Georgia College and State University

Program description: A Good MFA Program is Hard to Find

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program offers workshops with award-winning faculty in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry; students may write their thesis in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. Unlike some MFA programs, we not only encourage students to work in other genres, we require our students to take at least one workshop in a genre other than their thesis genre. In addition to workshops, students take creative writing seminars in Poetry & Poetics or Prose Forms, pedagogy classes on the teaching of writing, journal design, and courses on literature and special topics.

We are a fully-funded program. MFA-sponsored graduate assistants are assigned hours as “writing consultants” in the university Writing Center. Teaching Fellowships in Composition and in Creative Writing require a secondary application process, and students are eligible once they have completed the necessary credits and courses, which is usually after their first year. MFA G.A.s also divide their hours between the MFA/Arts and Letters office, the Flannery O’Connor Review office, or our teaching writing in the schools Early College project. MFA-sponsored graduate assistantships include a stipend and full-tuition remission (but does not include mandatory student fees and, unless eligible to be waived, mandatory student insurance).

Our 42-hour program is designed to be a three-year program. Most students follow a plan that emphasizes course work in the first year and thesis work in the second and third years.