University of New Hampshire

Program description: The MFA Program at the University of New Hampshire has a clear goal: to help you mold your gifts and passion for the art and to prepare you for the opportunities and demands that all writers will experience in a long career. What happens to you after you leave this program—how you will sustain yourself and your work—is one of our strongest concerns. This supportive community of students and faculty shares a belief that writing matters and that the best books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are made out of both the creative imagination and rigorous work.

We emphasize one-on-one contact between great teachers and highly-qualified students. Our superb faculty is made up of winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, Guggenheim, NEA, and MacArthur Fellowships. It includes writers whose work has been chosen recently for Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and Best American Travel Writing.

Six out of ten of our MFA students receive direct financial aid in the form of teaching assistantships, tuition scholarships, and awards. Other paid opportunities include internships in local cultural institutions and tutorial positions in the Writing Center, as well as editing jobs with Barnstorm, our literary magazine.

If you came to UNH, you would enjoy an active Writers Series, which brings to campus well-known authors for readings and residencies. Numerous top-flight literary events also take place in nearby Portsmouth and Boston. We’re close to great cities and the transcendent White Mountains, within minutes of the Atlantic coast.