yale university mfa creative writing

Yale Creative Writing

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Playwriting

Playwriting at Yale begins with the building blocks of writing for the stage: event, character and conflict. At Yale, the study of playwriting is augmented by plentiful opportunities throughout the year to see exciting live performances of classic and contemporary texts at the Yale Rep , Yale Cabaret , and the Yale Drama School . There are even student productions of plays, scenes, and monologues written by undergraduates. Recent visitors have included Sarah Ruhl, Naomi Wallace, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Stephen Adly Guirgis. Student writers are encouraged to develop their unique voices while applying the fundamental principles of drama. With the skills introduced in the classroom, many graduates have gone on to distinguish themselves not only in the field of playwriting but in writing for the screen and television as well.  

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The 10 Best Creative Writing MFA Programs in the US

The talent is there. 

But the next generation of great American writers needs a collegial place to hone their craft. 

They need a place to explore the writer’s role in a wider community. 

They really need guidance about how and when to publish. 

All these things can be found in a solid Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree program. This degree offers access to mentors, to colleagues, and to a future in the writing world. 

A good MFA program gives new writers a precious few years to focus completely on their work, an ideal space away from the noise and pressure of the fast-paced modern world. 

We’ve found ten of the best ones, all of which provide the support, the creative stimulation, and the tranquility necessary to foster a mature writer.

We looked at graduate departments from all regions, public and private, all sizes, searching for the ten most inspiring Creative Writing MFA programs. 

Each of these ten institutions has assembled stellar faculties, developed student-focused paths of study, and provide robust support for writers accepted into their degree programs. 

To be considered for inclusion in this list, these MFA programs all must be fully-funded degrees, as recognized by Read The Workshop .

Creative Writing education has broadened and expanded over recent years, and no single method or plan fits for all students. 

Today, MFA programs across the country give budding short story writers and poets a variety of options for study. For future novelists, screenwriters – even viral bloggers – the search for the perfect setting for their next phase of development starts with these outstanding institutions, all of which have developed thoughtful and particular approaches to study.

So where will the next Salinger scribble his stories on the steps of the student center, or the next Angelou reading her poems in the local bookstore’s student-run poetry night? At one of these ten programs.

Here are 10 of the best creative writing MFA programs in the US.

University of Oregon (Eugene, OR)

Starting off the list is one of the oldest and most venerated Creative Writing programs in the country, the MFA at the University of Oregon. 

Longtime mentor, teacher, and award-winning poet Garrett Hongo directs the program, modeling its studio-based approach to one-on-one instruction in the English college system. 

Oregon’s MFA embraces its reputation for rigor. Besides attending workshops and tutorials, students take classes in more formal poetics and literature.  

A classic college town, Eugene provides an ideal backdrop for the writers’ community within Oregon’s MFA students and faculty.  

Tsunami Books , a local bookseller with national caché, hosts student-run readings featuring writers from the program. 

Graduates garner an impressive range of critical acclaim; Yale Younger Poet winner Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Cave Canem Prize winner and Guggenheim fellow Major Jackson, and PEN-Hemingway Award winner Chang-Rae Lee are noteworthy alumni. 

With its appealing setting and impressive reputation, Oregon’s MFA program attracts top writers as visiting faculty, including recent guests Elizabeth McCracken, David Mura, and Li-young Lee.

The individual approach defines the Oregon MFA experience; a key feature of the program’s first year is the customized reading list each MFA student creates with their faculty guide. 

Weekly meetings focus not only on the student’s writing, but also on the extended discovery of voice through directed reading. 

Accepting only ten new students a year—five in poetry and five in fiction— the University of Oregon’s MFA ensures a close-knit community with plenty of individual coaching and guidance.

Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)

Cornell University’s MFA program takes the long view on life as a writer, incorporating practical editorial training and teaching experience into its two-year program.

Incoming MFA students choose their own faculty committee of at least two faculty members, providing consistent advice as they move through a mixture of workshop and literature classes. 

Students in the program’s first year benefit from editorial training as readers and editors for Epoch , the program’s prestigious literary journal.

Teaching experience grounds the Cornell program. MFA students design and teach writing-centered undergraduate seminars on a variety of topics, and they remain in Ithaca during the summer to teach in programs for undergraduates. 

Cornell even allows MFA graduates to stay on as lecturers at Cornell for a period of time while they are on the job search. Cornell also offers a joint MFA/Ph.D. program through the Creative Writing and English departments.

Endowments fund several acclaimed reading series, drawing internationally known authors to campus for workshops and work sessions with MFA students. 

Recent visiting readers include Salman Rushdie, Sandra Cisneros, Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and others. 

Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ)

Arizona State’s MFA in Creative Writing spans three years, giving students ample time to practice their craft, develop a voice, and begin to find a place in the post-graduation literary world. 

Coursework balances writing and literature classes equally, with courses in craft and one-on-one mentoring alongside courses in literature, theory, or even electives in topics like fine press printing, bookmaking, or publishing. 

While students follow a path in either poetry or fiction, they are encouraged to take courses across the genres.

Teaching is also a focus in Arizona State’s MFA program, with funding coming from teaching assistantships in the school’s English department. Other exciting teaching opportunities include teaching abroad in locations around the world, funded through grants and internships.

The Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing, affiliated with the program, offers Arizona State MFA students professional development in formal and informal ways. 

The Distinguished Writers Series and Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference bring world-class writers to campus, allowing students to interact with some of the greatest in the profession. Acclaimed writer and poet Alberto Ríos directs the Piper Center.

Arizona State transitions students to the world after graduation through internships with publishers like Four Way Books. 

Its commitment to the student experience and its history of producing acclaimed writers—recent examples include Tayari Jones (Oprah’s Book Club, 2018; Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2019), Venita Blackburn ( Prairie Schooner Book Prize, 2018), and Hugh Martin ( Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Award for Veterans)—make Arizona State University’s MFA a consistent leader among degree programs.

University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX)

The University of Texas at Austin’s MFA program, the Michener Center for Writers, maintains one of the most vibrant, exciting, active literary faculties of any MFA program.

Denis Johnson D.A. Powell, Geoff Dyer, Natasha Trethewey, Margot Livesey, Ben Fountain: the list of recent guest faculty boasts some of the biggest names in current literature.

This three-year program fully funds candidates without teaching fellowships or assistantships; the goal is for students to focus entirely on their writing. 

More genre tracks at the Michener Center mean students can choose two focus areas, a primary and secondary, from Fiction, Poetry, Screenwriting, and Playwriting.

The Michener Center for Writers plays a prominent role in contemporary writing of all kinds. 

The hip, student-edited Bat City Review accepts work of all genres, visual art, cross genres, collaborative, and experimental pieces.  

Recent events for illustrious alumni include New Yorker publications, an Oprah Book Club selection, a screenwriting prize, and a 2021 Pulitzer (for visiting faculty member Mitchell Jackson). 

In this program, students are right in the middle of all the action of contemporary American literature.

Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO)

The MFA in Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis is a program on the move: applicants have almost doubled here in the last five years. 

Maybe this sudden growth of interest comes from recent rising star alumni on the literary scene, like Paul Tran, Miranda Popkey, and National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed.

Or maybe it’s the high profile Washington University’s MFA program commands, with its rotating faculty post through the Hurst Visiting Professor program and its active distinguished reader series. 

Superstar figures like Alison Bechdel and George Saunders have recently held visiting professorships, maintaining an energetic atmosphere program-wide.

Washington University’s MFA program sustains a reputation for the quality of the mentorship experience. 

With only five new students in each genre annually, MFA candidates form close cohorts among their peers and enjoy attentive support and mentorship from an engaged and vigorous faculty. 

Three genre tracks are available to students: fiction, poetry, and the increasingly relevant and popular creative nonfiction.

Another attractive feature of this program: first-year students are fully funded, but not expected to take on a teaching role until their second year. 

A generous stipend, coupled with St. Louis’s low cost of living, gives MFA candidates at Washington University the space to develop in a low-stress but stimulating creative environment.

Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)

It’s one of the first and biggest choices students face when choosing an MFA program: two-year or three-year? 

Indiana University makes a compelling case for its three-year program, in which the third year of support allows students an extended period of time to focus on the thesis, usually a novel or book-length collection.

One of the older programs on the list, Indiana’s MFA dates back to 1948. 

Its past instructors and alumni read like the index to an American Literature textbook. 

How many places can you take classes in the same place Robert Frost once taught, not to mention the program that granted its first creative writing Master’s degree to David Wagoner? Even today, the program’s integrity and reputation draw faculty like Ross Gay and Kevin Young.

Indiana’s Creative Writing program houses two more literary institutions, the Indiana Review, and the Indiana University Writers’ Conference. 

Students make up the editorial staff of this lauded literary magazine, in some cases for course credit or a stipend. An MFA candidate serves each year as assistant director of the much-celebrated and highly attended conference . 

These two facets of Indiana’s program give graduate students access to visiting writers, professional experience, and a taste of the writing life beyond academia.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, MI)

The University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program cultivates its students with a combination of workshop-driven course work and vigorous programming on and off-campus. Inventive new voices in fiction and poetry consistently emerge from this two-year program.

The campus hosts multiple readings, events, and contests, anchored by the Zell Visiting Writers Series. The Hopgood Awards offer annual prize money to Michigan creative writing students . 

The department cultivates relationships with organizations and events around Detroit, so whether it’s introducing writers at Literati bookstore or organizing writing retreats in conjunction with local arts organizations, MFA candidates find opportunities to cultivate a community role and public persona as a writer.

What happens after graduation tells the big story of this program. Michigan produces heavy hitters in the literary world, like Celeste Ng, Jesmyn Ward, Elizabeth Kostova, Nate Marshall, Paisley Rekdal, and Laura Kasischke. 

Their alumni place their works with venerable houses like Penguin and Harper Collins, longtime literary favorites Graywolf and Copper Canyon, and the new vanguard like McSweeney’s, Fence, and Ugly Duckling Presse.

University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN)

Structure combined with personal attention and mentorship characterizes the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA, starting with its unique program requirements. 

In addition to course work and a final thesis, Minnesota’s MFA candidates assemble a book list of personally significant works on literary craft, compose a long-form essay on their writing process, and defend their thesis works with reading in front of an audience.

Literary journal Great River Review and events like the First Book reading series and Mill City Reading series do their part to expand the student experience beyond the focus on the internal. 

The Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series draws exceptional, culturally relevant writers like Chuck Klosterman and Claudia Rankine for readings and student conversations. 

Writer and retired University of Minnesota instructor Charles Baxter established the program’s Hunger Relief benefit , aiding Minnesota’s Second Harvest Heartland organization. 

Emblematic of the program’s vision of the writer in service to humanity, this annual contest and reading bring together distinguished writers, students, faculty, and community members in favor of a greater goal.

Brown University (Providence, RI)

One of the top institutions on any list, Brown University features an elegantly-constructed Literary Arts Program, with students choosing one workshop and one elective per semester. 

The electives can be taken from any department at Brown; especially popular choices include Studio Art and other coursework through the affiliated Rhode Island School of Design. The final semester consists of thesis construction under the supervision of the candidate’s faculty advisor.

Brown is the only MFA program to feature, in addition to poetry and fiction tracks, the Digital/Cross Disciplinary track . 

This track attracts multidisciplinary writers who need the support offered by Brown’s collaboration among music, visual art, computer science, theater and performance studies, and other departments. 

The interaction with the Rhode Island School of Design also allows those artists interested in new forms of media to explore and develop their practice, inventing new forms of art and communication.

Brown’s Literary Arts Program focuses on creating an atmosphere where students can refine their artistic visions, supported by like-minded faculty who provide the time and materials necessary to innovate. 

Not only has the program produced trailblazing writers like Percival Everett and Otessa Moshfegh, but works composed by alumni incorporating dance, music, media, and theater have been performed around the world, from the stage at Kennedy Center to National Public Radio.

University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA)

When most people hear “MFA in Creative Writing,” it’s the Iowa Writers’ Workshop they imagine. 

The informal name of the University of Iowa’s Program in Creative Writing, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop was the first to offer an MFA, back in 1936. 

One of the first diplomas went to renowned writer Wallace Stegner, who later founded the MFA program at Stanford.

 It’s hard to argue with seventeen Pulitzer Prize winners and six U.S. Poets Laureate. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is the root system of the MFA tree.

The two-year program balances writing courses with coursework in other graduate departments at the university. In addition to the book-length thesis, a written exam is part of the student’s last semester.

Because the program represents the quintessential idea of a writing program, it attracts its faculty positions, reading series, events, and workshops the brightest lights of the literary world. 

The program’s flagship literary magazine, the Iowa Review , is a lofty goal for writers at all stages of their career. 

At the Writers’ Workshop, tracks include not only fiction, poetry, playwriting, and nonfiction, but also Spanish creative writing and literary translation. Their reading series in association with Prairie Lights bookstore streams online and is heard around the world.

Iowa’s program came into being in answer to the central question posed to each one of these schools: can writing be taught? 

The answer for a group of intrepid, creative souls in 1936 was, actually, “maybe not.” 

But they believed it could be cultivated; each one of these institutions proves it can be, in many ways, for those willing to commit the time and imagination.

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Creative writing & journalism courses, creative writing and journalism courses for yale college students, fall 2024 courses.

A current (and continually updated) listing of all English course offerings is available on  Yale Course Search  (YCS).

Some courses will require an application in advance; a list will be posted here by Friday,  March 15 . Those applications will be due by noon on  April 5 . Applicants will be notified of decisions by  April 12 . When registration period begins, admitted students must add the course to their Registration Worksheet and request Instructor Permission in  YCS . Instructors will approve admitted student requests in YCS; approved students must then return to YCS to Confirm Changes and complete registration in the course. Admitted students who do not complete registration in the course by  May 1  may have their places filled from the waiting list. Applicants who submit after the April 1 deadline may be accepted to the waiting list.

Online Application Tip:  log into your Microsoft account using your Yale email address and password.  Please note that if you are trying to access the form while logged into any email on your browser that is not your Yale one, the page will not load.

Where no application is required in advance, students may enroll during registration period by submitting an instructor permission request through YCS or by enrolling on a first-come-first-served basis, depending on the course.  Please check the course sites on  Canvas   for further information ; these can be accessed through YCS by clicking on the Syllabus link in the course window.

Proposals for independent study courses are due at noon on  April 2 . Students will be notified by 5:00 pm on  April 10  whether the proposal has been approved or revisions are required.

Introductory Creative Writing Courses

ENGL 123 Introduction to Creative Writing. Richard Deming, Marie-Helene Bertino, Emily Skillings, and R. Clifton Spargo.

ENGL 404-01 The Craft of Fiction. Michael Cunningham. Information Session April 5, 12:00 or 2:00 in LC 317

ENGL 404-02 The Craft of Fiction. Adam Sexton.

ENGL 447 Shakespeare and the Craft of Writing Poetry. Danielle Chapman. This hybrid course is an exciting blend of creative and critical writing. Students decide before midterm whether they want to take the course as a Renaissance Literature or Creative Writing Credit, and this determines whether their final project is a creative portfolio or critical paper.

Professional Writing/Production Courses

These courses do not count toward the Creative Writing Concentration.

ENGL 412 Literary Production: Poetry. Maggie Millner.

ENGL 413 Literary Production: Prose. Jack Hanson.

Intermediate Creative Writing Courses

ENGL 407 Fiction Writing. Marie-Helene Bertino. ENGL 407 Application

ENGL 411 American Horror Stories. Brian Price.

ENGL 419 Writing about Contemporary Figurative Art. Margaret Spillane.

ENGL 421 Nonfiction Writing: Writing about Architecture. Christopher Hawthorne.

ENGL 425 Writing the Television Drama. Aaron Tracy.

JDST 345/ENGL 431 Ghostwriting. Joshua Cohen.

LITR 348/ENGL 456HUMS 427/JDST 316 The Practice of Literary Translation. Robyn Creswell.

THST 215/ENGL 434 Writing Dance. Brian Seibert.

Advanced Creative Writing and Journalism Courses

ENGL 453/THST 320 Playwriting. Donald Margulies. ENGL 453 Application

ENGL 460 Advanced Poetry Writing. Cynthia Zarin. ENGL 460 Application

ENGL 461 The Art and Craft of Television Drama. Derek Green. ENGL 461 Application

ENGL 463 Writing Outsiderness and Interiority. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.  ENGL 463 Application

ENGL 465 Advanced Fiction Writing. Michael Cunningham. ENGL 465-01 Application

ENGL 465 Advanced Fiction Writing. Caryl Phillips. ENGL 465-02 Application

ENGL 467 Journalism. Steven Brill. ENGL 467 Application

ENGL 469 Advanced Nonfiction Writing. Anne Fadiman. ENGL 469 Application

ENGL 474 The Genre of the Sentence. Verly Klinkenborg. ENGL 474 Application

ENGL 484 Writing Across Literary Genres. Cynthia Zarin. ENGL 484 Application

Independent Study

ENGL 487 Tutorial in Writing. Staff.  ENGL 487 Application

ENGL 489 The Creative Writing Concentration Senior Project. Staff.  ENGL 489 Application

Questions? Contact Erica Sayers or Jane Bordiere.

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Writing programs.

SAL2 Writing Programs include office hours with a writing coach, writing retreats, and writing workshops. These program is designed to help FAS ladder faculty in all disciplines develop sustainable writing routines, overcome writing blocks, engage new audiences, and address other writing-related goals and challenges.

Office Hours with a Writing Coach

Eligible faculty members can sign up for a 30-minute appointment with writing coach Anne Amienne from Scholars and Writers Consulting.

Office hours are an opportunity for one-on-one conversations and individualized guidance about writing goals and challenges, ranging from writing habits and mindset to craft and public engagement. You might also want to follow-up from a group workshop or talk over what writing coaching can do for you in the longer term.

Office hours are offered several times each semester. Dates will be announced to eligible faculty via email.

In addition, eligible FAS faculty members may request support through Coaching for Success  at any time. This program provides faculty with 1-on-1 support from professional coaches. To date, 300+ FAS faculty members have worked with coaches on areas that range from developing leadership skills to establishing sustainable research routines; from building mentorship networks to balancing the demands of research and teaching; from learning new technical skills to writing for new audiences.

Writing Retreats

The FAS Dean’s Office offers writing retreats to provide opportunities for faculty to work on their writing goals for a period of uninterrupted time. Optional workshops intended to guide the writing process will be available throughout the day. Breakfast, lunch, and prepared take-home family meals are provided. 

Writing Workshops

Offered in partnership with Scholars and Writers Consulting, writing workshops include topics such as writing routines, writing rituals, engaging readers, building clarity into your writing, goal-setting, and establishing boundaries around dedicated writing time. Future writing workshops will be announced via email.

Eligibility

Any ladder faculty member with a primary or fully joint appointment in an FAS department or program may participate. 

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Careers in creative writing: the mfa question and other concerns about the writing life after yale, monday, april 9, 2018    |    5:30pm to 6:30pm.

Accomplished writers and alums discuss their craft, different careers paths in writing and publishing, and the question of the benefit and purpose of an MFA program.

Cynthia Zarin (moderator), Senior Lecturer in English, is the Coordinator of the Writing Concentration at Yale. Cynthia is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Orbit (2017) as well as five books for children, and a collection of essays, An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History (2013). Honors and awards include the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the New York Women’s Press Award for Writing on the Arts, and a Parent’s Choice Award for Children’s Literature. She is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, where she currently writes about books and theatre, as well as The New York Times, The Paris Review, and other publications, and a former contributing editor for Gourmet Magazine. She is Resident Writer for the New York based dance company, BalletCollective.

Paul La Farge (JE ‘92) is the author of four novels: The Artist of the Missing, Haussmann, or the Distinction, Luminous Airplanes, and The Night Ocean; and a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter. His stories and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the American Academy in Berlin. He never got an MFA, but has somehow been teaching in MFA programs for the last sixteen years.

Caitlin Macy (SY ‘92) is the author of Mrs., Spoiled, and The Fundamentals of Play. She majored in Classics at Yale before receiving her MFA from Columbia. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate. The recipient of an O’Henry award, she lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Ed Park (SY ’92) is the author of the novel Personal Days, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and one of Time’s top 10 fiction books of the year. He is a founding editor of The Believer and was most recently executive editor at Penguin Press. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Bookforum, and many other places, and he has taught at Columbia’s MFA program and the Gallatin School at NYU. He also writes a column for the New York Times Book Review on graphic novels.

Sonya Huber’s newest book is Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Her other books include Opa Nobody, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir, The Evolution of Hillary Rodham Clinton and a textbook, The Backwards Research Guide for Writers. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other outlets. She teaches at Fairfield University and directs Fairfield’s Low-Residency MFA Program.

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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

This website exists as an ongoing collaborative experiment in digital publishing and information sharing. Because this website functions as a wiki, all members of the School of Art community—graduate students, faculty, staff, and alums—have the ability to add new content and pages, and to edit most of the site’s existing content.

Content is the property of its various authors. When you contribute to this site, you agree to abide by Yale University academic and network use policy, and to act as a responsible member of our community.

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Apply to the School

The yale school of art is a graduate school that confers master of fine arts degrees in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, and sculpture.

For information on applications to the MFA program, please click the “Graduate Admission” link below.

The undergraduate admissions process is handled entirely through Yale College . Please refer all undergraduate admissions questions to the Yale College Undergraduate Admissions Office .

Last edited by: Sara Cronquist

Edit access: Everybody

Fall 2024 Application

Application is live!

Deadline: Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time

The SoA wiki admission pages provide extensive information about applying to Yale’s MFA program. Use this as your resource while preparing an application.

Questions that are not easily answered via these pages may be directed to our office, either via email [email protected] or phone (during business hours), with the understanding that Yale does not provide personalized portfolio review or advisement about the content of applicant submissions.

Application status and receipt of documents can be checked within the status portal at the application link above, after an application has been submitted.

Applicants SHOULD NOT CONTACT Yale School of Art faculty and/or current students seeking program information, application and/or portfolio advisement. Please respect the personal/private spaces (such as email, social media, direct message, etc.) and time of our community by utilizing the wiki and, when necessary, directing your inquiries appropriately to those whose job it is to assist you.

Last edited by: Lindsey Mancini

Graduate Admission

Tuition, fees, & financing your education, graduate study areas, brochures and documentation.

Programs are filling quickly! Find our program availability here.

Writing for College

Get prepared for college and beyond by taking part in our writing for college program! Professionals in the field will help you master the skills needed for writing college essays, resumes and give you further insight into what it takes to become a writer!

Summer springboard program located at yale university, program highlights.

Residential Tuition : $6,098

Commuter Tuition: $3,198

Session 3: July 14, 2024 July 26, 2024

Yale University New Haven, CT

Testimonials

I learned about what I can accomplish as a devoted writer if I work hard enough. If I just write all the time, no matter how rough of a draft it is, I’ll come up with something meaningful. Iyanna L.

This course taught me a lot about writing techniques and skills and allowed me to rediscover my love for writing and stories. Alex J.

Course Overview

Writing for College = Writing for Life. The course stresses the fundamentals of writing, prepares students for college applications as students create their own resumes and master their college essays. Students will also be introduced to specific AP and college-level writing techniques – skills that are not only useful in their high school days, but in college and beyond.

Excursions at Yale –  Students have a unique opportunity to visit the iconic home of one of America’s greatest writers, Mark Twain . In addition, students will visit various local colleges and universities, having the chance to meet with and gain valuable insight from admissions counselors. 

Meet your instructor

Leslie Jernegan MFA

Leslie Jernegan is the Summer Springboard instructor for the course Writing for College at Yale University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a graduate Future Professoriate certificate.

Topics you'll explore

Hands-on learning.

College essays are the foundational building blocks that shape the future of a student's life and beyond. Honing the fundamental skills of writing on this course, students will learn how to prepare college applications by hand crafting their own resumes and mastering the intricacies of their college essays. Students will be introduced to specific AP and college-level writing techniques - skills that will set them apart in high school, and bolster their transition to college and beyond.

Get a  FREE catalog

Use this form to get a free catalog by email. Or call us now at 858.780.5660

Get started today

Summer Springboard - 2024 is operated independently of Yale University and is not sponsored or endorsed by the University. The views expressed in connection with the program are not the official positions, statements of advice nor opinions of Yale University and should not be viewed as an endorsement by Yale of any such views or statements.

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The NYU Creative Writing Program

is among the most distinguished programs in the country and is a leading national center for the study of writing and literature.

Graduate Program

The graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU consists of a community of writers working together in a setting that is both challenging and supportive.

Low Residency MFA Workshop in Paris

The low-residency MFA Writers Workshop offers students the opportunity to develop their craft in one of the world's most inspiring literary capitals.

Undergraduate Program

The undergraduate program offers workshops, readings, internships, writing prizes, and events designed to cultivate and inspire.

Spring 2022 Reading Series

The lively public Reading Series hosts a wide array of writers, translators, and editors, and connects our program to the local community.

Creative Writing Program

Low-residency mfa writers workshop in paris, undergraduate, washington square review, literary journal, a sample residency calendar, write in paris, scholarships and grant opportunities, program of study, dates and deadlines, creative writing, recent highlights from the mfa community.

• Alum Bruna Dantas Lobato   won the 2023 National Book Award in translation

• Faculty member Sharon Olds received the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize from King Felipe VI in July 2023

• Alumni  Tess Gunty  and  John Keene   each won a 2022 National Book Award in fiction and poetry , respectively

• Books by faculty members  Sharon  Olds  and  Meghan O'Rourke;  and alums  Tess Gunty, John Keene ,  and  Jenny Xie  were named finalists for the 2022 National Book Awards; books by alum  Rio Cortez and faculty member Leigh Newman were also longlisted

• Alum  Ada Limón   has been named the nation's 24th Poet Laureate  by the Library of Congress

• Alum  Amanda Larson 's debut poetry collection  GUT  was selected by Mark Bibbins as the winner of the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber Book Award

• Alum  Sasha Burshteyn  was named a 2022 winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize. Alums Jenna Lanzaro and JinJin Xu were also named semi-finalists for the prize.

• Alum Clare Sestanovich was selected as a  2022 5 under 35 Honoree  by the National Book Foundation

• Alum  Maaza Mengiste  was awarded a  2022 Guggenheim Fellowship

• Visiting graduate faculty member  Brandon Taylor 's collection  Filthy Animals  was named a 2021/22  finalist for The Story Prize  and was shortlisted for the  2022 Dylan Thomas Prize

• Alum  Raven Leilani  won the 2021 Clark Fiction Prize, Dylan Thomas prize, the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and the Center for Fiction 2020 First Novel Prize for her debut novel  Luster,  and was named a finalist for the 2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the Gotham Book Prize, the 2021 PEN/Hemmingway Award for Debut Novel, the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

• Alum Desiree C. Bailey 's debut poetry collection  What Noise Against the Cane  was longlisted for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize and was also named a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award in Poetry and the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was published as the winner of the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets

• Senior faculty member  Sharon Olds  was named the 2022 recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry

You can read more MFA Community news here and find a list of forthcoming and recently published books by alumni here .   NYU CWP alumni include  Aria Aber, Amir Ahmadi Arian, Julie Buntin, Nick Flynn, Nell Freudenberger, Aracelis Girmay, Isabella Hammad, Ishion Hutchinson, Mitchell S. Jackson, Tyehimba Jess, John Keene, Raven Leilani, Robin Coste Lewis, Ada Limón, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Maaza Mengiste, John Murillo, Gregory Pardlo, Morgan Parker, Nicole Sealey, Solmaz Sharif, Peng Shepherd, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Xie,  and  Javier Zamora. 

Announcements

Ocean Vuong joins the NYU Creative Writing Program Faculty

Mary Gabriel, Author of “Ninth Street Women”, Receives the NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize

Claudia Rankine joins the NYU Creative Writing Program Faculty

Classic podcasts from the lillian vernon reading series.

Anne Carson

Zadie Smith and Jeffrey Eugenides

Terrance Hayes

Where to find us.

Faculty Spotlight

Hari Kunzru is the author of six novels, including the most recent Red Pill, and White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award.

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel Intimacies was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of 2021 by numerous publications.

Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of acclaimed novels The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot. His latest collection is Fresh Complaint. 

Sharon Olds is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program. Her 2012 collection Stags Leap was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize and a Pulitzer.

Darin Strauss is the author of several acclaimed novels, including the most recent The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and the poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin and To Float In The Space Between.

Foer was listed in Rolling Stone's "People of the Year," Esquire's "Best and Brightest," and The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list.

Claudia Rankine is a recipient of the 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, and the author of six collections including Citizen and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.

Yale Writers' Workshop Faculty Bios

You are here, yale writers' workshop faculty 2024 .

Our faculty are accomplished writers and editors.

"I loved Dr. McCauley! She inspired me to keep working and improving my writing, and also connected us with the publishing journal she works for internships! Her comments and critiques were extremely helpful to my writing."

• Guest Speakers

Sybil Baker

Sybil Baker's latest novel is Apparitions . She is also author of four other works of fiction, including  While You Were Gone (IPPY Silver Award winner),  The Life Plan, Talismans, and  Into This World , which received an Eric Hoffer Award Honorable Mention and a Foreword’s INDIES Book of the Year finalist. Her essay collection Immigration Essays was the 2018-2019 Read2Achieve first year selection at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A UC Foundation Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Sybil received a 2017 Individual Artist's Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission for her work.

Jotham Burrello

Jotham Burrello is the director of the Yale Writers’ Workshop. His novel, Spindle City , was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway award, and a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. His writing has appeared in literary journals, the Hartford Courant , the  Christian Science Monitor , and he’s a proud winner of The New Yorker caption contest. He’s currently writing a new novel. He teaches writing at Central Connecticut State University, founded the CT Lit Fest, and is the former publisher of the award-winning Elephant Rock Books.

Trey Ellis is an American Book Award Winning novelist, two-time Emmy and Peabody winning filmmaker, NAACP Image award winning playwright, essayist and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.  His acclaimed first novel, Platitudes , was reissued by Northeastern University Press along with his influential essay, The New Black Aesthetic .  He is also the author of Home Repairs and Right Here, Right Now and Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.

Molly Gaudry

Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel Desire: A Haunting and the hybrid memoir, Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir . Her verse novel We Take Me Apart was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN/Osterweil. She teaches at Stony Brook University.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection Scar On/Scar Off which received an IPPY award and When Trying to Return Home , a short story collection, which was an New York Times Editors' Choice, called one of the Best Short Fiction Books of the Year according to Kirkus Reviews and a "Best Book to Read in 2023" by Today. She has been granted fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio and CantoMundo. She teaches at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and is fiction editor at Pleiades.

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here , as well as the forthcoming Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and her work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column and Slate . Amy lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

Non-fiction

Mary Collins

Nonfiction offers a cornucopia of forms and a chance to explore the self, society, history and life! Mary Collins has embraced the challenge in her 30-year career and published biography, memoir, humor, personal essay, travel, opinion and, in 2023, an experimental collection of illustrated flash nonfiction essays. Her book, At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick Up the Pieces (Beacon), which she co-authored with her son Donald Collins, received several national awards and recognition. This is her sixth year with the Yale Summer Writing Program.

Lisa Page is co-editor of We Wear The Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America . Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, LitHub Weekly, Playboy, The Chicago Tribune and other publications and anthologies, including Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race . Lisa has worked as an editor, speechwriter, lyricist, and actor. She is the former President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She is the Director of Creative Writing at the George Washington.

Kirsten Bakis

Kirsten Bakis is the author of King NYX (2024) which Victor LaValle called “a novel of delicious disquiet,” as well as the award-winning Lives of the Monster Dogs , which Jeff VanderMeer called “a classic.” She has been teaching at the Yale Writers’ Workshop since 2012.

Sergio Troncoso

Sergio Troncoso is the author of eight books, most recently Nobody’s Pilgrims , which won the Gold Medal for Best Novel- Adventure or Drama in English from the International Latino Book Awards. He also wrote A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, which Junot Díaz called “a masterwork” and “an extraordinary performance.” Troncoso edited Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds , which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso is past president of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Write Here, Write Now

Patricia Ann McNair

Patricia Ann McNair's collection of stories,  The Temple of Air , won Southern Illinois University Devil’s Kitchen Readers Award, Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year, and was a finalist for Society of Midland Authors Fiction Award. It will be reissued in May 2024. Responsible Adults (stories), was named a Distinguished Favorite by The Independent Press Awards.   And These Are The Good Times  (essays), was a Montaigne Medal finalist. McNair is an associate professor emerita in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Children and Young Adult

Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman is the award-winning author of humorous middle grade novels, and young adult novels exploring the intersection of teens and technology. Her most recent novel, Some Kind of Hate was a Sydney Taylor Honor book and has been chosen as a 2024 High School Read Aloud by the Indiana Library Federation. She celebrated her 60th birthday by finally becoming a bat mitzvah. Sarah teaches in the MFA program at Western CT State University

First Ten Pages: Fiction and Memoir

LaTanya McQueen

LaTanya McQueen is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts (2022 Fellowship in Prose) and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is the author of two books—the essay collection And It Begins Like This (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and the novel When the Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021). She is an Assistant Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at NC State.

Personal Essay/Memoir

Mishka Shubaly

Mishka Shubaly is an author, songwriter, and storyteller. His most recent work, Cold Turkey: How to Quit Drinking By Not Drinking was a New York Times bestseller. He was awarded the Dean’s Fellowship for Fiction by Columbia University. His seven nonfiction Kindle Singles for Amazon have all been bestsellers. He tours around the world and has shared the stage with everyone from Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Richard Price. I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You , his hardcover memoir, was released in 2016. In 2022, Shubaly released a collection of his Kindle Singles The Long Run and Other True Stories  with a forward by Jeff Bezos.

Short Stories / Novel Excerpts

Louis Bayard

Louis Bayard is the author of 10 novels, including The Pale Blue Eye , adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale, Jackie & Me , ranked by the Washington Post as one of the top novels of 2022, the national bestseller Courting Mr. Lincoln , The Black Tower , and Mr. Timothy , as well as the young-adult novel, Lucky Strikes . His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Christina Chiu

Christina Chiu is the Grand Prize Winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty , a Kirkus Best Books of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints , winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu’s stories appear in Tin House, Kweli Journal, Washington Square , and elsewhere. She curates The Pen Parentis Literary Salon. She is a founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and received her MFA from Columbia University.

Ethan Rutherford

Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, One Story , and The Best American Short Stories .  His first book, The Peripatetic Coffin , received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.  His second collection, Farthest South , was published by A Strange Object in May 2021, and his novel, North Sun , will be out in 2025.  He teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College lives in Connecticut with his family.

Emily Barton

Emily Barton’s three novels are The Book of Esther, Brookland , and The Testament of Yves Gundron . She writes short fiction, essays, and book reviews, primarily for The New York Times Book Review . Her work has earned grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She taught at Yale for five years, currently serves as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin, and is excited to return to YWW this summer.

Jade Wong-Baxter

Jade Wong-Baxter joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in 2021, after spending three years at Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents. Jade is looking for adult literary/upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction, with an emphasis on narratives by and about people of color, as well as the perspectives of marginalized identities. Her clients include Chris Belcher ( Pretty Baby , Avid Reader; a 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist); Delia Cai ( Central Places , Ballantine, 2023); and Hannah Matthews ( You or Someone You Love , Atria, 2023). June 7 @ 2 pm

Mark Gottlieb

Mark Gottlieb, a vice president at Trident Media Group, NYC, stands as a leading literary agent with numerous industry deals. His successes include representing New York Times bestsellers and award-winning authors, securing film and TV adaptations. With a focus on career growth, he manages authors adeptly, leveraging resources at Trident. Having worked in Foreign Rights and run the Audiobook Department, Mark is dedicated to expanding his clientele and bringing authors to a broad audience, fueled by his passion for discovering and championing talented writers. June 7 @ 2 pm

Sonya Huber

Sonya Huber is the author of eight books, including the essay collection Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook , the writing guide V oice First: A Writer’s Manifesto , the award-winning essay collection on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys , and the activist memoir-in-a-day Supremely Tiny Acts . She teaches at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield low-residency MFA program. June 2 @ 2 pm

Christopher Madden

Christopher Madden is an author, educator, editor, and publisher. He is a founding partner of Connecticut’s Woodhall Press where he serves as the executive editor. He teaches literature at Fairfield University, publishing in the Fairfield MFA program, and is a student thesis advisor for the Johns Hopkins University MA in Creative Writing. He is the editor of numerous prize-winning books and has worked with poet laureates, New York Times bestselling authors, and emerging writers. June 2 @ 3:30 pm

Roma Panganiban

Roma Panganiban graduated from Allegheny College with a degree in English and Psychology, followed by postgraduate study in Modern and Contemporary Literature & Culture at the University of York (UK). She began her publishing career at The Gernert Company before joining Janklow & Nesbit in 2019; her list focuses on literary & upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction, particularly by marginalized writers. She lives in Brooklyn and on the internet.  June 7 @ 2 pm

W.K. Stratton

A Western Heritage Award-winning poet,  W.K. (Kip) Stratton is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood , and the Making of a Legendary Film as well as nine other books. A finalist for the National Magazine Award, he has written for Texas Monthly, GQ, Outside, Sports Illustrated, Texas Highways , and other magazines. He's a past president and fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters. He lives in Austin. June 3 @ 2 pm

Jacinda Townsend

Jacinda Townsend is the author of Mother Country (Graywolf, 2022), winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Mother Country is also short-listed for both the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards. Townsend's first novel, Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. June 6 @ 7:30 pm

Maria Whelan

Maria studied English and drama at the University College Dublin, then obtained her master’s in modern literature from the University of Edinburgh. Maria enjoys a blend of literary and commercial fiction, as well as speculative fiction and magical realism. She is fond of novels that straddle the cultural divide and speak to the current cultural moment or examine overlooked facets of society. Her authors include Luke Dumas, Audrey Burges, Vanessa Cuti, and Sarah Fay.  June 7 @ 2 pm

Matt Bell is the author most recently of the novel Appleseed (a New York Times Notable Book) and the craft book Refuse to Be Done , a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision. He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods , as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall , a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II , and several other titles. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. June 13 @ 7 pm

Kimberly Brower

Kimberly fell in love with reading when she picked up her first Babysitter’s Club book at the age of seven (Super Special editions were her favorites) and hasn’t been able to get her nose out of a book since. After spending a decade in the business world, it was kismet that she found herself in publishing. She takes great pride in her client list, from the debut authors to #1 NYT bestsellers. She previously worked for over two years at a boutique literary agency before starting her own. June 14

Audrey Crooks

Audrey Crooks is an Agent at Trident Media Group, where she represents literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, and select memoir. Originally from Virginia, she joined Trident in 2020. Previously, Audrey worked at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, worked a bookseller, and from 2017-2018 she lived in Jordan, working for a nonprofit serving Gazan women refugees. Audrey’s academic background is in poetry and Middle Eastern Studies. June 14

Kristina Marie Darling

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-nine books, and a twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Darling’s work has also been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, a Villa Lena Foundation Fellowship, a Civita Institute Fellowship, and ten residencies at the American Academy in Rome. Currently a faculty member at The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. Dr. Darling is Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly. June 14

Kimberly Garrett Brown

Kimberly Garrett Brown is the Executive Editor of Minerva Rising Press. Her best-selling novel, Cora’s Kitchen , won the 2022 Story Circle Network Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction and the 2022 Bronze Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award for multicultural fiction. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, The Feminine Collective, Today’s Chicago Woman, Chicago Tribune , and elsewhere. She lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. June 14

Wanda Morris

Wanda M. Morris is the acclaimed author of Anywhere You Run . It was named One of the Top Ten Crime Fiction Books of 2022 by The New York Times and has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal , and Booklist . Wanda has won numerous awards including the Anthony, the Lefty and named the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for Mystery. Anywhere You Run was also longlisted for the prestigious Mark Twain Voice in American Literature Prize. June 13 @ 12:30 pm

Cat Richardson

Cat Richardson is the editor in chief of Bodega Magazine, a monthly online literary magazine that can be read in one sitting. Her poetry has appeared in magazines such as Narrative, Ploughshares, Tin House , and Four Way Review , among others. You can find her reviews and interviews at Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, Pleiades, and The National Book Foundation . She is also the director of content strategy and development at NYU's Office of Marketing Communications. June 14

Julie Stevenson

Julie is a literary agent with Massie & McQuilkin. She represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense, memoir, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction, young adult fiction and children’s picture books. She is drawn to storytelling with unforgettable characters, an authorial command of voice, and a strong sense of narrative tension. She’s agented books that have won the Pulitzer Prize, the MWA Edgar Award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Caldecott Honor.   June 14

C Pam Zhang

C Pam Zhang is the author of two bestselling novels, How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey . She a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a Booker Prize nominee, and the winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, and the California Book Award. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times . June 12 @ 12:30 pm

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Information Session: MFA Programs in Creative Writing

• Post author By 46797344
• Post date April 5, 2024

Write of Passage 2024: Creative Writing MFA Student Reading

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This event is part of UCF Celebrates the Arts 2024. 

Write of Passage 2024 showcases the work and talent of the Spring 2024 graduating students of UCF’s creative writing MFA graduate program.

This reading will feature works by Justin Ahlquist, Camila Cal Mello, Fernanda Coutinho Teixeira, Kristi Dao, Colleen Dieckmann, Kianna Greene, Michelle Munoz, Spencer Reynolds, Jessa Santiago, Dani Sarta and Nicholas Stovel.

Arrive early to enjoy a showcase of other projects from the English department, including:

• The Florida Review , UCF’s international literary journal
• The Cypress Dome , UCF’s undergraduate student literary journal
• Writers in the Sun, UCF’s visiting writers’ series
• UCF Creative Writing Faculty Book Display
• Zeppelin Books and Burrow Press Display

One of Central Florida’s favorite new traditions celebrates ten years!   UCF Celebrates the Arts is an immersive and dynamic cultural extravaganza that fuses creativity, innovation and community engagement. This annual festival showcases the artistic prowess of UCF’s faculty and students and invites the broader community to enjoy performances, exhibitions, presentations and interactive experiences. With a focus on accessibility, partnership and diverse offerings, UCF Celebrates the Arts is a unique opportunity for the community to experience the creative side of UCF’s innovative spirit. Events will be held April 3-14 at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Learn more at   arts.cah.ucf.edu/celebrates .

Event Registration

Tickets: FREE