MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING
[ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS • DEGREE REQUIREMENTS • FACULTY • HISTORY]
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a selective program that will admit approximately five applicants in fiction and five in poetry each academic year. It offers an intense and focused opportunity for students to further their commitment to writing as the center of their professional life. Through a combination of mentoring by accomplished faculty in a series of creative writing workshops, courses focused on the study of literature offered through the English M.A. program, and electives that include the practice of literary editing and the teaching of creative writing, students will have the guidance to develop and shape their work to the limits of their talent. After three years in the program, they will be prepared to sustain their commitment to contemporary literature as writers, readers, editors, and teachers.
Matriculating students beginning in Fall 2007, The Master of Fine Arts builds on UMass Boston’s well-established undergraduate creative writing program, and on the English M.A. degree’s creative writing track. Students from these programs have published in the National Poetry Series, the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and with presses including Penguin, Norton, HarperCollins, Doubleday, Beacon, Little, Brown, Ohio University and University of Illinois Press. Our graduates include program directors at University of Connecticut and Franklin Institute, as well as the Poet Laureate of Texas.
The M.F.A. degree requires six semesters of full-time study, with 9 credits required in each of the first four semesters, and 6 credits in the final two semesters, during which students will concentrate on completing a thesis in fiction or poetry under the direction of a faculty member. M.F.A. workshops are limited to 12 students, and seminars are limited to 15.
Assistantships: A limited number of teaching and administrative assistantships are available to first year students. After successfully completing course work and a teaching assistantship, students may teach their own class by qualifying for a limited number of teaching internships.
Please contact our Program Assistant with any questions.
Jen Garfield
jennifer.garfield@umb.edu
617.287.6736