Application Deadline: January 1
One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials; take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction; and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at our website.
Application Deadline: January 1.
One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials, take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction, and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at mfagreensboro.org.
The MFA in Creative Writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato seeks to meet the needs of students who want to strike a balance between the development of individual creative talent and close study of literature and language. The program helps to develop work in the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Students typically spend three years completing coursework, workshops, and book-length theses.
Current faculty includes Robin Becker, Candace Black, Geoff Herbach, Diana Joseph, Chris McCormick, Richard Robbins, and Michael Torres. Recent visiting writers include Juan Felipe Herrera, Marcus Wicker, Leslie Nneka Arimah, Danez Smith, Layli Long Soldier, and Ada Limón.
Students have the opportunity to grow within a rich and active community of writers with the Good Thunder Reading Series, the Writers Bloc Open Reading Series, and working on literary magazine Blue Earth Review.
Stop by their listing at NewPages to learn more.
MFA in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is designed to help graduate students develop their talents and abilities as writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Graduate teaching assistants teach special topics undergraduate creative writing courses as well as first-year and second-year writing. Students also have the option to work as editors of the prize-winning literary magazine, The Journal, and to serve on the editorial staff of two annual book prizes.
All students are fully funded for three years in a program well known for its sense of community and a faculty that is committed to teach as much as they are to their own writer. Current faculty includes Kathy Fagan Grandinetti, Michelle Herman, Marcus Jackson, Lee Martin, Elissa Washuta, and Nick White. Recent writers who have visited the program include Tarfia Faizullah, Melissa Febos, Garth Greenwell, Dan Kois, Nicole Sealey, and Danez Smith.
The program also offers special topics in addition to the regular workshops so opportunities abound for students to experiment.
Stop by NewPages to learn more about the program.
The Michener Center for Writers is the only MFA program in the world that provides full and equal funding to every writer, yet it is the extraordinary faculty and sense of community that most distinguishes them. Theirs is a three-year, fully funded residency program with a unique interdisciplinary focus. While writers apply and are admitted in a primary genre—fiction, poetry, playwriting, or screenwriting—they also study a secondary genre during their time in Austin.
Enrolled students have no teaching duties, allowing them to fully commit themselves to their writing. Only 12 writers are admitted to the program each year so that faculty have ample time to devote to every writer. Current faculty includes Joanna Klink, Lisa Olstein, Roger Reeves, Dean Young, Edward Carey, Oscar Casares, Peter LaSalle, Bret Anthony Johnston, Elizabeth McCracken, Deb Olin Unferth, Stuart Kelban, Richard Lewis, Cindy McCreery, Beau Thorne, Annie Baker, Liz Engelman, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Kirk Lynn, and KJ Sanchez.
Writers also have the opportunity gain professional editing experience with literary magazine Bat City Review; a collaborative process between the Michener Center for Writers, the New Writers Project, and Studio Art.
Stop by their listing at NewPages to learn more.
There is still a few days left to submit your application to the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Eastern Kentucky University. The Bluegrass Writers Studio offers one of the most affordable and progressive low-residency programs in the nation.
They offer a close-knit and supportive writing community, are devoted to their students creative and professional success, and are supportive of both literary and literary genre writing. The program offers online workshops conducted with live audio, intensive residency workshops, international literary and cultural experiences, and web-based courses in contemporary literature. Students also have the option of working on Jelly Bucket, the annual graduate-student-produced literary journal.
To be considered for their Fall 2020 program, applications need to be received by August 1. To start their program in spring, applications need to be received by December 1.
Mills College is now offering a new kind of MFA in creative writing that enables its students to earn a degree in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction in their own way.
Along with offering more traditional classroom-based workshops and craft classes, Mills College also offers the ability to complete the degree by working one-on-one with a faculty mentor. This allows students to be on campus as much or as little as they desire. They are also expanding the amount of online offerings available during summer and January terms.
The program offers concentrations in education, literary arts administration, PhD preparation, and young adult fiction. Students can also create their own unique concentration with electives in podcasting, performance, and pedagogy. They offer a literary editing and production course that gives students hands on experience in editing their annual graduate journal 580 Split.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more about their program.
This new and distinctive program offers intimate classes; the opportunity to pursue both creative and critical writing; close mentorship by renowned faculty in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction; and three fully supported years in which to grow as writers and complete a book-length creative project. Our curriculum gives students time to deepen both their creative writing and their study of literature. Students will receive full financial support for three academic years and two summers. Both degrees—the MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in English—are awarded simultaneously at graduation.
Program faculty include Chris Abani, Eula Biss, Brian Bouldrey, John Bresland, Averill Curdy, Sheila Donohue, Stuart Dybek, Reginald Gibbons, Juan Martinez, Shauna Seliy, Natasha Trethewey, and Rachel Jamison Webster.
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.
Focus on fiction, narrative nonfiction or poetry in our graduate M.F.A. program, which has launched the careers of hundreds of poets, novelists, storywriters, essayists and memoirists. What is notable is not just how hard students work on their own creative writing, but how much effort goes into their response to the work of their peers. Writers here care deeply about each other, and the production of honest work that captures life on the page.
Application Deadline: January 1 (annually)
One of the oldest creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA Writing Program offers fully funded graduate assistantships with stipends, tuition remission, and subsidized health insurance. The MFA is a two-year residency program with an emphasis on studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Students work closely with acclaimed faculty in one-on-one tutorials and small classes, including courses in contemporary publishing and creative nonfiction. Our campus features a Distinguished Visiting Writers Series of authors and editors; other professionalization opportunities include college teaching and hands-on editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at mfagreensboro.org and greensbororeview.org.
Application Deadline: January 6
For well over sixty years, this highly regarded Hollins MFA has supported lively and determined writers who want to concentrate on craft. Our intensive two-year graduate program helps students find their way in an atmosphere of cooperation and encouragement. Our students work successfully in poetry, short fiction, novels, and creative nonfiction—and in between genres. Our faculty writers take time to work with students in this vibrant, supportive community. Our alums have a remarkably high record of publication. Program provides graduate assistantships, teaching fellowships, travel funding, and generous scholarships. Most of all, a vibrant, supportive community. For information, www.hollins.edu/creative-writing-MFA.
The MFA in Creative Writing program at Florida Atlantic University offers concentrations in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Core faculty include Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Andrew Furman, Becka Mara McKay, Susan Mitchell, Kate Schmitt, and Jason Schwartz.
Students have the opportunity to work with online literary magazine Swamp Ape Review (which reopens to submissions on April 1). Learn more…
The Cult of Likeability (or Why You Should Kill Your Literary Friendships) Craft essay by Jackson Bliss. TriQuarterly.
I’ve noticed a recurring trend in my fiction workshops recently that troubles me, partially because I was once the defendant in the same court of law during my own MFA program: a creative writing student stands up (metaphorically speaking) and then declares almost joyfully that they don’t like a character in the manuscript we’re workshopping or in the novel we’re reading. After I pause and wait for the student to elaborate, I soon realize that their dislike is the critique. I can’t help but wonder if the either/or fallacy of cancel culture I see routinely on social media has in some way reinforced this notion in workshop that unlikeable characters (like people in real life) don’t deserve our attention, which is why we’re allowed to stop considering them at all, once we decide we don’t like them. Frankly, I find this kind of reader response lazy, problematic, ungenerous, and uninsightful, regardless of whether we’re talking about art or people.
…What if the real problem is that, as readers, we’ve become impatient assholes who no longer want to understand the people we’d like to erase, both in literature and in our lives. What if part of the issue here is that, as readers, we now want to cancel the characters that rub us the wrong way (or even worse, who offend us) precisely because we now live in an era where we want to shut up half of those we share the world with.