.A. Fiction 2007
- Short story: ‘Twenty Tales of Natural Disaster’, 2010
- And Yet They Were Happy , 2011
- Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green , 2012
- The Beautiful Bureaucrat , 2015
- Some Possible Solutions , 2016
- The Need , 2019
Sapphire, M.F.A. Poetry 1995
- American Dreams , 1996
- Push , 1997
- Black Wings & Blind Angels , 2000
- The Kid: A Novel , 2012
Sara Shepard, M.F.A. Fiction 2005
- The Visibles , 2009
- Everything We Ever Wanted , 2011
- The Perfectionists Series , 2014-2015
- Pretty Little Liars Series , 2006-2014
- The Lying Game Series , 2010-2013
- The Heiresses , 2014
- The Amateurs , 2016
Mohan Sikka, M.F.A. Fiction 2006
- Short story: ‘Uncle Musto Takes A Mistress’, 2007
- Short story: ‘The Railway Aunty’, 2009
Lysette Simmons, M.F.A. Poetry 2013
- Dear Robert , 2013
David Trinidad, M.F.A. Poetry 1990
- Monday, Monday , 1985
- November , 1986
- Hand Over Heart , 1994
- Three Stories , 1998
- Plasticville , 2000
- Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse , 2003
- The Late Show , 2007
- Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry , 2007
- By Myself, An Autobiography , 2009
- Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems , 2011
- Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera , 2013
- Notes of a Past Life , 2016
Jenny Williams, M.F.A. Fiction 2011
- Short story in Battle Runes: Writings on War , 2011
- The Atlas of Forgotten Places , 2017
John Yau, M.F.A. Poetry 1978
- Radiant Silhouette: New and Selected Work , 1974-1988, 1989
- Forbidden Entries , 1992
- Edificio Sayonara , 1992
- A.R. Penck , 1993
- In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol , 1993
- Hawaiian Cowboys , 1994
- Berlin Diptychon: Poems , 1995
- The United States of Jasper Johns , 1997
- My Symptoms , 1998
- Randy Hayes: The World Reveiled , 2000
- Borrowed Love Poems , 2002
- My Heart Is That Eternal Rose Tattoo , 2002
- Ing Grish , 2005
- Paradiso Diaspora , 2006
- The Passionate Spectator: Essays on Art and Poetry , 2006
- A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns , 2008
- Further Adventures in Monochrome , 2012
Young Jean Lee, M.F.A. Playwriting 2005
- Play: ‘The Appeal’, 2006
Julie Agoos
Julie Agoos is professor and coordinator of the Poetry specialization. Agoos, who received her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, publishes widely in journals and is the author of three collections of poems, Property (Ausable/Copper Canyon, 2008), Calendar Year (Sheep Meadow, 1996), and Above the Land (Yale University Press, 1987), for which she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Her latest book Echo System was published in 2015.
Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan ’98 M.F.A. is the author of five books of poetry, most recently the book-length poem Notes from Irrelevance (Wave Books, 2011). Other titles include Free Cell (City Lights, 2009), Some Notes on My Programming (Edge, 2006), and Zero Star Hotel (Edge, 2002). Skasers , a book jointly written with poet John Coletti, was be published in 2012 by Flowers & Cream Press. He is the current poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail and a member of the subpress publishing collective. From 1998 to 2007 he worked for The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in various capacities, including a stint as artistic director from 2003 to 2007. Berrigan is also co-chair of Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts, Bard College’s interdisciplinary summer M.F.A. program.
Erin Courtney
Erin Courtney’s play I Will Be Gone , directed by Kip Fagan, premiered at Actors Theater of Louisville, Humana Festival in 2015. Her play A Map of Virtue, produced by 13P and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, won a special citation OBIE in 2012. She has written two operas with Elizabeth Swados, The Nomad and Kaspar Hauser : Both were commissioned and produced by The Flea Theater. Her play Honey Drop was developed at The Atlantic Theater, the Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab, and New Georges. Her other plays include Alice the Magnet, Demon Baby, Quiver and Twitch , and Black Cat Lost . She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a member of the Obie Award–winning playwright collective 13P, and the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space. Courtney teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College, where she earned her M.F.A. with Mac Wellman. She earned B.A. from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has been a member of New Dramatists since 2012 and is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
LaTasha Diggs
A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.
Myla Goldberg
Myla Goldberg is the best-selling author of Bee Season , Wickett’s Remedy , and The False Friend . Her short stories have appeared in Harper’s, and she is an occasional contributor to NPR. She teaches at various M.F.A. programs and leads writing workshops in and around New York City.
David Grubbs
David Grubbs, associate professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, has released 11 solo albums and appeared on more than 150 commercially released recordings. He is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers such as Susan Howe and Rick Moody, and with visual artists such as Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, Cosima von Bonin, and Stephen Prina. His work has been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Grubbs was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and directs the Blue Chopsticks record label. He is currently completing the book Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording for Duke University Press. Grubbs was a 2005–06 grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and has been called one of two “Best Teachers for an Indie-Rocker to Admire” in the Village Voice and “le plus Français des Américains” in Libération. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago.
Joshua Henkin
Joshua Henkin , professor and coordinator of the fiction specialization, is the author of the novels Swimming Across the Hudson , a Los Angeles Times Notable Book; Matrimony , a New York Times Notable Book; and The World Without You , which was named an Editors’ Choice Book by The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and was the winner of the 2012 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction and a finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award. His short stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories , and broadcast on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” His reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Boston Globe , the Chicago Tribune , the San Francisco Chronicle , and elsewhere.
Lisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot is the author of four books of poetry and a biography, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus (University of California Press). Her Joie de Vivre: Selected Poems 1992–2012 was published by City Lights in 2013.
Associate Professor Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), Angle of Yaw (2006), and Mean Free Path (2010), all published by Copper Canyon Press. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry and the Northern California Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and a Howard Foundation Fellow. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie for the German translation of The Lichtenberg Figures . His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House, 2011) won The Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction and the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker , The Guardian , The New Statesman , The Boston Globe , The Wall Street Journal , The New Republic , and New York Magazine , among many others. His recent criticism can be found in Art in America , boundary 2 , and Critical Quarterly , where he also serves as poetry editor.
Fiona Maazel
Fiona Maazel is the author of the novels Last Last Chance . (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) and Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf, 2013). She is a 2008 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and winner of the Bard Prize for fiction in 2009. Her work has appeared in Anthem, Bomb, Book Forum, Boston Book Review, The Common, Conjunctions, Fence, Glamour, The Millions, Mississippi Review, N+1, The New York Times, The NY Times Sunday Book Review, Salon, Selected Shorts, This American Life, Tin House, The Village Voice, The Yale Review , and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.
Ernesto Mestre
Ernesto Mestre is the author of two novels, The Lazarus Rhumba and The Second Death of Unica Aveyano . His fiction has been collected in various anthologies, including Best American Gay Fiction 1996 , A Whistler in the Nightworld: Short Fiction from the Latin Americas , and Cubanisimo!: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature .
Meera Nair’s debut collection, Video , received the Asian-American Literary Award for Fiction in 2003. She has published fiction in The Threepenny Review and Calyx , and in the anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead . She is at work on her first novel, which will be published by Pantheon.
Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez has published six novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God , The Last of Her Kind , and, most recently, Salvation City . She is also the author of Sempr e Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times , Threepenny Review, Harper’s , McSweeney’s , Tin House, The Believer , and Conjunctions. Her honors and awards include four Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. She has taught at Amherst College, Smith College, Columbia University, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Baruch College, Vassar College, Boston University, and the University of California at Irvine, among others. She has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and of several other writers’ conferences across the country.
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill’s novel, Last Things , was chosen as a notable or best book of the year by The New York Times , the Village Voice, and the Guardian (U.K.), and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Book Award. She is also the editor, along with Elissa Schappell, of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything . She has written one children’s book, 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore , and has two more forthcoming from Random House. She received a NYFA fellowship in fiction in 2008 and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 1991 to 1993. Her flash fiction is featured in the anthology Long Story Short (UNC-Press, 2009).
Julie Orringer
Julie Orringer is the author of a novel, The Invisible Bridge, and an award-winning story collection, How to Breathe Underwater, which was a New York Times notable book and was named Book of the Year by the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and The Washington Post, and have been widely anthologized; she has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, Stanford University, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is working on a new novel.
Helen Phillips
Helen Phillips is the author of the novel-in-fables And Yet They Were Happy (Leapfrog Press, 2011), which was a semifinalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, a finalist for the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize, and declared a notable collection of 2011 by The Story Prize. Her second book, Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green (Random House Children’s Division/Delacorte Press, 2012), is a children’s adventure novel, and has been published internationally as Upside Down in the Jungle (Chicken House UK, 2012; Chicken House Germany, 2013). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, The Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award, the Meridian Editors’ Prize, and a Ucross Foundation residency. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts in fall 2012. She has been published in Tin House, BOMB , Mississippi Review, and PEN America , among many others. A graduate of Yale and the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Brooklyn College. Named one of the Breakout Brooklyn Book People of 2011 by The L Magazine , Helen (born and raised in Colorado) now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Douglas Thompson, and their baby girl.
Madeleine Thien
Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, including Dogs at the Perimeter , and a story collection, Simple Recipes . Her most recent novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing , was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize; and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction. The novel was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2016 and longlisted for a Carnegie Medal. Madeleine’s books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times , The Guardian , Brick , The Sunday Times , frieze , Granta , and elsewhere. Her first libretto will premiere with Vancouver City Opera in 2021.
Mónica de la Torre
Mónica de la Torre ’s is the author, most recently, of Repetition Nineteen , a book of poems and prose (Nightboat, 2020). Her other poetry books include The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017) Public Domain (Roof Books, 2009) and Talk Shows (Switchback Books, 2006). Two Spanish-language collections of poems, Acúfenos (Taller Ditoria, 2006) and Sociedad Anónima (UNAM/Bonobos, 2010), were published in Mexico. She is a member of the women’s collective whose eponymous book, Taller de Mecanografía , appeared in 2011 from Tumbona Ediciones. She has translated an array of poets from the Spanish including Gerardo Deniz, Lila Zemborain, and Amanda Berenguer. Her latest translation is Defense of the Idol by Chilean modernist Omar Cáceres (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018). Born and raised in Mexico City, she has lived in New York City since the 1990s, where she frequently writes about art and collaborates with other writers and artists. She served as BOMB Magazine ’s senior editor from 2007–16, and has taught poetry and translation at Columbia, Brown, and Bard’s M.F.A. programs.
Ellen Tremper
Ellen Tremper , professor and chair of the English Department, received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Specializing in 19th- and 20th-century British poetry and fiction, she has published many articles on Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and children’s literature, and is the author of “Who Lived at Alfoxton?”: Virginia Woolf and English Romanticism (Bucknell University Press) and I’m No Angel: The Blonde in Film and Fiction , which was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2006.
Mac Wellman
Mac Wellman, professor and coordinator of the playwriting specialization, received his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin. His recent work includes The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (Montclair, 2006) and 1965 UU (Chocolate Factory, 2008). His most recent collection of plays is The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Four other collections of his plays have been published: The Bad Infinity and Cellophane (PAJ/Johns Hopkins University Press), and Two Plays and The Land Beyond the Forest (Sun & Moon). He has written a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds (Trip Street Press, 2008), as well as three novels: Q’s Q (Green Integer, 2006), Annie Salem (Sun & Moon 1996), and The Fortuneteller (Sun & Moon, 1991). His recent books of poetry are Miniature (Roof Books, 2002), Strange Elegies (Roof Books, 2006), and A Shelf in Woop’s Clothing (Sun & Moon, 1990). In 1997 he received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement ( Antigone, Jennie Richee and Bitter Bierce all cited). In 1990 he received an Obie (Best New American Play) for Bad Penny , Terminal Hip and Crowbar . In 1991 he received another Obie for Sincerity Forever . He has received numerous honors, including both NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 2004 he received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. He is the Donald I. Fine Professor of Playwriting at Brooklyn College. Currently, he is working on two plays for chorus: The Invention of Tragedy (Classic Stage Company) and Nine Days Falling (Stuck Pigs Company, Melbourne, Australia).
The Support You’ll Find
Brooklyn College is an integral part of the cultural and artistic energy of New York City. Our faculty members in English offer incomparable expertise and tremendous talent, and each brings a unique perspective to their teaching and mentoring in and out of the classroom.
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism. He was the “The ...
Sophia Bamert
Matthew Burgess
Matthew Burgess began teaching at Brooklyn College in 1999 while pursuing his M.F.A. in Poetry. H...
Monica De La Torre
Joseph Entin
Joseph Entin teaches in the English Department and the American Studies program at Brooklyn Colle...
Nicola Masciandaro
The Whim (blog) Current Projects: Appalling Melodrama, ...
Simanique Moody
Roni Natov has lived her entire life (almost) at Brooklyn College, where she was a student and ha...
Jonathan Nissenbaum
Jon Nissenbaum earned his Ph.D. under the supervision of Noam Chomsky and David Pesetsky. Before ...
Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including the novel THE NEED (Simon & Schuster, 20...
Tanya L. Pollard
Tanya Pollard trained in Classics, English, and Comparative literature, at Oxford and Yale. She t...
Karl T. Steel
Dorell Thomas
Dorell Thomas earned master’s degrees in both English Adolescent Literature, Grade 7-12 and...
Native New Yorker Ellen Tremper has taught at New York University and joined the Brooklyn College...
Internships and Employers
Brooklyn College creative writing alumni have found employment with many organizations, including:
- BRIC (Arts and Media in Brooklyn)
- Central Casting
- New York City Department of Education
- New York University
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- Classic Foundational Literature: Creative Nonfiction
Career Outlook
Our MFA writing online program in creative writing, poetry or creative nonfiction helps prepare graduates for opportunities within creative writing and other areas across writing communications. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual salary for a writer is $69,510. For those interested in pursuing a role as a technical writer, the pay is even more lucrative, with BLS reporting an annual salary of $78,060.
Admissions Requirements
For admission to your program, you will need to complete your online application and submit the following documents:
- Online Application
- For the MFA, this statement should describe why you would like to pursue the MFA degree and the role writing has played in your life
- If GPA is lower, please discuss options with your enrollment counselor
- NOTE: The MFA program admission is selective based on the program director’s approval of this submitted creative writing sample
Tuition Details
The cost per credit hour for this program is $561. Besides affordable tuition, we offer a generous transfer policy of up to 90 credits toward your degree completion to further offset tuition costs—to save you time and money on your education!
Frequently Asked Questions
We do not charge any fees in addition to tuition for any of our online graduate degree programs, including this online MFA writing program.
The online MFA creative writing, nonfiction writing or poetry writing program at Lindenwood allows you to transfer up to 9 credits. Learn more about our transfer policy.
Yes, there are scholarships available. Learn more about our scholarship policy by reaching out to an admissions advisor.
MFA Emphases Available
Explore creative writing alongside published authors with the online MFA Creative Nonfiction master’s program from Lindenwood University. The MFA creative nonfiction degree track examines the practice of writing as a creative art form—from many angles—from its history to its contemporary expression. This creative nonfiction MFA covers creative nonfiction expressed in a number of formats, including novels, short stories and essays, along with supportive topics in editing, publishing, literary analysis, and writing critiques. A master’s in creative nonfiction can help further develop your writing proficiency and style as a professional writer, or prepare you for more advanced studies in this field.
Hone your creative writing skills as you design your own curriculum across a range of courses – workshops, craft and literature classes – in the Fiction concentration of the online MFA in Writing program. The MFA in fiction writing can help you further develop your approach to composition, creative dissertation, narrative, imagery in your writing and more specialized writing tools such as metaphor. A fiction writing program can help you earn your fiction writing degree credential for career paths in areas such as communications, your MFA studies can help you commit more fully to a professional creative writing path.
Considering pursuing an online MFA poetry program? This is your chance to pursue your MFA poetry online. Enhance your poetry capabilities as you design your own curriculum and take advantage of workshops, craft classes, and literature classes in the online MFA Poetry Writing program from Lindenwood University. The MFA in Poetry online track offers an opportunity to advance your approach to your poetry writing practice, through an exploration of key areas such as structure, form, figurative language, rhyme, mood, tone and syntax. This master’s degree in poetry track prepares you to take your writing practice to the next level through publishing or continued study in this field.
Why Choose Lindenwood University Online?
Since 1832, Lindenwood University has served students worldwide with affordable, high-quality academic programs providing real experience and real success. After nearly 200 years of academic excellence, Lindenwood is committed to a set of core values, including integrity, dedication, excellence, creativity, and community.
We evolve our online degree programs to reflect the latest in academic research and innovation and to meet the top standards of higher education.
Affordability
We are committed to offering our students studying online low tuition rates on top of multiple ways to save on your education.
Career-Focused
Our programs align curriculum to industry realities from experienced instructors who share real-world insights.
We employ experts who are dedicated to helping our students with financial aid planning, enrollment counseling, tutoring services, and more.
We are committed to helping you succeed.
Throughout each step of your online degree program, you will receive support. From enrollment and tuition planning to staying on the right track, your support team is there to ensure your success.
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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, mfa programs in poetry.
Hey everyone! I'm a junior who loves writing poetry and I'm considering pursuing an MFA in poetry after college. Could someone give me some advice on finding colleges with strong MFA poetry programs? What should I look for in a program? Any resources or suggestions are much appreciated!
It's wonderful that you have a passion for poetry and are considering pursuing an MFA in poetry. Finding a program that matches your needs and interests is crucial for your experience and success in the program. Here are some factors to consider and resources to help find the best MFA poetry programs for you:
1. Program structure: Look for programs that offer a mix of workshops, lectures, and seminars. A good poetry program will focus on not only developing your writing skills but also exposing you to different styles and perspectives in the world of poetry.
2. Faculty: Research the faculty members teaching in the programs you're considering. Ideally, you would want to work with faculty who have published work you admire or who have a strong reputation in the field. Look for their books, awards, and experience to determine if they are strong mentors for you.
3. Program size and student-to-faculty ratio: Smaller programs with a low student-to-faculty ratio can provide more individual attention and mentoring opportunities. However, larger programs can offer a diverse student body and access to more events and resources.
4. Funding opportunities: MFA programs can be expensive, so it's essential to look for programs that offer financial support through fellowships, teaching assistantships, or scholarships. Some programs fund all admitted students, while others offer partial funding or require students to apply separately for financial aid.
5. Location and duration: The geographic location of the program and the length of time it takes to complete the degree can play a significant role in your experience. Some students may prefer a two-year program in a bustling city, while others might want a three-year program in a quieter, college town setting.
6. Alumni success: Check the success stories of the program's alumni. A strong program will have a track record of producing successful poets with published work, awards, and teaching positions.
As for resources, the Poets & Writers magazine's MFA Rankings is an excellent place to start your research. They rank MFA programs in various categories, including funding, selectivity, and job placement. Additionally, you can visit the websites of the individual programs to learn more about their offerings, faculty, and application processes.
Lastly, remember that finding the right MFA program is subjective and depends on your personal preferences and goals. Make sure to research, visit, and speak with current students or alumni of the programs you're considering to ensure you find the best fit for your poetic aspirations. Good luck!
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Creative Writing, MFA
On this page:, at a glance: program details.
- Location: Tempe campus
- Second Language Requirement: No
Program Description
Degree Awarded: MFA Creative Writing
The MFA in creative writing at ASU has always been an unswervingly student-first program. Through small classes, intimate workshops and one-to-one mentoring, the centuries-old apprenticeship model thrives within the New American University. Poets and fiction writers work with outstanding faculty who have published more than 80 books and garnered national and international attention through awards and honors that include:
- Guggenheim, Howard Foundation, Lannan Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and United Artists fellowships
- international Griffin Poetry Prize and Whiting Award
- multiple Pulitzer Prizes
- two medals of achievement from the National Society of Arts and Letters
- two Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets
- Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets
Additionally, in concert with the Master of Fine Arts program, several campus entities contribute to the MFA experience: the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing offers students a wide range of fellowships, support for professional development, and other teaching and leadership opportunities including a Community Outreach Graduate Assistantship. The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands brings writers and other artists for intensive workshops, classes and public events, and offers an artistic development and teaching assistant fellowship and two research assistantships. The Master of Fine Arts program also hosts a newly inaugurated series of craft lectures and an alumni reading series.
Furthermore, students have access to a variety of additional professional development opportunities, including serving on the editorial board of an international literary journal Hayden's Ferry Review, translation experience through the Thousand Languages Project and internships with award-winning independent literary press Four Way Books.
Sally Ball , Director of Creative Writing, Professor
Justin Petropoulos , Program Manager
Faculty in Creative Writing
The ASU MFA in Creative Writing is and has always been an unswervingly student-first program. Through small classes, intimate workshops, and one-to-one mentoring, the centuries-old apprenticeship model thrives within the New American University. Creative writing has been a part of the department of English since the 1930s. With the inception of the MFA degree in 1985, creative writing became an ascendant unit; the program was ranked within the top 20 MFA programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
ASU Creative Writing is distinguished by an outstanding faculty that has garnered national and international attention: Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, a Pulitzer Prize and several Pulitzer nominations, two Flannery O’Connor Awards, the Western States Book Award, PEN/Faulkner finalist recognition, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the International Griffin Poetry Prize, the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, and two Medals of Achievement from the National Society of Arts and Letters.
The program's alumni are equally impressive, having won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Pen Southwest Book Award, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award, and numerous Pushcart Prizes. They are the recipients of grants from the NEA and Fulbright and Stegner Fellowships.
Currently, all students admitted to the MFA program who submit a complete and approved teaching assistantship application are awarded a TA by the Department of English. Each assistantship carries a three course per year load and includes a tuition waiver and health insurance in addition to the TA stipend ($24,586 per year) . Graduate students with assistantships must enroll in a minimum of six credit hours each semester.
In addition, students have diverse opportunities for additional financial and professional support via The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, including:
- Graduate Assistantships in arts education and community programming (providing stipends and tuition remission)
- Creative Research Fellowships and other funding and scholarship opportunities
- Travel Funding to support tabling and presenting during the annual AWP Conference
- A robust visiting writer event series , with exclusive opportunities to learn from and engage with highly acclaimed authors
- Free admission to the annual Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference
- Opportunities to moderate author panels and read creative work during the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference and other events
- A professional development program series for creative writing students, with a focus on creative lives, careers, and opportunities during and after graduation
The program requirements include 48 hours of study evenly divided between writing courses and literature courses designed to inform that writing. While students are expected to satisfy these requirements in the genre in which they were accepted, the program encourages cross-genre study, and electives can include courses taken outside of the creative writing program, even outside the English department. Courses such as “Creative Writing and the Professions” and “Internship for Community Outreach” encourage students to envision life beyond graduation. The Creative Writing Program at ASU has been able consistently to offer MFA students among the best funding packages in the nation through teaching and research assistantships, which are renewable for each of the program's three years. Additionally, in concert with the CWP, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing offers a variety of graduate assistantships, international writing and teaching scholarships, and thesis fellowships to continuing students. Students who accept the TA offer are required to take the TA seminar, a pedagogy and training course designed to assist graduate students during their first year. TA seminar is credited as a literature elective. Successful TAs have the opportunity to teach introductory creative writing to undergraduates, under the supervision of one of the program faculty. In the second year students assemble their thesis committees and identify a committee chair. The second year is also when one-on-one mentorship begins. In the spring of the third year, students typically focus on completing the thesis manuscript with their committee chair.
Degree Requirements
48 credit hours including a written comprehensive exam and the required applied project course (ENG 593)
Coursework (39 credit hours)
Other Requirement (6 credit hours) ENG 592 Research (6)
Culminating Experience (3 credit hours) ENG 593 Applied Project (3)
Additional Curriculum Information The creative writing program requires 48 credit hours of study evenly divided between writing courses and literature courses designed to inform that writing.
While students are expected to satisfy these requirements in the genre in which they were accepted, the program encourages cross-genre study, and electives can include courses taken outside of the creative writing program or even outside of the English department.
A written comprehensive exam and an applied project are required.
Admission Requirements
Applicants must fulfill the requirements of both the Graduate College and The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Applicants are eligible to apply to the program if they have earned a bachelor's or master's degree from a regionally accredited institution. Applicants should have an undergraduate major in English or creative writing; however, exceptional students who do not have either of these undergraduate majors may be admitted on the basis of writing excellence.
Applicants must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 (scale is 4.00 = "A") in the last 60 hours of their first bachelor's degree program, or a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 (scale is 4.00 = "A") in an applicable master's degree program.
All applicants must submit:
- graduate admission application and application fee
- official transcripts
- statement of purpose
- resume or curriculum vitae
- three letters of recommendation
- creative manuscript
- proof of English proficiency
Additional Application Information An applicant whose native language is not English (regardless of current residency) and has not graduated from an institution of higher learning in the United States must provide proof of English proficiency . Applications will not be processed without valid proof of English proficiency. Please note that official scores must be sent to ASU in order for the application to be processed.
The personal statement should include the applicant's writing background, intended area of specialization and a brief self-evaluation of recent work (double-spaced, up to three pages or 750 words). The creative manuscript should be up to 20 pages of poetry or up to 30 pages of prose (prose should be double-spaced). Students applying for a teaching assistantship must submit a statement of teaching philosophy and an academic writing sample.
Courses and Electives
Mfa course requirements - fiction.
A 48-hour Program of Study
For additional information please contact Justin Petropoulos , Program Manager of Creative Writing
WRITING COURSES (24 hours)
Students are expected to satisfy the degree requirements in the genre in which they are accepted. Exceptions must be approved by the director of creative writing, the chair of the student’s supervisory committee, the dean of the Graduate College, and the instructor. Electives may be taken out of genre, with the permission of the instructor.
Required (15 hours)
- ENG 592 Research (Fiction) (6 hours)*
- ENG 593 Applied Project (Fiction) (3 hours)
- ENG 594 Conference and Workshop (Fiction) (3 hours)
- ENG 563 Forms of Fiction (3 hours)
*Research Hours are dedicated the development of a student's creative thesis with the support of their committee.
Electives (choose 9 hours)
- ENG 505 Writing Workshops (Special Topics)(3 hours)
- ENG 591 Seminar, Selected Topics* (3 hours)
- ENG 594 Conference and Workshop (Fiction) (3-6 hours)
- ENG 663 Fiction Genres* (3 hours)
- ENG 680 First Book Seminar (3 hours)
LITERATURE COURSES (24 hours)
Required (9 hours).
- ENG 538 Studies in Modern and Contemporary American Literature (3 hours)
- ENG 539 Studies in Modernist and Postmodern Literature and Theory (fiction topics, 3 hours)
- ENG 665 Creative Methods, Fiction (3 hours)
Electives (choose 15 hours)
Any 400, 500, or 600 level English course relevant to the student’s program of study, and up to six hours of credit in class work outside the department of English (for example, courses at the 400, 500, or 600 level in theater, music, dance, photography, fine printing and bookbinding, papermaking, or editing and publishing), subject to the approval of the director of creative writing, the chair of the student’s supervisory committee (if designated), and the dean of the Graduate College. Possible English courses include:
- ENG 537 Studies in Modern and Contemporary British Literature (3 hours)
- ENG 543 Studies in Anglophone Literatures (3 hours)
- ENG 545 Studies in Women’s Literature (3 hours)
- ENG 550 Translation (3 hours)
- ENG 584 Internship* (3-6 hours)
- ENG 591 Seminar (Selected Topics, 3 hours)
- ENG 593 Pedagogy (3 hours)
- ENG 594 Conference and Workshop (TA Seminar) (4 hours)
- ENG 598 Special Topics* (3 hours)
- ENG 667 Writing for the Professions (3 hours)
*May be repeated for credit if topics are distinct.
MFA COURSE REQUIREMENTS - POETRY
For information about the program please contact Justin Petropoulos , Program Manager of Creative Writing
- ENG 592 Research Hours (6hours)*
- ENG 593 Applied Project (3 hours)
- ENG 594 Graduate Poetry Workshop (3 hours)
- ENG 562 Forms of Poetry (3 hours)
*Research Hours are dedicated the development of a student's creative thesis with the support of their committee.
- ENG 505 Writing Workshop (3 hours)
- ENG 594 Conference and Workshop (Poetry) (3-6 hours)
- ENG 662 Poetic Genres* (3 hours)
- ENG 539 Studies in Modernist and Postmodern Literature and Theory (poetry topics, 3 hours)
- ENG 665 Creative Methods, Poetry (3 hours)
Any 400, 500, or 600 level English course relevant to the student’s program of study, and up to six hours of credit in class work outside the department of English (for example, courses at the 400, 500, or 600 level in theater, music, dance, photography, fine printing and bookbinding, papermaking, or editing and publishing), subject to the approval of the director of creative writing, the chair of the student’s supervisory committee (if designated), and the dean of the Graduate College. Possible English courses might include:
Next Steps to attend ASU
Learn about our programs, apply to a program, visit our campus, application deadlines, learning outcomes.
- Analyze and critique the writing of other creative writers.
- Explicate their creative works articulately.
- Create original fiction or poetry that incorporates theoretical and foundational literary knowledge.
Career Opportunities
A Master of Fine Arts in creative writing graduate is prepared primarily for the professional creation of new art, including fiction, poetry and other written forms. In addition to working as novelists, poets and short story writers, graduates go on to careers in education, arts administration, media and entertainment, and in political and community organizations. Career examples include:
- book designer or marketer
- book or magazine editor
- creative writing professor
- essayist or journalist
- grant writer and developer
- literary or events coordinator
- nonprofit administrator
- public relations and communications manager
- screenwriter
- secondary education teacher
Global Opportunities
Global experience.
With over 250 programs in more than 65 countries (ranging from one week to one year), study abroad is possible for all ASU students wishing to gain global skills and knowledge in preparation for a 21st-century career. Students earn ASU credit for completed courses, while staying on track for graduation, and may apply financial aid and scholarships toward program costs. https://mystudyabroad.asu.edu
Program Contact Information
If you have questions related to admission, please click here to request information and an admission specialist will reach out to you directly. For questions regarding faculty or courses, please use the contact information below.
- [email protected]
- 480/727-9130
Department of English
College of humanities and sciences, mfa in creative writing.
Our selective and academically rigorous 48-credit, three-year program is designed to provide talented writers with the opportunity to work closely with both outstanding faculty and gifted peers.
Students will strengthen their craft, develop their literary aesthetics, enrich their understanding of existing traditions and compositional possibilities, and participate actively in the life of the literary community at large.
The primary tracks are poetry and fiction, and admission is highly competitive. In addition to the poetry and fiction workshops, there are courses available that focus on writing drama, nonfiction, and screenplays, as well as courses that provide practical experience in editing.
The basic requirements to complete the MFA degree program are simple and straightforward, and include 12 semester hours of writing workshops, 12 hours graduate literature courses, and six to 12 hours of thesis work. Thesis hours enable students to produce a substantial creative writing thesis, a requirement of graduation.
Concentrations
In addition to completing a thesis, fiction students will learn effective approaches for creating sustained works of fiction distinguished by a nuanced use of appropriate narrative elements, techniques and conventions and will demonstrate a highly developed proficiency in understanding and creating story structures.
Degree Details
Learning Outcomes
How to Apply
Students in the poetry concentration will gain skillful use or knowledge of major poetic devices and classic poetic forms in addition to completing a thesis.
We have expanded creative nonfiction/CNF work and created the new dual genre concentration to allow our MFA students to formally add CNF to their academic concentrations.
Program Highlights
Increased financial support.
Graduate assistantship stipends have greatly increased, and now range from $14,000 up to $22,000 a year (plus tuition waiver). All current full-time MFA students are funded.
Teaching Opportunities
Assistantships not only offer teaching opportunities in writing and rhetoric coursework, but also undergraduate creative writing classes as well.
Travel Funding
We have newly established travel stipends for MFA students for summer writing conferences and study abroad travel, as well as yearly travel funding and registration waivers for students attending the annual AWP conference.
Assistantship Options
Assistantship assignments also include the opportunity to coordinate VCU’s national literary awards , including the Cabell First Novelist, Levis Reading Prize, and Tarumoto Prize in short fiction.
Dual Genre Concentration
Independent study and internships.
We offer three-year course requirements that enable MFA students to design up to six credits of independent study and six credits of professional internships, including opportunities to work in electronic publishing (editorial, web design, digital sound editing, and more) via the program’s nationally prominent online literary journal, Blackbird .
Small Workshops
We boast an excellent 4 to 1 student to faculty ratio. Our program has nine full-time MFA faculty and approximately 30 graduate students.
Coursework Options
We have additional and regular offerings in screenwriting, form and theory coursework , and literary editing/publishing seminars.
Active Authors
Every one of our full-time faculty members has a recent or forthcoming book publication .
Faculty Specialties
We have recent faculty hires in both fiction and creative nonfiction.
A polished, book-length creative thesis is the capstone project of the MFA curriculum. Assessment of learning outcomes are conducted through a comprehensive review of each student’s thesis by the student’s thesis director and second reader (always a member of the MFA faculty ). In addition, to determine each student’s comprehension of the literary antecedents and cultural contexts of their work, and to evaluate the written and oral articulation of personal aesthetics, an exit interview (or in some cases, a traditional “thesis defense”) will be conducted by members of the MFA faculty.
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MFA in Creative Writing
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The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing is a two-year full residency program with an emphasis on providing studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Our students develop their particular talents through small classes in writing, literature, and publishing. As part of a community of writers, students read and comment on each other’s work under the guidance of distinguished faculty, who also meet with students in one-on-one tutorials.
Join Our Community of Writers
- Full funding
- 2-year residency program
- Cohorts of 10-12 writers
- Assistantships & internships in teaching and editing
- One-on-one faculty tutorials
- Workshops & seminars in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, literary editing, and publishing
Recent MFA News
Jennine capó crucet fiction reading, michael parker: the last lecture, the history the uncg mfa program.
The MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is one of the oldest such programs in the country. During the early years, the University had among its faculty noted writers such as Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, John Crowe Ransom, Hiram Haydn, Peter Taylor, and Randall Jarrell. They invited other distinguished authors to campus to meet with students and read from their work; these writers included Saul Bellow, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, and Eudora Welty.
In 1965, under the leadership of Robert Watson, creative writing offerings were formalized. Since that time, the faculty has intentionally kept the program small, enabling students to work one-on-one with faculty in a community of writers.
Department of English UNC Greensboro
Physical Address: 3143 Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building Greensboro, NC 27412
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 26170 Greensboro, NC 27402
Phone: 336-334-5311 Fax: 336-334-3281 Email: [email protected]
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- Learn more about English and Creative Writing
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Get In Touch
A graduate admissions representative is ready to answer your questions about this program. Email David Marts today.
Poetry (MFA)
Time to degree: two years (34 credits) part-time options are available.
In the Master of Fine Arts in Poetry program at Columbia College Chicago, you’ll see and be seen: You’ll meet visiting, critically acclaimed poets and learn from top-notch faculty members who will work with you one-on-one as you hone your writing skills and take risks in an open-minded environment. Along the way, you’ll find your own aesthetic and build a community of writers who will help you succeed.
Quick Links
See application requirements | View required courses | View program costs (PDF)
In the Classroom
In your first of two years at Columbia, you’ll take workshops as part of your initial graduate school experience, and you’ll dive into craft seminars and literature courses to study poetry as well as fiction and creative nonfiction. If you intend to be a graduate student instructor, you’ll take composition theory and learn how to teach. If you plan to work on Columbia Poetry Review —the student-edited, nationally distributed literary journal—you’ll start immediately. As you finish your MFA program, you’ll take a thesis development seminar to learn how to compile and promote your writing as you work one-on-one with a faculty member to shape your thesis into a substantial manuscript. You’ll also continue to take craft seminars that challenge you to explore your unique voice. In a final poetics class, you’ll look at how other poets have shaped the genre—and where you’ll fit into that shape versus where you’ll push the boundaries.
You’ll have several opportunities outside your graduate classes to grow:
- Create reading series, journals, or presses of your own.
- Teach as a graduate student instructor or teaching assistant.
- Participate in the student-run 33 Reading Series, which features readings by MFA students in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.
Associate Professor CM Burroughs
Poetry faculty members at Columbia College Chicago know that shaping language into poetry requires rigorous discipline. They help you master the highly challenging genre of poetry, introducing you to new styles, because they’re not committed to just one aesthetic—they’re committed to good work.
Our faculty includes award-winning, experimental poets:
- Jenny Boully
- CM Burroughs
- Lisa Fishman
- Tony Trigilio
- David Trinidad
See all English and Creative Writing Faculty
Opportunities for Graduate Students
Columbia College Chicago offers several opportunities for graduate students, including scholarships, assistantships, and instructing opportunities.
See More Information
Columbia College Chicago’s Poetry MFA alumni write their own stories of success. Many of our alumni publish their own books, move on to teaching positions at prominent institutions, or go on to get PhDs. Others put their writing skills to work for major corporations and industries around the country.
Here are just a few of our alumni who have created names for themselves in the writing world:
Kelly Forsythe MFA ’11
Poet Kelly Forsythe finds inspiration in historical events.
Hafizah Geter MFA ’10
Hafizah Geter found her voice through contemporary poetry. Now, her life centers around it.
Chicago: A Literary City
Living and studying in Chicago means you’ll have opportunities to participate in the literary community here. The city has one of the country’s best live literary scenes, with a diverse range of styles and genres and a welcoming environment for new writers.
You can take advantage of the resources of poetry institutions you won’t find anywhere else, from the Poetry Foundation (headquartered in Chicago) to smaller literary publications.
Creative Writing Reading Series
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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.
Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.
Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.
Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.
Every week a new publishing professional shares advice, anecdotes, insights, and new ways of thinking about writing and the business of books.
Stay informed with reports from the world of writing contests, including news of extended deadlines, recent winners of notable awards, new contest announcements, interviews with winners, and more.
Find publishers ready to read your work now with our Open Reading Periods page, a continually updated resource listing all the literary magazines and small presses currently open for submissions.
Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.
Our series of subject-based handbooks (PDF format; $4.99 each) provide information and advice from authors, literary agents, editors, and publishers. Now available: The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion, The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal, The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents, The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs, and The Poets & Writers Guide to Writing Contests.
Find a home for your work by consulting our searchable databases of writing contests, literary magazines, small presses, literary agents, and more.
Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.
Get the Word Out is a new publicity incubator for debut fiction writers and poets.
Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.
Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.
Let the world know about your work by posting your events on our literary events calendar, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.
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Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.
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The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs
Thinking of getting your mfa.
Poets & Writers is here to help.
This essential handbook, revised and updated for 2023 , provides everything you need to know about the MFA, with topics including:
- Points to consider before you apply.
- How to decide which MFA program is right for you.
- How to deal with MFA rejections.
- Application advice from a former program director.
- Six recent graduates on the realities of attending a writing program.
- Information about MFA programs that create safe, nurturing spaces for diverse communities.
- Tips for getting the most out of an MFA program.
- Advice for entering a graduate program later in life.
- How to remain productive after the MFA.
A collection of articles edited by the staff of Poets & Writers Magazine , this handy resource includes straightforward advice from writers, teachers, and professionals in the literary field, additional resources to help you choose the program that’s right for you, and much more.
Featuring articles by authors:
- Dawn Denham
- Camille T. Dungy
- Miciah Bay Gault
- Yona Harvey
- Dana Isokawa
- Naomi Jackson
- Susan Jackson Rodgers
- Luis Jaramillo
- Jessica Kashiwabara
- Shannon Reed
- Kali White VanBaale
This file is in PDF format and requires Adobe Reader , available free from Adobe Systems, or other software capable of reading PDF files.
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- MFA in Creative Writing
The MFA in Creative Writing challenges students to write in a variety of genres and to study literature from the point of view of a working writer. Recent graduates have become not only published authors of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, and screenplays, but also journalists, editors, publishers, and college-level and secondary-level teachers. The degree program culminates in the submission and oral defense of a creative thesis in poetry or fiction. Students may develop custom programs in non-fiction and scriptwriting with available faculty with secondary interests in those genres. The MFA in Creative Writing is designed as a three-year degree program that values literary study, innovation and writing that tests the limits of conventional forms.
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Admission Requirements
- Complete and up-to-date admission requirements can be found on our A dmissions page.
- Check how to complete and submit an online application . Please do not send application materials to the English Department.
Teaching assistantships (TAs), Graduate Part-time Instructorships, various graduate level awards are available to MFA students on a competitive basis. The department funds about 70% of accepted MFA applicants each year. Students applying for admission to the program do not need to apply separately for teaching assistantships.
MFA students who are TAs and GPTIs teach creative writing courses only (not composition or literature). If offered a teaching appointment upon admission, you can expect:
- During the first academic year, a Teaching Assistant (TA) is paid a monthly stipend set by the Graduate School. Based on the 2020-2021 rates, first-year TAs are paid approximately $5,695.36 with a tuition credit waiver of five (5) in-state or out-of-state tuition credits each semester. As a first-year TA, you will be responsible for leading one (1) section of ENGL 1191 Introduction to Creative Writing in the fall semester and one (1) section of ENGL 1191 Introduction to Creative Writing in the spring semester.
- After your first year of satisfactory teaching and academic performance, you will be promoted from a TA to Graduate Part-time Instructor (GPTI). Contingent upon course enrollment and availability, your funding offer will increase to three (3) sections of Creative Writing during your Second-Year Teaching Graduate Part-time Instructorship (GPTI) and Third-Year Graduate Part-time Instructorship (GPTI). Based on the current 2020-2021 rates, the compensation for one semester at one (1) course assignment at the GPTI-rate is approximately $6,582.60 with a tuition credit wavier of five (5) in-state credit hours. The compensation for a second semester of two (2) course assignments at the GPTI rate is estimated to be approximately $13,165.19 with a tuition credit waiver of 9-18 hours of in-state tuition credits.
- MFA TAs and GPTIs also receive a 90% contribution towards the cost of the CU Boulder Student Gold Health Insurance premium each semester as part of their compensation.
Tuition Remission for Teaching Assistantships:
Students with teaching assistantships are responsible for paying the cost of tuition for any credit hours taken in excess of what their waiver covers each semester. For example, if the TA compensation includes a waiver for 5 credit hours, and you enroll in 6 credit hours, you will be responsible for paying the difference in tuition cost between 5 and 6 credits. Non-resident students will be charged out-of-state tuition rates. Resident students will be charged in-state tuition rates. Tuition waivers may not be carried over between terms, and must be used in the same semester as the qualifying appointment
In addition to teaching assistantships, there are a limited number of paid positions available, such as reading series organizer, lead GPTI and hourly office assistants. Other resources for financial support include:
- The Office of Student Employment
- CU Graduate School Fellowships and Grants
- National Fellowships
- The Office of Financial Aid
- Tuition and fees estimator : Out-of-state students who receive teaching assistantships must pay the non-resident tuition rate for or any credits not covered by their tuition waiver.
Students must take 45 hours of coursework (15 courses). At least 39 hours must be taken at CU Boulder. With approval from the Associate Chair for Creative Writing, up to 6 hours of coursework may be taken in departments other than English. A requirement may be waived if a student has taken an equivalent graduate course at another institution; waivers must be approved by the Associate Chair for Creative Writing. Coursework must be taken in the following areas:
- 4 courses (12 credits) of writing workshops (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, publishing) (The publishing workshop may be taken two times for credit.)
- 4 courses (12 credits) in literature (Literature courses may be taken in other graduate departments with the approval of the Associate Chair for Creative Writing.)
- 2 courses (6 credits) in two of the following: Studies in Poetry; Studies in Fiction; Studies in Literary Movements
- 2 courses (6 credits) of electives. This may include courses from other departments with the approval of the Associate Chair for Creative Writing.
- 9 credits of thesis writing. Thesis hours may not be taken in the first year.
MFA students have four years from the semester in which they begin coursework to complete all degree requirements. To continue past four years, you must file a petition for an extension of the time limit with the Dean of the Graduate School. Such petitions must first be submitted for endorsement to the English Department Associate Chair for Creative Writing. Extensions may be granted for up to one year.
All MFA-Creative Writing students must complete a thesis as part of the degree requirements. The thesis should be a book of poetry, short stories, literary/creative non-fiction, or a substantial portion of a novel, play, or screenplay. It may also be a combination of these genres. The thesis should be at least 70 pages in length, though most students write between 70-100 pages. The bulk of work used in a thesis should have been written while a student is enrolled in the MFA-Creative Writing program, and it should be in a form acceptable to the committee. The thesis must include an abstract (1 to 3 pages) that states the writer’s aims and explains how the thesis reflects those aims. See the APPENDIX in the Graduate Student Handbook for the MFA-CRWR Thesis Action Item Checklist which includes deadlines and a suggested schedule.
MFA-Creative Writing students take a total of nine thesis hours in one or more semesters. The student should select a committee of three faculty (the advisor, who is a Creative Writing faculty member; one other Creative Writing faculty member; and a faculty member in literary studies) during the semester prior to that in which she or he will defend the thesis. A rough draft of the thesis should be made available to the advisor prior to the thesis defense so that problems may be discussed at an early enough date to enable the student to work on them. The advisor will work with the student, advising on length of manuscript, suggestions for improvement, and general compilation. The advisor and the student will also agree on a reading list about which the student may be questioned at the defense.
A thesis defense must take place before the semester’s deadline for completing defenses (see the Graduate School’s website for a list of semester deadlines ). You must give your completed thesis to your entire committee and file a Master’s Examination Report at least two weeks in advance of your defense. Consult the Graduate Program Assistant for Assistance with the process. Please see the Graduate Student Handbook for additional defense requirements.
Thesis Submission & Format for MFA Degrees
The final draft of the MFA thesis must be submitted to the Graduate School by the applicable deadline and must comply with the Graduate School’s specifications for theses and dissertations. See information for the Master Graduation Requirements (thesis option). It is required that you include all parts of the stipulated thesis (title page, signature page, abstract, table of contents, bibliography, etc.). It is also suggested that students ask the Graduate School to pre-check the format of the thesis before submitting the final copy. To do so, email a copy of your thesis to [email protected] .
Students earning the MFA in Creative Writing must complete a foreign language requirement, either before or after enrolling at CU Boulder, prior to the semester in which they intend to graduate. The requirement may be fulfilled in one of the following ways:
- Complete a fourth-semester (second-semester sophomore) college language course with a grade of C or better. This means completing a course that is the second semester of a sophomore-level foreign language. If you have completed or will complete this coursework at another institution, the Graduate Program Assistant will need a record of it your file if it is not part of your original application. Completion of only freshman-level language courses does not qualify as evidence of competence.
- Complete two semesters of Old English (ENGL 5003, ENGL 5013, ENGL 5023).
- Demonstrate proficiency in one foreign language by taking the appropriate language proficiency exam administered at least once each semester by the English department. For uncommon languages, students may be asked to make independent arrangements for their exam. The language exam consists of translating a text written in a foreign language into written English, utilizing English language sentence structure. The text is on the reading and comprehensive level of a fourth-semester student of the chosen language. Students are given two hours to complete the translation and the exam is open-book, open computer.
- Present other evidence of competence in a foreign language to the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies. In most cases, this other evidence consists of native or near-native command of a language.
For additional information about satisfying the language requirement, see the English Department Graduate Program Handbook .
For additional information about the language exam, see the FAQ for the Language Proficiency Exam .
The semester in which you plan to graduate, the Candidacy Application for an Advanced Degree must be submitted by the stipulated deadline, which is generally in the third or fourth week of classes. The Candidacy Application confirms that all degree requirements will have been completed by the end of the semester, and it be approved by the Associate Chair for Creative Writing. Please consult the Graduate Program Assistant for assistance with this process.
All students planning to graduate must apply online to graduate . This step must be completed by the published graduation deadline for each semester, regardless of whether or not you plan to attend the commencement ceremony. To do this, log in to your Buff Portal account. On the apply for graduation card, select the “Apply for Graduation."
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A pocket-sized writing program
- This $3297 program is for the working writer who wants the results of an MFA program but cannot yet find the means or the time–at 12 weeks, with every meeting and interaction either through Zoom, inside our PocketMFA Online, or over email, PocketMFA seeks to be accessible by nearly anyone while maintaining the rigor of graduate-level learning.
- Designed from the ground up to build relationships between writers, our mentor-led writing groups offer space to find the literary community that you’ll carry with you into your writing career.
- Every cohort is full of students who commit ten hours a week to their learning. No one can leave the PocketMFA without becoming a better, more productive writer.
- Not just a generative program, every writer will work 1- on-1 with an instructor to follow-through with their writing and to refine and move forward their current writing project, whatever that may be.
- Whether you finished up your graduate degree years ago, or are thinking of one for the future, the PocketMFA will give you the opportunity to embrace the community, mentorship, and education that defines a great creative writing workshop, without the disruption to your life an MFA may entail.
Accessible & Affordable
The program is completely virtual, and every Zoom session is worked in consideration of each writer’s schedule. We also frequently employ payment plans with writers to make tuition more accessible.
Lasting Community
Create deep bonds with a curated cohort of your peers as you learn, write, and workshop together.
Acclaimed Faculty
Every track is led and designed by some of the very best writers and instructors working today.
UMass Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers to Host Juniper Literary Festival 2024: The Writer in Community, Honoring the MFA’s 60th Anniversary
The UMass Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers has announced the Juniper Literary Festival 2024 , Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, on the UMass Amherst campus. This year’s festival is part of the yearlong celebration of the MFA’s 60 th anniversary. The celebration honors the program’s dynamic alumni and the theme of the writer in community.
All events are free and open to the public.
“We are excited to invite our wider community to celebrate with us for this sixtieth anniversary,” says MFA Program Director Edie Meidav. “Our institution thrives on such strong tradition and innovation, and this program is poised at a great moment—deep exploration in our past and future, while our community plays an important role. This special jubilee year offers so many bridging events, and we hope all the vital cultural conversation happening in our halls will connect with a community we deeply appreciate.”
The Juniper Festival is produced by the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action. The festival is also supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the UMass Chancellor’s Office, UMass English Department, UMass Arts Council, Emily Dickinson Museum and UMass Art Department.
For more information and scheduling details, visit https://www.umass.edu/english/events/juniper-literary-festival-2024 or contact Ryan Mihaly at [email protected] .
Full Schedule
The Writer’s Life Susan Straight and Edie Meidav Friday, April 5 - 2:30 p.m. Herter Hall, Room 231
Susan Straight’s recent novel “Mecca” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022) was a national bestseller, a finalist for The Kirkus Prize, and named a best novel of the year by The Washington Post and NPR, as well as a Top Ten California Book by the New York Times, and winner of the Southwest Book of the Year for Fiction. Her memoir, “In the Country of Women,” was named a best book of the year by NPR and Real Simple. Straight is the recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Harper’s, and elsewhere. In 2021, she was named Woman of the Year for the 61 st Assembly District, by Assemblyman Jose Medina, for her thirty years of writing stories of African-American, Mexican-American, Asian-American and immigrant life in southern California, bringing little-known histories, especially of women, into American books, museums, magazines and libraries. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where she has taught since 1988.
Publishing in Today’s Market Anjali Singh Friday, April 5 - 3:30 p.m. Herter Hall, 231
Agent/editor Anjali Singh started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout. Best known for championing “Persepolis,” the breakaway graphic memoir about the Iranian revolution and exile by Marjane Satrapi, Singh is the former editorial director at Other Press, and has also worked as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, and Vintage Books. Drawn to the thrill of discovering new writers, she has helped launch the careers of leading literary novelists including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Saleem Haddad, Samantha Hunt, and Preeta Samarasan. In her work as an agent, she represents: Susan Abulhawa, bestselling author of “Mornings in Jenin” and “Against the Loveless World;” Nawaaz Ahmed, author of the PEN-Faulkner finalist “Radiant Fugitives;” Mai Al-Nakib, author of “An Unlasting Home;” Bridgett Davis, author of the acclaimed memoir “The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers;” and Rachel Harper, author of “The Other Mother.” Her graphic novel list includes Rhea Ewing’s “Fine: A Comic About Gender,” Gillian Goerz’s two “Shirley and Jamila” books, Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martinez’ “Wake: The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts,” and Deena Mohamed’s “Shubeik Lubeik” as well as new and forthcoming works by Gillian Goerz, Fouad Mezherm Tessa Hullsm Steenz, and Salman Toor.
MFA Visiting Faculty Reading Hannah Brooks-Motl and Bianca Stone Friday, April 5 - 6 p.m. Herter Hall, 231
Hannah Brooks-Motl ’13MFA is the author of the poetry collections “The New Years,” “M”, and “Earth.” Her poetry, essays, and criticism have appeared in the Best American Experimental Writing, the Cambridge Literary Review, the Chicago Review, Modernism/modernity, and in edited collections from Cambridge University Press and Wesleyan University Press. With Stephanie Burt, she helped edit “Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden.”
Bianca Stone is the author of the poetry collections “What is Otherwise Infinite” (Tin House, 2022), which won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Poetry; “The Möbius Strip Club of Grief” (Tin House, 2018), “Someone Else’s Wedding Vows” (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of “Antigonick” (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and poetic study at the Ruth Stone House where she is editor-at-large for ITERANT magazine and host of Ode & Psyche Podcast.
LiveLit Friday, April 5 - 8 p.m. Herter Hall, 231
LiveLit is a vibrant monthly reading series organized by students in the English Department’s MFA for Poets and Writers. The community is invited to join each reading, which feature the talents of a graduate prose writer and poet.
Writer & Editor Chat Sarah Ghazal Ali and Carey Salerno of Alice James Books Saturday, April 6 - 3:30 p.m. Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall
Sarah Ghazal Ali ’21MFA is the author of “Theophanies” (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A 2022 Djanikian Scholar and winner of The Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, her poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, The Yale Review, Poem-a-Day, Guernica, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A Stadler Fellow, Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch. She has received fellowships and residencies from Tin House, the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, the Hambidge Center, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers and others. She holds an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst, where she was a Juniper and MFA Fellow, and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Carey Salerno serves as the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books where she has been dedicated to broadening the spectrum of the American poetic voice since 2008. She is the author of “Tributary” and “Shelter,” and a co-editor of “Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry” from Alice James Books. She serves as co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and teaches publishing arts and poetry writing for the University of Maine at Farmington.
MFA Alumni Reading Sarah Ghazal Ali ’21MFA, Eric Baus ’05MFA, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu ’23MFA, and Susan Straight ’84MFA Saturday, April 6 - 6 p.m. Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall
Eric Baus ’05MFA is the author of five books of poetry: “How I Became a Hum” (Octopus Books, 2020), “The Tranquilized Tongue” (City Lights 2014), “Scared Text” (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry, “Tuned Droves” (Octopus Books, 2009) and “The To Sound” (Wave Books, 2004), winner of the Verse Prize. He is also the author of several chapbooks, most recently “The Rain Of The Ice” (Above/Ground Press 2014) and “Euphorbia” (Above/Ground Press 2019). His poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Finnish.
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu ’23MFA is a Zimbabwean sarungano (storyteller). Her debut short story collection “Drinking from Graveyard Wells” (University Press of Kentucky, 2023) was selected for the 2021 UPK New Poetry & Prose Series. She has taught at Clarion West Writers Workshop online and earned her B.A. at Cornell University. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Tin House Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She received the 2017 Cornell University George Harmon Coxe Award for Poetry selected by Sally Wen Mao, and was the 2020 fiction winner of Columbia Journal’s Womxn History Month Special Issue and the 2021 Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest-winner selected by K-Ming Chang. She is the co-founder of the Voodoonauts Summer Workshop for Black SFF writers. Her work has been anthologized in African Risen (Tordotcom Publishing, 2022) and has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, Tor.com, FANTASY Magazine, Columbia Journal, Fiyah Literary Magazine, Mermaids Monthly and Kweli Journal.
Susan Straight’s recent novel “Mecca” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022) was a national bestseller, a finalist for The Kirkus Prize, and named a best novel of the year by The Washington Post and NPR, as well as a Top Ten California Book by the New York Times, and winner of the Southwest Book of the Year for Fiction. Her memoir, “In the Country of Women,” was named a best book of the year by NPR and Real Simple. Straight is the recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Harper’s, and elsewhere. In 2021, she was named Woman of the Year for the 61st Assembly District, by Assemblyman Jose Medina, for her thirty years of writing stories of African-American, Mexican-American, Asian-American and immigrant life in southern California, bringing little-known histories, especially of women, into American books, museums, magazines and libraries. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where she has taught since 1988.
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Careers in Prose and Poetry. Northwestern University's MFA in Prose and Poetry is an arts degree. Students pursue the degrees in order to become better writers, able to create prose and poetry that draw on a full range of the craft. On a more practical level, MFA students become better writers, which prepares them for a variety of careers.
The Poetry concentration at Columbia is one of the strongest and most rigorous in the country. The program's focus is, always, on students' creative work, but we also emphasize an in-depth study of poetry and poetics unlike any other curriculum offered elsewhere. In a given semester, poetry students participate in a hands-on, intense, and ...
The Creative Writing Program offers the MFA degree, with a concentration in either poetry or fiction. MFA students pursue intensive study with distinguished faculty committed to creative and intellectual achievement. Each year the department enrolls only eight MFA students, four in each concentration. Our small size allows us to offer a ...
Our list of 259 MFA programs for creative writers includes essential information about low-residency and full-residency graduate creative writing programs in the United States and other English-speaking countries to help you decide where to apply. It also includes MA programs and PhD programs.
An MFA degree program can offer you classes in craft and technique, workshops, seminars, feedback on your writing, exposure to other writers' work, and opportunities to meet peers and established writers. In addition to providing a way for writers to make contacts with agents, editors, and publishers, MFA degree programs often offer prestige ...
This individualized course of study and thorough engagement with faculty, occurring within the context of one's ongoing adult life, make the Program useful to writers at all stages of their development. The Master of Fine Arts degree at Warren Wilson represents the study of literature from within the writer's perspective.
Often called the field's terminal degree, a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing has become an increasingly popular option for poets, especially for those wanting to enter academia. The number of MFA programs has tripled since the '90s, and The New York Times reported that an estimated 4,000 people graduated with this degree in 2015.
Accolades. Recent award-winning publications by our MFA alumni:. Valzhyna Mort won the 2021 International Griffin Prize for her third poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), which was named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by The New York Times. Field Study by Chet'la Sebree won the 2020 Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award; Mistress won the 2018 New ...
The Columbia MFA is a two-year program requiring 60 credits of coursework to complete the degree and can take up to three years to complete the thesis. Students concentrate in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, and also have the option of pursuing a joint course of study in writing and literary translation.
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a two year program offering a degree in either Poetry or Prose, and is a part of the English Department's Creative Writing Program. Founded in 1947 by Theodore Roethke, the Creative Writing Program's tradition of transformative workshops continues with our current faculty: David Bosworth, David ...
MFA Programs in Writing. The Programs in the writing of poetry and fiction lead to the Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree in English. In addition to the workshops and seminars taught within the Writing Programs by its faculty, instruction is offered by visiting writers. The curriculum is augmented by frequent readings on the Irvine campus.
Program Overview. This small, highly personal two-year program confers Master of Fine Arts degrees in fiction, playwriting, and poetry. It offers single-discipline and inter-genre workshops, literature seminars, small-group reading tutorials, and one-on-one tutorials, all of which emphasize relationships between students and eminent faculty.
Because the Poetry concentration offers both an MFA and an M.A., you'll be able to choose a degree that best meets your personal and career goals, setting you up for professional success after graduation. To read about the MFA requirements, click here and to read about the M.A. program requirements click here.
Career Outlook. Our MFA writing online program in creative writing, poetry or creative nonfiction helps prepare graduates for opportunities within creative writing and other areas across writing communications. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual salary for a writer is $69,510. For those interested in pursuing a ...
It's wonderful that you have a passion for poetry and are considering pursuing an MFA in poetry. Finding a program that matches your needs and interests is crucial for your experience and success in the program. Here are some factors to consider and resources to help find the best MFA poetry programs for you: 1. Program structure: Look for programs that offer a mix of workshops, lectures, and ...
With the inception of the MFA degree in 1985, creative writing became an ascendant unit; the program was ranked within the top 20 MFA programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. ... MFA COURSE REQUIREMENTS - POETRY. A 48-hour Program of Study. For information about the program please contact Justin Petropoulos, Program Manager of ...
In addition to the poetry and fiction workshops, there are courses available that focus on writing drama, nonfiction, and screenplays, as well as courses that provide practical experience in editing. The basic requirements to complete the MFA degree program are simple and straightforward, and include 12 semester hours of writing workshops, 12 ...
MFA in Creative Writing. The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing is a two-year full residency program with an emphasis on providing studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Our students develop their particular talents through small classes in writing, literature, and publishing. As part of a community of writers, students read and ...
Time to degree: Two years (34 credits)Part-time options are available. In the Master of Fine Arts in Poetry program at Columbia College Chicago, you'll see and be seen: You'll meet visiting, critically acclaimed poets and learn from top-notch faculty members who will work with you one-on-one as you hone your writing skills and take risks in ...
Poets & Writers is here to help. This essential handbook, revised and updated for 2023, provides everything you need to know about the MFA, with topics including: Points to consider before you apply. How to decide which MFA program is right for you. How to deal with MFA rejections. Application advice from a former program director.
All MFA-Creative Writing students must complete a thesis as part of the degree requirements. The thesis should be a book of poetry, short stories, literary/creative non-fiction, or a substantial portion of a novel, play, or screenplay. It may also be a combination of these genres.
With an MFA, you can go on to work in your chosen field, such as designing costumes, writing novels, or producing films. Thanks to the terminal nature of the degree, you can also teach at the university level. The average salary for MFA degree holders is $64,000 [ 2 ]. Your salary will depend on your chosen profession, the industry you work in ...
Whether you finished up your graduate degree years ago, or are thinking of one for the future, the PocketMFA will give you the opportunity to embrace the community, mentorship, and education that defines a great creative writing workshop, without the disruption to your life an MFA may entail. ... Pursue your passion and join the Pocket MFA, a ...
The MFA for Poets and Writers announces the Juniper Literary Festival 2024, which will take place Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, 2024, on the UMass Amherst campus.This year's festival is part of the MFA's sixtieth anniversary celebrating The Writer in Community.. All events are free and open to the public.
The UMass Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers has announced the Juniper Literary Festival 2024, Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, on the UMass Amherst campus.This year's festival is part of the yearlong celebration of the MFA's 60 th anniversary. The celebration honors the program's dynamic alumni and the theme of the writer in community.