Creative Writing (MFA)
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a low-residency program that offers students individualized instruction in Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction and Performance Writing. For approximately twenty days out of the year, students gather on campus for intensive workshops, readings, lectures, and one-on-one sessions with their mentor with whom they develop a learning plan for the following semester. During the semesters, students are guided by their mentors, exchanging papers and manuscripts via snail-mail or email, and conversing via phone or video call. The low-residency format allows optimum flexibility for students who have family and/or career responsibilities or who cannot relocate in order to pursue a graduate degree. While individualized mentorships ensure that students receive maximum support for their unique projects, on campus residencies foster much-needed supportive writing communities.
All students who wish to engage with topics of embodiment, health, illness, and wellness through their writing have the opportunity to join the Narrative Medicine track. As an optional focus within any genre, Narrative Medicine students can explore how bodies are experienced, assessed, and valued, including cross cultural concepts of the body, constructs of ability and disability, precepts of normativity, and the ways in which embodiment practices shape writing and art. The Narrative Medicine track utilizes writing as a means to examine and push traditional boundaries of how bodies and bodily experiences are represented and understood in literature and beyond.
Program Learning Outcomes
The student will demonstrate:
- Comprehensive knowledge of published works in their field and how their own work contributes to that body of literature.
- Skillful writing in their chosen genre.
- An acquired discipline for maintaining a lifelong writing practice.
- And create a substantial work of high literary merit.
Requirements
For details on Admission Requirements, see the Graduate Study section of this catalog.
Program Description:
The 47-unit low-residency MFA begins and ends in the Summer, extending over the course of two years and consisting of four mentorship semesters and five residencies. Students complete a book-length MFA Thesis in their chosen genre(s). At-a-glance program design is pictured in the table below:
Residencies:
Mentorships:
| CRWR 5100 | Mentorship: Poetry | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5150 | Mentorship: Poetry: Narrative Medicine | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5200 | Mentorship: Fiction | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5250 | Mentorship: Fiction: Narrative Medicine | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5300 | Mentorship: Creative Nonfiction | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5350 | Mentorship: Creative Nonfiction: Narrative Medicine | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5400 | Mentorship: Performance Writing | 8.00 units |
| CRWR 5450 | Mentorship: Performance Writing: Narrative Medicine | 8.00 units |
| Total Credit Hours: | 32 |
Professional Skills
| CRWR 5900 | Publish Your Writing | 1.00 unit |
| | |
| CRWR 5910 | Teaching Practicum | 1.00 unit |
| or | |
| CRWR 5920 | Publishing Practicum | 1.00 unit |
| Total Credit Hours: | 2 |
Total Credit Hours: 47
Special Students and Auditors
This distance-learning program does not allow for auditing. Non-degree seeking students may register for up to 3 Residency units that can be applied towards the MFA degree upon acceptance to the program.
Transfer of Credit
With permission of the graduate director, up to 9 units of graduate credit in humanities and the arts may be transferred into the MFA program.
Selection of Genre
While students typically work in a single genre, some cross-genre study will be permitted for those intending to produce a hybrid MFA Thesis. Students must seek permission from the MFA Director.
Narrative Medicine Track
Students pursuing the Narrative/Poetic Medicine track register for mentorships in their chosen genre (Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Performance Writing).
Performance Writing
Performance Writing is an umbrella term for writing that has a performed or live component and may include screenwriting, playwriting, podcasts, spoken word, or live storytelling. MFA students generate the written scripts of these forms through generative writing and workshops.
MFA Thesis
The MFA Thesis is a substantial work of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or performance writing. With permission from the program director, students may opt to write a hybrid or cross-genre MFA Thesis. Poetry manuscripts are 48-80 pages in length or no more than 30,000 words. Prose and cross-genre manuscripts range from 80-120 pages or 20,000-30,000 words. Students with a longer work can submit an excerpt of no more than 120 pages. Students who entered the program with a substantial manuscript will include at least 80 pages of new writing that is generated during the program. Students submit their thesis to the Program Director and to Dominican Scholar during Thesis Residency 5.