nyu creative writing program mfa

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Creative Writing

Degrees and fields of study.

• M.F.A. in Creative Writing - Fiction
• M.F.A.  in Creative Writing - Poetry
• M.F.A.  in Creative Writing - Creative Nonfiction
• M.F.A.  in Low Residency Writers Workshop in Paris Program - Fiction
• M.F.A. in Low Residency Writers Workshop in Paris Program - Poetry
• M.F.A. in Low Residency Writers Workshop in Paris Program - Creative Nonfiction

Application Deadlines

Applications and all supporting materials must be  submitted online by 5PM  Eastern Time. If a listed deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or U.S. federal holiday, then the next business day will be the actual deadline.

Creative Writing Programs

• December 18 : Fall admission

Writers Workshop in Paris Programs

• September 1 : January residency (January term application)
• March 1 : July residency (summer application)

Requirements

In addition to the general application requirements, the department specifically requires:

Test Scores

• Please do not send GRE test scores — they will not be reviewed by our Admissions Committee.

TOEFL/IELTS

Applicants must submit official TOEFL or IELTS scores unless they:

Are a native English speaker; OR

Are a US citizen or permanent resident; OR

Have completed (or will complete) a baccalaureate or master's degree at an institution where the language of instruction is English.

Statement of Academic Purpose

In a concisely written statement, please describe your past and present work as it relates to your intended field of study, your educational objectives, and your career goals. In addition, please include your intellectual and professional reasons for choosing your field of study and why your studies/research can best be done at the Graduate School of Arts and Science at NYU. The statement should not exceed two double-spaced pages.

Writing Sample

A creative writing sample is required. It should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages for fiction and nonfiction applicants and 10 single-spaced pages for poetry applicants. The font size should be 12 point or larger.

Useful Links

• GSAS Bulletin
• Department Website
• Email [email protected]
• Application Portal
• Back to Programs, Requirements and Deadlines

The Graduate School of Arts and Science reserves the right to change this information at any time. This page supersedes all previous versions.

Last updated October 2024.

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• Program of Study
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Program in Creative Writing

as.nyu.edu/cwp Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10011-8702 • 212-998-8816

Professor Landau

The New York University Program in Creative Writing, among the most distinguished programs in the country, is a leading national center for the study of writing and literature. The undergraduate and graduate programs provide students with an opportunity to develop their craft while working closely with some of the finest poets and novelists writing today. The creative writing program occupies a lovely townhouse on West 10th Street in the same Greenwich Village neighborhood where so many writers have lived and worked. The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House allows writers—both established and emerging—to share their work in an inspiring setting.

The program's distinguished faculty of award-winning poets and prose writers represents a wide array of contemporary aesthetics. Our instructors have been the recipients of Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur Genius, Guggenheim, and NEA fellowships, National Book and National Book Critics Circle awards, Pushcart Prizes, the Whiting Writer's Award, and more.

Undergraduates are encouraged to attend the program's reading series, which brings both established and new writers to NYU. Writing prizes, special events, and our undergraduate literary journal,  West 10th , further complement our course offerings and provide a sense of community for undergraduate writers. If you have questions about the minor in creative writing, please contact us at  [email protected] .

Creative Writing in Spanish (MFA)

Program description.

Due to its location in New York City, home to an important and diverse Latino and Latin American community, NYU is uniquely situated to offer a graduate Creative Writing Program in Spanish. New York has been a meeting point for Spanish and Latin American writers and journalists since the 19th century and a home to many of them. José Martí (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Federico García Lorca (Spain), Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico), Francisco Ayala (Spain), Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rico), Manuel Ramos Otero (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig (Argentina), and Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba), among many others, have in the past either settled in New York or spent extended periods of time there.

The end of the 20th century has seen this community of writers grow considerably both in visibility and cultural significance. Nowadays many Spanish and Latin American writers, such as Carmen Boullosa (Mexico), Cecilia Vicuña (Chile), Eduardo Lago (Spain), Mercedes Roffé (Argentina), and Roger Santiváñez (Peru) make of New York their temporary or permanent home.

Dada su ubicación privilegiada—la ciudad alberga a numerosas y diversas comunidades latinoamericanas—New York University es el lugar ideal para cursar un programa de escritura creativa en español. Desde el siglo XIX Nueva York viene atrayendo a escritores y periodistas españoles y latinoamericanos, y ha sido lugar de residencia de muchos de ellos. José Martí (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Federico García Lorca (España), Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico), Francisco Ayala (España), Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rico), Manuel Ramos Otero (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig (Argentina) y Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba), entre otros, vivieron en Nueva York o pasaron allí largas temporadas.

Esta comunidad de escritores ha aumentado considerablemente a lo largo del siglo veinte. Hoy son muchos los escritores hispanos que residen en esta ciudad o que alternan largas permanencias en ella con regresos a sus respectivos países, como Carmen Boullosa (México), Cecilia Vicuña (Chile), Eduardo Lago (España), Mercedes Roffé (Argentina), o Roger Santiváñez (Perú), para nombrar sólo algunos.

All applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) are required to submit the  general application requirements , which include:

• Academic Transcripts
• Test Scores  (if required)
• Applicant Statements
• Résumé or Curriculum Vitae
• Letters of Recommendation , and
• A non-refundable  application fee .

See Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures for admission requirements and instructions specific to this program.

Program Requirements

Master of fine arts thesis.

This program is a two-year program of 32 credits (i.e., eight courses, two per semester) and a creative writing thesis at the end. Workshops will be offered in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, theater, and translation. Additional workshops will be added to the program as needed.

At least two in the field in which the student plans to specialize.

May be in the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, or in another department, with an adviser’s approval.

Additional Program Requirements

Students will also write a thesis with the counsel of a faculty member and a second reader at the second year of their course of study. Students write this final independent project consisting of between 50-80 pages for prose, 40-50 pages for theater or translation (including source and target languages), 30 pages for poetry. This final project may include, or may be an expansion of work begun during previous courses, but it should represent a culminating effort to shape stories, prose pieces, a long narrative, a literary translation or a group of poems into a coherent, self-sufficient work.

Sample Plan of Study

Learning outcomes.

Upon successful completion of the program, graduates will:

• Learn to write, read, and revise creative pieces including the following genres and forms: Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Theater, Literary Translation, Film Script, Hybrid Writing, Digital Writing. They will become proficient in copy-editing and style editing.
• Gain expertise in selection and organization of materials, and virtually proofreading, copy editing and style editing of literary texts submitted by participating as Committee Members and/or Board Members in the layout and contents supervision of Temporales , our MFA online magazine.
• Be able to teach Language courses in Spanish, including elementary and intermediate levels.
• Be able to study and revise the literary traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as that of Spain, and the USA, including those written and performed in Spanish, English and Spanglish.

NYU Policies

Graduate school of arts and science policies.

University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages .

Academic Policies for the Graduate School of Arts and Science can be found on the Academic Policies page . 

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2023 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

By MDP March 17, 2022 in Literary

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For those of us who plan to apply for a Creative Writing MFA in 2022 (start date 2023)! I saw that last year's thread was created around this time, so I thought I would drum one up. 

• sassydragon , opuhala , anibass and 2 others

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dagreenkat 74 posts

lanadelreystan 55 posts

treaux 44 posts

Leeannitha 43 posts

Feb 21 2023

Feb 28 2023

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February 23, 2023

send me my decisions u cowards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

ArthurDentJr

March 12, 2023

I've now received CNF decisions on all of my schools: UPittsburgh, UMinnesota, UIowa, Louisiana State, and UArizona were all rejections...But! I was accepted at Ohio State (my top preference)! I am ve

February 16, 2023

Received an acceptance email from BU this morning for poetry. Insane relief after getting a couple rejections in a row this last week.

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annachristine

Hi! I'm really considering applying to Brown University's Cross-Discplinary/Digital Writing concentration in the Literary Arts MFA. I already have a studio MFA but I get so excited thinking about that school/program, lmfao. 

Anyway, just wondering if anyone here went to Brown in their undergrad? 

Hey! Excited to be applying for fiction MFAs this upcoming fall. Was wondering if anyone happens to know what the application fee is for University of Miami and if they have fee waivers available? I can't seem to find the information on their website. Much obliged :)

• 5 weeks later...

lenagator1997

Hey Everyone!

 I am still at UNH, so if anyone has questions about what it's like as a first year creative nonfiction student or a MFA student in general let me know!

If I am being honest I had a real rough first semester, but the second semester made up for it. In Fall 2022 I am still working at Research and Development, the Writing Center and TA-ing with a professor of mine, as well as writing my Masters Thesis. This is the advice stemming from my own experience only I would give to someone now being one year into my program:

1. The first semester is when you begin to transition into the grad-school writing life and into your writing community, but it may not be easy. Putting out my first essay (to a mostly second year cohort!) was rather scary because it was the first impression of my writing I gave to my peers and professor. This is where the rose colored glasses come off and the real work begins. Just be patient with others and yourself.

2. Look out for professional development opportunities outside of the classroom. Try for that Writing Center job you saw in that email or even grant writing. Even if down the line you realize you don't want to do it for a career, the experience will get you far and even help you make a little money. Yes the rumors are true, everyone is kinda looking out for the same careers post graduation. Everyone is looking to have that cushy tenure track job "teaching," (even if they've never done it in their entire lives or admit to hating undergraduates) or are looking to be the Editor and Chief of Penguin Random House. People will most likely brag and use every political tool they have to get ahead, but don't let it get you down. Think outside the lines, be yourself and keep on your own path. I personally thought I would be a terrible editor for the Writing Center, but it ended up becoming a passion of mine.

3. Find that one professor in your corner. You won't like every single person on the faculty, but you just need one who sees you and your writing for what it really is.

4. Even if you don't become extremely close with your cohort, if they respect you within the classroom as a writer, that's all that matters. In my experience, that whole "you will find friends for life," thing was an inflated unrealistic myth. (But if that aspect is important to you in an MFA program, then that's fine too.)

5. You might not all graduate together. I personally had no idea about this until recently. Everyone except for me extended their time in our two year program to 2.5 years and I am apparently the only one graduating in May 2023. Just don't be shocked.

6. Take that literature class your advisor warned you about. I took 2 master's level literature classes and not only did I get to know some awesome people outside of the MFA classroom, studying literature also helped my creative writing! I am also admittedly not an MFA purist. I describe myself as a academic/artist hybrid so I believe in cross-departmental study.

7. Take advantage of alumni from your program. One published alumni subbed for my nonfiction class once last semester and he is now helping me out with some aspects of my Masters Thesis! 

8. In the end, it's your writing. Just because they are your professors or second/ third years doesn't mean they have greater authority then you about your voice, style, POV ect. In the end, you get to call the play.

Again, this is small sage advice from one person, but I hope it helps!

• RosA-R , koechophe and jjooeeyy

• 2 yr Warelin pinned this topic

Heya folks. I've been a reader for my college's literary magazine over the summer. The vast, vast majority of pieces I read are from MFA graduates or MFA candidates. Being in that seat where I have to say yes or no to incoming pieces has taught me a lot about what the difference between a "yes" piece is and a "no" piece is (and for reference, there have been dozens of "no" pieces and only like 2 "yes" ones... which I think is a lot like MFA applications lol). 

Here's some advice if you're still working on your writing sample:

-Good, solid prose is an entry requirement. I honestly thought literary magazine submissions would be filled with a lot of really mediocre writers, but they aren't. The writers are, for the most part, fabulous, and have very solid prose. You can tell these people know the craft and know the basics and principals. The writing is clean and polished from a prose standpoint. A lot of people feel like that's not important, but from my experience, it's more like it goes without saying that you already know your stuff.

-... but good, solid prose isn't enough to get you noticed. This actually sort of threw me, since I always thought the person with the best prose, mechanically speaking, would be the "winner." But as I'm reading, that's not the case, and in fact, one of my "yes" recommendations wasn't actually quite as solid on prose (it was still good, but it wasn't as amazing as some of the other ones I've seen.) Basically, prose seems to be a "you must be this tall to enter" line, not the end-all be-all for good writing.

-Your writing needs to feel like it is contributing to the literary conversation. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what made me say "yes" to the few I've said yes to. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether the piece felt like it had something interesting to say. I read a lot of pieces about popular topics which treated those popular topics... pretty much like everyone else does. They were well-written, and they were genuine, but it felt like a lot of them were saying things the same way everyone else has said them. 

I doubt everyone says yes for the same reasons, but the reasons I find myself saying yes are based mostly on:

Does this feel like a new insight? Does it feel like they're approaching the topic from a new angle/perspective? Does the work appropriately embrace complexity and nuance? Is there enough ambiguity in the piece to allow it to be analyzed, while also having enough specificity to feel intentional? The pieces I read which got a yes just went a hair further than the rejected ones. They were just a bit more unique, enough to make me think after reading them. I hope some of this helps. I also highly recommend looking for opportunities to volunteer for a literary magazine. It's been one of the single best experiences for making me look at my writing in a harsher light. 

Best of luck!  

• ElfieG , 1badgloop , Leeannitha and 2 others

Hey all. Application season is right around the corner... Anyone starting to feel the pressure? (And/or frantically trying to write the best short story they've ever written  ? )

• 2 weeks later...

strawberrybaldwin

just out of a simple curiosity, what's the consensus on switching programs? like if one was admitted somewhere but decided that maybe they wanted to go elsewhere after all? is that frowned upon?

• 4 weeks later...

On 8/30/2022 at 12:31 PM, strawberrybaldwin said: just out of a simple curiosity, what's the consensus on switching programs? like if one was admitted somewhere but decided that maybe they wanted to go elsewhere after all? is that frowned upon?

I did it and now I'm at Iowa. If a program isn't right for you that's okay. Anyone who doesn't think so can go suck rocks.

Hope everyone is having a decent time putting together their portfolios and applications! This is my first time applying to programs, so I'm fairly nervous. I'm applying to 8 schools, all fully funded, with 4 being "higher ranked" programs and the other 4 being smaller/"underrated" programs.

I have my poems completed, but I need to really tidy up my SOP and get another letter of recommendation, (been out of school for 7 years eeep!)

On 10/23/2022 at 9:00 PM, jjooeeyy said: Hey all, Hope everyone is having a decent time putting together their portfolios and applications! This is my first time applying to programs, so I'm fairly nervous. I'm applying to 8 schools, all fully funded, with 4 being "higher ranked" programs and the other 4 being smaller/"underrated" programs. I have my poems completed, but I need to really tidy up my SOP and get another letter of recommendation, (been out of school for 7 years eeep!)

Hi! Fellow poet here. I was in the thread a little last year but didn’t end up applying due to health reasons. Now, I am back to try again.  One thing that is helping me with my SOP is printing out my manuscript. Then I read it as if I have never seen it before (or try to). It helped me see some common themes or topics in the poems. 

How are applications going for everyone? Anyone else have a Dec 1 deadline? I am worried about the program processing all my documents and transcripts in time. 

Hi everyone! I just finished my applications to 16 different schools (mostly in poetry, a few for poetry and fiction) and am waiting on fee waivers for my last 3 applications. This has been such an incredibly stressful, daunting and nerve-wracking process so far and we are only just beginning! I endlessly workshopped my SOP and writing sample with two professors and I am still double-checking every so often to make sure I didn't make a mess of anything. How does everyone survive the waiting process!? 

I also wanted to say that I was able to secure fee waivers for every program so far (other than the final 3) and if anyone would like help with the language to use when asking for waivers or what I had to use as proof of financial hardship, I am more than happy to help!

On 11/20/2022 at 9:08 PM, Veneralia said: Hi everyone! I just finished my applications to 16 different schools (mostly in poetry, a few for poetry and fiction) and am waiting on fee waivers for my last 3 applications. This has been such an incredibly stressful, daunting and nerve-wracking process so far and we are only just beginning! I endlessly workshopped my SOP and writing sample with two professors and I am still double-checking every so often to make sure I didn't make a mess of anything. How does everyone survive the waiting process!?  I also wanted to say that I was able to secure fee waivers for every program so far (other than the final 3) and if anyone would like help with the language to use when asking for waivers or what I had to use as proof of financial hardship, I am more than happy to help!

Congrats on finishing 16 applications already!! The waiting sure is difficult but at least you don’t have to worry about sending apps in during the holidays.  Is this your first round of apps?

5 hours ago, Leeannitha said: Congrats on finishing 16 applications already!! The waiting sure is difficult but at least you don’t have to worry about sending apps in during the holidays.  Is this your first round of apps?

Yes! I am just finishing my first undergraduate degree this semester, as a non-traditional student, and I focused on English and Creative Writing. I will definitely apply again next round if I don't end up anywhere this time--I know people often get in on subsequent rounds, but hey, fingers crossed and all that.

On 11/23/2022 at 11:00 PM, Veneralia said:

Best of luck to you!! With apps and the rest of your undergrad classes.  Which programs are you applying to? Maybe we have some in common.   

I’m applying to:

Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Umass Amherst 

Helen Zell program

& maybe Northwestern??  All for poetry ?

22 hours ago, Leeannitha said: Best of luck to you!! With apps and the rest of your undergrad classes.  Which programs are you applying to? Maybe we have some in common.    I’m applying to: Michener  NWP Iowa Writers’ Workshop NYU Umass Amherst  Syracuse  Helen Zell program & maybe Northwestern??  All for poetry ?

I'm applying to all of those except for NYU, Umass and Syracuse! I live like twenty minutes from Amherst though and it's lovely here! I just want to move to a new place. I'm also applying in poetry. Would be so rad to cross paths!

alligator mississippiensis

Hi friends! Happy holidays and happy application cycle! 

I am applying to Michener and I'm a little confused about the process. I submitted my ApplyTexas online application and got an email from UT, Austin telling me they received my app. I set up my MyStatus account but now I cant figure out how to upload my additional materials (personal statement and manuscript ext.) Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance! 

On 11/28/2022 at 12:34 AM, alligator mississippiensis said: Hi friends! Happy holidays and happy application cycle!  I am applying to Michener and I'm a little confused about the process. I submitted my ApplyTexas online application and got an email from UT, Austin telling me they received my app. I set up my MyStatus account but now I cant figure out how to upload my additional materials (personal statement and manuscript ext.) Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance! 

Hi sorry just saw this!!! I know the deadline is approaching.  Go to your my status page and click the “admissions” tab. It should have sections to upload each part. This is what mine looks like.  (I am on mobile so I hope this picture shows up)

I think you have to click “details” first on the right, then it will take you to a separate page to upload.

writinggrad

I had a hard time figuring out underrated programs. Which ones did you apply to?

I got an email from FSU about an 'application update' and jumped out of my skin (as if I didn't just apply last week). it was only letting me know the app is now under department review. It's gonna be a longggg three months until decisions come out, lol

just wanted to jump into this forum and note my presence. in addition to PhD programs in English, i am applying this cycle to Michener, New Writer's Project, UC Irvine, Litowitz @ Northwestern, Brown, and UVA. all are for poetry. wishing everyone a jolly and warm december!

6 hours ago, issys134 said: hi y'all,  just wanted to jump into this forum and note my presence. in addition to PhD programs in English, i am applying this cycle to Michener, New Writer's Project, UC Irvine, Litowitz @ Northwestern, Brown, and UVA. all are for poetry. wishing everyone a jolly and warm december!

Good luck to you! 

23 hours ago, notebook said: I got an email from FSU about an 'application update' and jumped out of my skin (as if I didn't just apply last week). it was only letting me know the app is now under department review. It's gonna be a longggg three months until decisions come out, lol  

Do you think this means that programs are already meeting and going over applications? Was the deadline last week? The whole process is very mysterious…

steins rose

hi everyone! i just discovered this forum and i'm so happy to find some community!

i applied to brown, syracuse, ucsd, u of o, and uw this year. it's my first time applying so very scary!!

wishing you all luck as you get those apps in. looking forward to tons of acceptances for everyone <3

stannecarson

Hi y'all! Here to offer well wishes as the December 15th deadline is looming... I'm frantically revising (and essentially rewriting) my SOP for each school, which is maybe the worst part of this whole process, IMO. Each school wants a different length, different questions answered, and then I feel the need to research each school's resources and opportunities to oh-so subtly mention them. At least it'll be (mostly) over soon! Best of luck! ?

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Creative Writing: Masters

Pan-european mfa in creative writing .

We see you on a creative journey as you work toward the completion of your master’s degree in Creative Writing and the creation of a publishable work of literature. Study fiction, poetry, nonfiction, travel writing, screenwriting, or a dual genre with award-winning faculty members in inspiring locations across Europe.

The Cedar Crest College Pan-European Creative Writing MFA program offers gifted students from around the world a unique opportunity to unite for three fifteen-day intensive workshops, held in European locations rich in culture and literary significance. The remainder of your studies will take place on your time and in your home, led by faculty members and supported by an international community of students.

Residencies take place during the first two weeks of July and rotate between Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain; and Vienna, Austria, with new locations to be offered in the future. 

Wherever you live, wherever you write, you become part of a vibrant literary community when you join the Pan-European MFA program. We look forward to meeting you, working with you, and guiding you toward publication.

5 tips for choosing work that best displays your talent for writing.

• Select your strongest work. Don’t worry if it is not self-contained and complete. Choose the best 25 pages of your novel or memoir, or the best 10 pages from your long poem. Fellow writers understand the concept of a work in progress.
• Select work that demonstrates ambition and risk-taking. You don’t necessarily have to be doing the literary equivalent of jumping off a cliff, but in general it is true that the more risk you take in the work, the more rewarding it is for the reader and the more invested in it you are as a writer. Speaking of which…
• Select work that you are truly invested in. Choose work that has cost you in some way to write it. Choose writings that you care about and feel passionate about.
• Make sure that it is error-free. While content may be subjective, typographical errors and misspellings are not. As one agent I know likes to say, “If you don’t care enough about your work to make it perfect, then why should I care enough about it to read it?” The work you put into polishing it and making it error-free will say a lot about your investment in your work.
• Demonstrate your critical skills. If you also are submitting an essay about your writing goals, share how you feel you might improve. What are your weaknesses? How do you hope to strengthen your skills? What do you hope to gain by pursuing a writing degree or joining a group of writers? One of the best ways to meet your goals is to clarify what they are.

When a date falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline is extended to the next business day for the College.

December 1: Spring Semester Distance Mentorship (Coursework begins February 1)

April 1: Summer Residency (over 1st 2-weeks of July) (Online Coursework begins June 1st)

August 1: Fall Semester Distance Mentorship (Coursework begins September 1st)

Want to Learn More?

Dive a little deeper, courses required.

MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction (48 credits)

CWR 501 Residency Workshop I: Fiction (2 credits) 
 CWR 507 Craft Seminar I: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 508 Locale Seminar I (1 credit)
 CWR 511 Writing Mentorship I: Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 521 Writing Mentorship II: Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 531 Residency Workshop II: Fiction (2 credits)
 CWR 537 Craft Seminar II: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 538 Locale Seminar II (1 credit)
 CWR 541 Writing Mentorship III: Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 551 Writing Mentorship IV: Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 590 Creative Thesis I (3 credits)
 CWR 591 Creative Thesis II (3 credits)
 CWR 592 Critical Essay (3 credits)
 CWR 598 Graduating Residency (3 credits)

MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry (48 credits)

CWR 502 Residency Workshop I: Poetry (2 credits) 
 CWR 507 Craft Seminar I: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 508 Locale Seminar I (1 credit)
 CWR 512 Writing Mentorship I: Poetry (6 credits)
 CWR 522 Writing Mentorship II: Poetry (6 credits)
 CWR 532 Residency Workshop II: Poetry (2 credits)
 CWR 537 Craft Seminar II: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 538 Locale Seminar II (1 credit)
 CWR 542 Writing Mentorship III: Poetry (6 credits)
 CWR 552 Writing Mentorship IV: Poetry (6 credits)
 CWR 590 Creative Thesis I (3 credits)
 CWR 591 Creative Thesis II (3 credits)
 CWR 592 Critical Essay (3 credits)
 CWR 598 Graduating Residency (3 credits)

MFA in Creative Writing: Non-Fiction (48 credits)

CWR 503 Residency Workshop I: Non-Fiction (2 credits)
 CWR 507 Craft Seminar I: Cross-Genre (3 credits) CWR 508 Locale Seminar I (1 credit)
 CWR 513 Writing Mentorship I: Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 523 Writing Mentorship II: Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 533 Residency Workshop II: Non-Fiction (2 credits)
 CWR 537 Craft Seminar II: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 538 Locale Seminar II (1 credit)
 CWR 543 Writing Mentorship III: Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 553 Writing Mentorship IV: Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 590 Creative Thesis I (3 credits)
 CWR 591 Creative Thesis II (3 credits)
 CWR 592 Critical Essay (3 credits)
 CWR 598 Graduating Residency (3 credits)

MFA in Creative Writing: Dual Genre (48 credits)

CWR 501, CWR 502, or CWR 503 Residency Workshop I: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (2 credits) 
 CWR 507 Craft Seminar I: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 508 Locale Seminar I (1 credit)
 CWR 511, CWR 512, or CWR 513 Writing Mentorship I: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 521, CWR 522, or CWR 523 Writing Mentorship II: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 531, CWR 532, or CWR 533 Residency Workshop II: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (2 credits)
 CWR 537 Craft Seminar II: Cross-Genre (3 credits)
 CWR 538 Locale Seminar II (1 credit) CWR 541, CWR 542, or CWR 543 Writing Mentorship III: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (6 credits)
 CWR 551, CWR 552, or CWR 553 Writing Mentorship IV: Fiction, Poetry, or Non-Fiction (6 credits) CWR 590 Creative Thesis I (3 credits)
 CWR 591 Creative Thesis II (3 credits)
 CWR 592 Critical Essay (3 credits)
 CWR 598 Graduating Residency (3 credits)

Graduate 2024-2025 Tuition and Fees

M.F.A. in Creative Writing Application fee (non-refundable) $50.00
 MFA Graduate Tuition, per credit $796.00
 Deposit (non-refundable) due upon acceptance to the program $250.00
 Residency Fee (per each 15-day summer residency) $TBD Master’s Thesis Binding Fee (non-refundable) (CWR 591) $300.00
 Part-Time Technology Fee, per fall and spring semesters $75.00

Note: The College reserves the right to change fees and charges as necessary. Books, supplies, lab materials and other program costs are not included in the tuition. The deposit is credited toward the tuition cost for the first residency.

MFA Application Requirements

In order to be considered for admission to the program, applicants must submit the following items:

• A completed graduate application form.
• Two letters of recommendation, either academic or professional, that address the applicant’s ability to succeed in graduate writing study. See the MFA program website for the Recommendation Form.
• A $50 application fee. (If applying to multiple genres, a separate $50 fee must be submitted for each genre to which the applicant is seeking admission.)
• Official academic transcripts from institutions where the applicant has completed coursework. (A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in creative writing is required.)

If previous coursework was completed outside of the United States, applicants must have their academic degree validated as equivalent to a degree in the United States through a non-profit credential-evaluation agency, such as:

World Education Services 
 PO Box #745
 Old Chelsea Station
 New York, NY 10011
 USA
 1 -212-966-6311
 www.wes.org

A $250 non-refundable deposit will be required for all admitted students to save one’s place in the program.

Discover all of the opportunities that await you on your MFA journey. Check out our MFA handbook for all the details that you want to know about residencies and what the Cedar Crest MFA experience has in store for you. 

How To Apply

Ready to apply as an graduate student?

MFA Student Spotlight

Rachel Adine Phelps is a poet from the wilderness of central Pennsylvania currently living in sunny central Florida. She received a bachelor’s degree in Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College and a Master of Fine Arts from the Pan-European Program at Cedar Crest College. Her work can be found in Bitterzoet Magazine and the Bitter Oleander.

Katie Karamtbelas works full time as a proposal writer for a clinical trial company but is often found writing fiction and memoir pieces in her (scarce) spare time. She holds a BA in Media Wriing from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a MFA in Fiction from Cedar Crest College’s Pan-European program. Her fiction and memoir pieces have been published in Imagination Magazine, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Speculation Journal, Matador Network, Parent.Co, Huffington Post, Elite Daily, and Thought Catalog, among others.

Amy Lee Lillard writes corporate communications by day, and by night explores the dark edges of the daily world through novels and stories. Her fiction was recently named to the 2017 Berlin Writing Prize Short List. She holds an MA in literature from Northwestern University, and will complete her MFA in fiction writing from the Pan-European Program at Cedar Crest College in 2018.

Margaret Montet writes travel narratives woven with memoir, culture, research, and conversations.

She is a college librarian who teaches wickedly sophisticated Music History courses to older adults. Her work has been published in Library Journal, Solo Travel Network, Mature Years, America in WWII, Edible Jersey, and Danse Macabre Magazine.

Stephanie Papa is a poet and translator living Paris, France. She has an MFA degree in Poetry from the Pan-European Program at Cedar Crest College. She is poetry co-editor of Paris Lit Up magazine. Her work has been published in World Literature Today, Niche, Yasakmeyve, NOON, great weather for media, Four Chambers Press, Paris/Atlantic, Literary Bohemian, 5×5, Rumpus, Cleaver Magazine, Cerise Press, The Prose Poetry Project and One More Glass. She organizes anglophone writing workshops and readings in Paris.

Under the pen-name M. Allen Cunningham , Mark is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction, including a biographical novel about Rilke called Lost Son, and The Green Age of Asher Witherow, which was his debut at age twenty-six and was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association. His shorter work has appeared in many outlets, including Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review, and Poets & Writers.

Accreditation

Cedar Crest College is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education ; 1007 North Orange Street, 4th Floor, MB #166, Wilmington, DE 19801

Faculty & Staff

Who’s teaching you is as important as the curriculum you choose. Let’s put a face to some of the names you’ll be seeing on the course listings!

Alison Wellford

Robert Antoni

Annia Ciezadlo

Alison Espach

Heather Green

Aleksandar Hemon

Gwyneth Lewis

Alice Miller

Ruben Quesada

Kate Racculia

Diana Spechler

Peter Streckfus

David Heska Wanbli Weiden

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MFA in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is designed to help graduate students develop to the fullest their talents and abilities as writers of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. Creative writing classes are conducted as workshops or tutorials, and there are numerous opportunities for related study both within and beyond the Department of English.  All students are fully funded for three years in a program that is well known for its sense of community and a faculty that is as committed to teaching as to their own writing.

Approximately 36 graduate students are taught by tenure track, visiting and affiliated (Film Studies) faculty, who also teach in the undergraduate program. Graduate student TAs teach introductory and intermediate special topics undergraduate creative writing courses, undergraduate literary publishing, as well as first-year and second-year writing (required courses for all Ohio State undergraduates). TAs teach two classes a year, one in autumn and one in spring. In addition, they have the opportunity to work as editors of Ohio State's prize-winning, nationally distributed literary magazine, The Journal , and to serve on the editorial staff of our two annual book prizes, one in poetry and one in prose.

Course offerings are varied and numerous. Special topics graduate workshops (in the long poem, in characterization, in literary translation, in humor writing, and so on) ensure that, in addition to "regular" workshops, opportunities abound for experimentation. Our graduate program includes coursework designed for "crossing over," such as, poetry workshops for MFA fiction writers or essayists with little experience writing poems; and "forms" classes in prosody, the novel, the memoir, novellas, for example. 

Screenwriting for MFAs is offered regularly, and many students also elect to study playwriting or writing for performance as an elective. Some MFAs choose to pursue the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in the Fine Arts (GISFA), which allows them to take graduate courses in other arts disciplines. Indeed, Ohio State's size and breadth offer our students the chance to explore many disciplines that enrich their study and practice of creative writing.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Core faculty.

Marcus Jackson is the director of the Creative Writing Program. He earned a BA from the University of Toledo and continued his poetry studies at New York University (NYU) and as a Cave Canem fellow. His poems have appeared in such publications as  The American Poetry Review ,  The New Yorker  and  Tin House . His first collection of poetry,  Neighborhood Register , was released in 2011, and his second collection,  Pardon My Heart  (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books) came out in 2019. Please visit Marcus Jackson's  website . Email:   [email protected]

Kathy Fagan Grandinetti  is the author of five books of poems:  Sycamore  (Milkweed Editions, 2017);  The Raft , a National Poetry Series Award Winner;  MOVING & ST RAGE , winner of the 1998 Vassar Miller Prize for Poetry;  The Charm  (2002); and  LIP  (2009). Her poems have been widely anthologized and her work has appeared in such publications as  Poetry ,  The Paris Review ,  FIELD ,  The Kenyon Review ,  Slate ,  Ploughshares ,  The New Republic  and  Blackbird . She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Ingram Merrill Foundation, The Frost Place and the Ohio Arts Council. Director of the Creative Writing Program, she continues to serve as advisor to  The Journal , for which she and Michelle Herman were awarded the 2004 Ohioana Award for Editorial Excellence. Fagan is also series editor for The Ohio State University Press/ The Journal  Wheeler Poetry Prize. Please visit Kathy Fagan's  website . Email:  [email protected]

Lee Martin  is the author of the novels  The Bright Forever ( a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction);  River of Heaven ;  Quakertown ;  Break the Skin ; and  Late One Night . He has also published three memoirs:  From Our House ,  Turning Bones  and  Such a Life . His first book was the short story collection,  The Least You Need To Know , and a new collection,  The Mutual UFO Network , was published in 2018. His craft book,  Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life , came out in 2017. He is the co-editor of  Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors.  His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as  Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train, The Best American Mystery Stories  and  The Best American Essays . He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching from Ohio State, where he is a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English. Please visit Lee Martin's  website . Email:   [email protected]

Elissa Washuta  is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir. She is the author of three books:  Starvation Mode,   My Body Is a Book of Rules , named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and  White Magic , named a finalist for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology  Exquisite Vessel: Shapes of Native Nonfiction,  forthcoming from University of Washington Press. Her work has appeared in  Salon ,  The Chronicle of Higher Education ,  BuzzFeed  and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Potlatch Fund and Hugo House. Please visit Elissa Washuta's website . Email: [email protected]

Nick White is the author of the story collection  Sweet and Low  and the novel  How to Survive a Summer.  His fiction and essays have appeared in  The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, Indiana Review, Guernica  and elsewhere. A native of Mississippi, he earned a PhD in English and creative writing from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Please visit Nick White's  website . Email: [email protected]

Affiliated faculty

Angus Fletcher  is the Black List and Nicholl award-winning screenwriter of MIDDLE EARTH (produced by Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, directed by Michel Apted), WEE FREE MEN (produced by Allison Thomas and Gary Ross, based on the novel by Terry Pratchett), and VARIABLE MAN (produced by Isa Dick and Electric Shepherd, based on the novella by Philip K. Dick). He earned his PhD from Yale and has published articles on dramatic ethics and practice in Critical Inquiry, New Literary History, The Journal of the History of Philosophy, and a dozen other academic journals. His book Evolving Hamlet appeared on Palgrave in 2011, and his research and writing has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Prior to coming to Ohio State, he taught at USC, Stanford and Teach for America. Email: [email protected]

Alumni of the MFA Program in Creative Writing have had their fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction appear in  The Best American Essays, The Best New American Voices, The Best American Travel Writing, Tin House, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Yale Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, New Criterion, Field, Iowa Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Ploughshares, The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Quarterly West, Epoch, Five Points , and other notable venues.

Below are just a few of these outstanding alumni poets and writers.

Maggie Smith  is the author of  Weep Up  (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018);  The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison  (Tupelo Press 2015), winner of the Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry  Lamp of the Body  (Red Hen Press 2005), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award; and three prizewinning chapbooks. Her poems regularly appear in journals such as  The Paris Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Plume, Virginia Quarterly Review,  and  Guernica . The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and elsewhere, Smith is a freelance writer and editor in Bexley, Ohio, and she serves as a consulting editor to the  Kenyon Review . (MFA, 2003) Maggie Smith's website . 

Photo credit: Lauren Powell

Claire Vaye Watkins  (MFA, 2011) is the author of the novel  Gold, Fame, Citrus  (2015) and  Battleborn  , a collection of stories (2012).  Battleborn  was awarded The Story Prize and the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize and listed by the  San Francisco Chronicle  as one of the Best Books of 2012. Watkins was awarded an American Academy Arts & Letters Prize in 2012 and has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf. Her stories and essays have appeared in  Granta ,  One Story,   The Paris Review ,  Ploughshares ,  Glimmer Train ,  Best of the West 2011 , and  Best of the Southwest 2013.  Watkins is an assistant professor at Bucknell University and the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a non-profit creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

For more information about Watkins, her work, and the Mojave School, visit her website .

Photo credit: Heike Steinweg

Donald Ray Pollock  (MFA, 2009) is the author of the novel  The Devil All the TIme  (2011) and  Knockemstiff  (2008), a collection of stories. Pollock grew up in southern Ohio. At 17, He dropped out of high school to work in a meatpacking plant and then spent 32 years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio.  Knockemstiff  won the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, and  The Devil All the Time  was listed by Esquire as one of the Three Books Every Man Should Read. Pollock's work has appeared in  Third Coast, The Journal ,  Sou’wester ,  Chiron Review ,  River Styx ,  Boulevard ,  Folio, Granta ,  The New York Times Book Review ,  Washington Square , and  The Berkeley Fiction Review . He is the 2012 recipient of the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the most prestigious award for crime and detectives novels in France.

For more information about Pollock and his work, visit his website .

Yona Harvey  (MFA, 2001) is a literary artist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the poetry collection  Hemming the Water  (Four Way Books: New York), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University.

She is also the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant in literary nonfiction from The Pittsburgh Foundation. Her poems can be found in  jubilat, Gulf Coast, Callaloo, West Branch,  and various journals and anthologies, including  A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry  (Ed. Annie Finch). She lives not far from where jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams grew up. Williams married the spiritual to the secular in her music, and is a regular muse in Yona’s writing. She is an assistant professor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Visiting Writer John Murillo

Friday, September 22, 2023, at 5 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

John Murillo is the author of the poetry collections  Up Jump the Boogie  (Cypher 2010, Four Way Books 2020), finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Pen Open Book Award and  Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way 2020), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, Believer Poetry Award, Maya Angelou Book Award, Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the NAACP Image Award.  His other honors include the Four Quartets Prize from the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, two Larry Neal Writers Awards, a pair of Pushcart Prizes, the J Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, an NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cave Canem Foundation and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.   

Visiting Writer Melissa Faliveno

Friday, November 3, 2023, at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the debut essay collection  TOMBOYLAND , named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine and Electric Literature and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her essays, interviews and reviews have appeared in  Esquire, Paris Review, Bitch, Literary Hub, Ms Magazine, Brooklyn Rail  and  Prairie Schooner , among others, and in the anthology  SEX AND THE SINGLE WOMAN: 24 WRITERS REIMAGINE HELEN GURLEY BROWN’S CULT CLASSIC (Harper Perennial, 2022). Melissa is the Fall 2022 Distinguished Visiting Writer in the MFA program at UNC–Wilmington, was the 2020-21 Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC–Chapel Hill, and has also taught creative writing at Kenyon College, Sarah Lawrence College, Catapult and to incarcerated men, high school students and adults in and around New York City.

Visiting Writer Thao Thai

Friday, February 23, 2024, at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Thao Thai is a writer based out of Ohio, whose work has been published or is forthcoming in the  Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Real Simple, Catapult, The Sunday Long Read, Cup of Jo  and other publications. Thao’s debut novel,  Banyan Moon , is set to come out in June of 2023 (Mariner|HarperCollins). The novel has already been selected as an Indie Next pick, Indies Introduce Title, Book of the Month pick and the HarperCollins Lead Read of Summer 2023. Thao received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University in 2012.

Visiting Writer Daisy Hernández

Friday, October 28, 2022 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Daisy Hernández is the author of  The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease  (Tin House, 2021), which won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was selected as an inaugural title for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Program.  The Kissing Bug  was named a top 10 nonfiction book of 2021 by  Time  magazine and was a finalist for the New American Voices Award. Daisy is also the author of the award-winning memoir,  A Cup of Water Under My Bed  (Beacon Press, 2014), and co-editor of the classic feminist anthology,  Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism  (Seal Press, 2002). Her essays and fiction have appeared in numerous publications, and she has reported for  National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times  and  Slate .

Visiting Writer Yona Harvey

Friday, November 18, 2022 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collections  You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love  (Four Way Books, 2020), which won the Believer Book Award for Poetry, and  Hemming the Water  (Four Way Books, 2013), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She co-wrote  Marvel’s World of Wakanda  with Roxane Gay, as well as  Black Panther & the Crew  with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Yona has worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with  Creative Nonfiction  magazine and is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow. She is also a 2001 alumna of the Ohio State University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Visiting Writer Jamel Brinkley

Friday, March 3, 2023 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Jamel Brinkley is the author of  A Lucky Man: Stories  (Graywolf Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Jamel’s writing has appeared in  A Public Space, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, The Believer  and  Tin House , and it has been anthologized twice in  The Best American Short Stories . Jamel was also the 2016-2017 Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, a 2018-2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and he has been awarded a 2021 O. Henry Prize.

Visiting Writer Laura van den Berg

Friday, October 1, 2021 at 4 p.m. virtually. 

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. Her most recent collection of stories, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears , was published by FSG in July and named a “best summer read” by The New York Times, Time Magazine, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and Entertainment Weekly , among others. She is the author of two previous collections, The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013) and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009) and the novels Find Me (FSG, 2015) and The Third Hotel (FSG, 2018). The Third Hotel was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, an IndieNext Pick, a Powell’s Books Indispensable Pick and named a “best book of 2018” by over a dozen publications. Laura’s honors include the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and the Jeannette Haien Ballard Writer’s Prize.

Visiting Writer LaTanya McQueen

Friday, November 5, 2021 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

McQueen’s novel  When the Reckoning Comes  was published with Harper Perennial , an imprint of HarperCollins . She’s also the author of  And It Begins Like This , an essay collection. She received her MFA from Emerson College, her PhD from the University of Missouri, was the 2017-2018 Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College and is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Coe College. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and has been published in  Carve Magazine, Passages North, Bennington Review, Fugue, Ninth Letter, Grist, The Florida Review, Black Warrior Review, Fourteen Hills, New Orleans Review, Nimrod, New South and Booth . She’s won the Disquiet Literary Prize and the Walker Percy Prize in Fiction.

Visiting Writer Ilya Kaminsky

Friday, March 4, 2022 at 5:30 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of  Deaf Republic  (Graywolf Press) and  Dancing In Odessa  (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including  Ecco Anthology of International Poetry  (Harper Collins) and  Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva  (Alice James Books). His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship,  Poetry  magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).

Visiting Writer Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Friday, March 26, 2021, at 4 p.m. on Zoom

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments  (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-In Volcano  (2007) and Miracle Fruit  (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite , a collaboration of garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series , The New York Times Magazine , ESPN , Ploughshares , American Poetry Review  and Tin House .

Visiting Writer Liza Wieland

Friday, September 13, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Liza Wieland is the author of eight works of fiction and a volume of poems. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the 2017 winner of the Robert Penn Warren Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her novel,  A Watch of Nightingales , won the 2008 Michigan Literary Fiction Award and her previous novel,  Land of Enchantment , was a longlist finalist for the 2016 Chautauqua Prize. She lives in Oriental, North Carolina, and she teaches at East Carolina University.

Native Craft Reading Series presents Billy-Ray Belcourt

Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree nation. He is a PhD candidate and 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta; his doctoral project is a creative-theoretical one called "The Conspiracy of NDN Joy." He is also a 2016 Rhodes Scholar and holds an MSt in women's studies from the University of Oxford and Wadham College. In the First Nations Youth category, Belcourt was awarded a 2019 Indspire Award, which is the highest honor the Indigenous community bestows on its own leaders. In January 2020, he will be an assistant professor of Indigenous creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

Visiting Writer Nicole Sealey

Friday, October 18, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311 MFA Workshop: Saturday, October 19 in Denney Hall 311

Born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of  Ordinary Beast , finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and  The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named , winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include a 2019 Rome Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, the Poetry International Prize and a Daniel Varoujan Award, grants from the Elizabeth George and Jerome Foundations, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell Colony and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in  The New Yorke r and elsewhere. Sealey holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Formerly the executive director at Cave Canem Foundation, she is a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

Visiting Writer Robert Fieseler

Friday, January 10, 2020 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311

Robert W. Fieseler is the 2019 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association "Journalist of the Year" and the acclaimed debut author of  Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation , winner of the Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime and Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers. He graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and lives with his husband and dog in New Orleans.

Visiting Writer Dan Kois

Friday, January 24, 2020 at 4 p.m. in Denney Hall 311 MFA Workshop: Saturday, January 25 in Denney Hall 311

Dan Kois is the author of  How to Be a Family  and the co-author of  The World Only Spins Forward .

Visiting Writer Amy Fusselman

Wednesday, September 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the Wexner Center for the Arts Bookstore

Amy Fusselman  is a writer, artist and publisher based in New York City. She is the author of three books of nonfiction:  Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted and Afraid to Die  (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015);  The Pharmacist’s Mate  (McSweeney’s, 2013); and  8  (McSweeney’s, 2013). Her new book,  Idiophone , was released from Coffee House Press on July 3rd, 2018. Her writing has appeared in  ARTnews, Ms., The New York Times, Artnet, The Believer, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency,  and  The Atlantic , among other places. Fusselman is the publisher at  Ohio Edit , a digital art and literary journal that offers 99-cent downloadable essays  on thought-provoking topics. 

Visiting Writer Danez Smith

Reading: Friday, September 14 at 4:30 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall. MFA Student Workshop: Saturday, September 15.

Danez Smith  is a Black, queer, poz writer and performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of  Don’t Call Us Dead  (Graywolf Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, and  [insert] boy  (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is also the author of two chapbooks,  hands on your knees  (2013, Penmanship Books) and  black movie  (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Danez's work has been featured widely including in/on  Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine,  and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. 

Visiting Writer Alice McDermott

Reading: Friday, September 28 at 4:30 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall. MFA Student Workshop: Saturday, September 29.

Alice McDermott ’s first novel,  A Bigamists' Daughter , was published to wide acclaim in 1982.  That Night  (1987), her second novel, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and for the  Los Angeles Times  Book Prize.  At Weddings and Wakes  (1992), her third novel, became a  New York Times  bestseller.  Charming Billy  (1998), won the National Book Award. Ms. McDermott's other books include  Child of My Heart  and  After This .  Ms. McDermott received her BA from the State University of New York at Oswego, and her MA from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught at the University of California at San Diego and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg and Hollins Colleges in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. Her short stories have appeared in  Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle  and  Seventeen . The recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, Ms. McDermott is currently writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

Visiting Writer Melissa Febos

Reading: Friday, March 1 in 311 Denney Hall. Time: 4 p.m. MFA Student Workshop: Saturday, March 2.

Melissa Febos  is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir,  Whip Smart  (St. Martin’s Press 2010) and the essay collection,  Abandon Me  (Bloomsbury 2017), which  The New Yorker  called “mesmerizing,” and was an Indie Next Pick and named a Best Book of 2017 by  Esquire, Book Riot, The Cut, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Bustle, Refinery29, Salon , and  The Rumpus . The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University. She serves on the Board of Directors of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, the PEN America Membership Committee, and co-curated the Manhattan reading and music series, Mixer, for ten years. She curates literary events, teaches workshops, and speaks widely. The daughter of a sea captain and a psychotherapist, she was raised on Cape Cod and lives in Brooklyn. 

Native Craft Reading Series presents Tommy Pico

Friday, April 13, 2018 at 4 p.m. in Denney 311

Tommy “Teebs” Pico  is the founder and editor-in-chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press and zine that publishes art and writing. The author of absentMINDR (VERBALVISUAL, 2014)—the first chapbook APP published for iOS mobile/tablet devices—Pico was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow and a 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry and has published poems in BOMB, Guernica, [PANK] and elsewhere. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn, where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker.

Visiting Writer Gabe Habash

Friday, April 6, 2018 at 4 p.m. in Denney 238

Columbus native Gabe Habash comes back to read from his debut novel,  Stephen Florida .  Hanya Yanagihara, author of  A Little Life , says, "In  Stephen Florida , Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he's created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study."  Gabe is currently the fiction reviews editor for  Publishers Weekly . He holds an MFA from New York University.

Visiting Writer Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas (creative nonfiction)

Friday, February 23, 2018 at 4 p.m. in Denney 311 MFA Student Workshop: Saturday, February 24

Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas received a 2016 Writer’s Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her nonfiction book,  Don’t Come Back , was released in 2017 from Mad River Books, an imprint of the Ohio State Press. She has MFA degrees in both creative nonfiction and literary translation, both from the University of Iowa. She is also the author of  Drown Sever Sing .

Native Craft Reading Series presents Toni Jensen

Reading:  Monday, November 13, 2017 at 4:30 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall

Toni Jensen ’s first story collection,  From the Hilltop , was published through the Native Storiers Series at the University of Nebraska Press. Her stories have been published in journals such as  Ecotone ,  Denver Quarterly , and  Fiction International  and have been anthologized in  New Stories from the South ,  Best of the Southwest , and  Best of the West: Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri . She’s working on a collection-in-progress, called  Cowboyistan , about fracking and the sex trafficking of Indigenous women. She teaches in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas. She is Métis.

Visiting Writer Garth Greenwell (fiction)

Reading:  Saturday, November 4, 2017 at 5 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall MFA Student Workshop:  Saturday, November 4, 2017

Garth Greenwell  is the author of  What Belongs to You , which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the  Los Angeles Times  Book Prize. A  New York Times Book Review  Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into eleven languages. His short fiction has appeared in  The New Yorker, The Paris Review ,  A Public Space , and  VICE , and he has written criticism for  The New Yorker , the  London Review of Books , and the  New York Times Book Review , among others. He lives in Iowa City.

MFA Alumna Molly Patterson

Reading:  Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 4 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall

Molly Patterson  was born in St. Louis and lived in China for several years. Her work has appeared in several magazines, including  The Atlantic Monthly  and  The Iowa Review . She was the 2012-2013 Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel,  Rebellion , was published by Harper (HarperCollins) in August 2017.

Visiting Poet Tarfia Faizullah

Reading:  Friday, October 20, 2017 at 4:30 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall MFA Student Workshop:  Saturday, October 21, 2017

Bangladeshi American poet  Tarfia Faizullah  grew up in Midland, Texas. She earned an MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University program in creative writing. Her first book,  Seam  (2014), won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Faizullah’s honors and awards include an Associated Writers Program Intro Journals Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, a Copper Nickel Poetry Prize, a Ploughshares’Cohen Award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Margaret Bridgman Scholarship in Poetry. A Kundiman fellow, she lives in Detroit where she teaches at the University of Michigan and is an editor for the Asian American Literary Review and Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. Her second book is  Registers of Illuminated Villages  (Graywolf Press, 2018).

Visiting Writer Camille Dungy

Co-sponsored by project narrative.

Panel Discussion "A Conversation about Camille Dungy's Writing": Tuesday, September 19 at 4 p.m. in 311 Denney Hall Reading:  Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at 11 a.m. in 311 Denney Hall 

Camille T. Dungy  is the author of four collections of poetry:  Trophic Cascade  (Wesleyan UP, 2017),  Smith Blue  (Southern Illinois UP, 2011),  Suck on the Marrow  (Red Hen Press, 2010), and  What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison  (Red Hen Press, 2006). Her debut collection of personal essays is  Guidebook to Relative Strangers  (W. W. Norton, 2017). Dungy’s honors include an American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and a California Book Award silver medal. Her poems and essays have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, nearly thirty other anthologies, and over one hundred print and online journals.

Lia Purpura

April 7-9, 2017

Lia Purpura is the author of three collections of essays ( Rough Likeness, On Looking,  and  Increase ) in addition to a collection of translations and three books of poems. A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for  On Looking ), she has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship (Translation, Warsaw, Poland), and three Pushcart Prizes. Lia Purpura is Writer in Residence at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in Baltimore, MD and teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop  in Tacoma, WA. Recently, she has served as Bedell Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa’s MFA Program in Nonfiction.  www.liapurpura.com

Carl Phillips

October 22-23, 2016

Carl Phillips  is the author of numerous books of poetry, including  Reconnaissance ,  Silverchest ,  Double Shadow ,  Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006 , and  Riding Westward . His honors include the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Phillips served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2012. He is Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.

Benjamin Percy

September 23-25, 2016 

Benjamin Percy is the author of three novels, the most recent among them  The Dead Lands   (Grand Central/Hachette, April 2015), a post apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark saga. He is also the author of   Red Moon  (Grand Central/Hachette, May 2013) and  The Wilding  (Graywolf Press, 2010), as well as two books of short stories,  Refresh, Refresh  (Graywolf Press, 2007) and  The Language of Elk  (Grand Central/Hachette, 2012; Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006).  His craft book —  Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction  — will be published by Graywolf Press in October of 2016. And his next novel,  The Dark Net , is due out in 2017 with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He also writes the Green Arrow and Teen Titans series at DC Comics.  His honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Writers’ Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the Plimpton Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. He is a member of the WGA screenwriters’ guild and has sold scripts to FOX and Starz. He currently has several film and TV projects in development. 

Stuart Dybek

November 20-22, 2015

Stuart Dybek is the author of three books of fiction: I Sailed With Magellan , The Coast of Chicago , and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods . Both I Sailed With Magellan and The Coast of Chicago were New York Times Notable Books, and The Coast of Chicago was a One Book One Chicago selection.  Among Dybek’s numerous awards are a PEN/Malamud Prize “for distinguished achievement in the short story,” a Lannan Award, a Whiting Writers Award, an Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, several O.Henry Prizes, and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. 

Meghan Daum

January 29-31, 2016

Meghan Daum is the author of four books, most recently the collection of original essays The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion . She is also the editor of Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids . Her other books include the essay collection My Misspent Youth , the novel The Quality of Life Report , and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House , a memoir. Since 2005, Meghan has been an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times, covering cultural and political topics. She is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently an adjunct associate professor in the M.F.A. Writing Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Natalie Diaz

February 19-21, 2016

Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community. She is the author of the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012). Her honors and awards include the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf, the Narrative Poetry Prize, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Diaz lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, where she works with the last speakers of Mojave and directs a language revitalization program. 

BOOKS THAT COOK: The Making of a Literary Meal, A Food Writing Extravaganza

Thursday, March 26, 2015, Denney Hall 311 Food Writing Panel at 3 p.m. Reading at 4 p.m. Cooking Class (off-campus) at 6 p.m. (more details below and on  this flyer [pdf] )

Organized like a cookbook, Books that Cook:  The Making of a Literary Meal is a collection of American literature written on the theme of food.  The literary works within each section are an extension of these cookbooks, while the cookbook excerpts in turn become pieces of literature — forms of storytelling and memory-making all their own.  Each section offers a delectable assortment of poetry, prose and essays, and the selections all include at least one tempting recipe to entice readers to cook this book.    Edited by OSU alumni  Jennifer Cognard-Black  and  Melissa A. Goldthwaite , and including work by OSU creative writing professor  Kathy Fagan .

Food Writing Panel from 3-4 p.m. featuring:

Melissa Goldthwaite , Editor,  Books that Cook Jennifer Cognard-Black , Editor,  Books that Cook Colleen Leonardi , Managing Editor,  Edible Columbus Mike Bierschenk , Food Writer,  Optional Kitchen Nancy Yan , Lecturer, The Ohio State University Newark Jonathan Buehl , Associate Professor, Ohio State English

Literary Reading from 4-5 p.m. featuring:

Jennifer Cognard-Black , Editor,  Books that Cook Melissa Goldthwaite , Editor,  Books that Cook Kathy Fagan , Poet and Professor, MFA Faculty, OSU

Cooking Class (Hors d'Oeuvres) from 6-8 p.m.

with  Sarah Lagrotteria , Cooking Instructor and Recipe Editor for  Edible Columbus  at The Seasoned Farmhouse Cooking School in Clintonville

Gail Caldwell

Saturday, November 8, 2014 at 8 p.m. OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street

Gail Caldwell was the chief book critic for The Boston Globe and the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Her work was noted for “her insightful observations on contemporary life and literature.” She wrote  A Strong West Wind: A Memoir  (2006) about her native Texas, and Let's Take the Long Way Home (2010), a memoir of her friendship with author Caroline Knapp. Her latest book, New Life, No Instructions, was released in April 2014.  She has a Samoyed named Tula. 

Zadie Smith

Thursday, November 13, 2014 Mershon Auditorium/Wexner Center for the Arts 1871 N. High Street 5 p.m.

As of 2012, Zadie Smith has published four novels, all of which have received substantial critical praise. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors, and was also included in the 2013 list.[ She joined New York University's Creative Writing Program as a tenured professor on September 1, 2010. Smith has won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006 and her novel  White Teeth  was included in Time magazine's TIME:  100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 list.

Presented by the President and Provost's Diversity Lecture and Cultural Arts Series, with co-host The Humanities Institute.

Friday, January 16, 2015 at 7 p.m. OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street

Jamaal May is a poet, editor and educator from Detroit, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. He is the author of  Hum  (2013), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and two poetry chapbooks ( The God Engine  and  The Whetting of Teeth ). A graduate of Warren Wilson's MFA program for writers, Jamaal teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program.  

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

Friday, February 6, 2015 at 8 p.m. OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels,  Ms. Hempel Chronicles , a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and  Madeleine Is Sleeping , a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by the New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design. 

January 25, 2014 OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street 8 p.m.

Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of  Among the Missing , which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and  You Remind Me of Me , which was named one of the best books of the year by  The Washington Post ,  Chicago Tribune ,  San Francisco Chronicle ,  The Christian Science Monitor , and  Entertainment Weekly , among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including  The Best American Short Stories ,  Pushcart Prize , and  The O. Henry Prize Stories . He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing. 

November 25, 2013 311 Denney Hall 164 W. 17th Avenue 3 p.m.

Born in Miami,  Joy Castro  is the author of the novel Hell or High Water and the memoir The Truth Book . She teaches literature, creative writing, and Latino studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her work has appeared in Fourth Genre , Seneca Review  and The New York Times Magazine . 

Terrance Hayes

November 16, 2013 OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street 7:30 p.m.

Terrance Hayes  was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1971. He received a BA from Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina, and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh writing program. He is the author of  Lighthead  (Penguin, 2010), which won the National Book Award for Poetry;  Wind in a Box  (2006);  Hip Logic  (2002), which won the 2001 National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and  Muscular Music  (1999), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has received many honors and awards, including a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Hope Edelman

October 20, 2013 OSU Bookstore - Barnes & Noble Event Space, Second Floor 1598 N. High Street 4 p.m.

Hope Edelman  holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's degree in writing from the University of Iowa. She is the author of six nonfiction books: the international bestseller  Motherless Daughters  (1994), which was published in sixteen countries and translated into eleven languages;  Letters from Motherless Daughters  (1995), an edited collection of letters from readers;  Mother of My Mother  (1999), which looks at the depth and influence of the grandmother-granddaughter relationship;  Motherless Mothers  (2006), about the experience of being a mother when you don't have one; and  The Possibility of Everything  (2009), her first book-length memoir, set in Topanga Canyon, California, and Belize. In 2012 she collaborated with actors and filmmakers Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez to help them write their father-son memoir,  Along the Way .    

To find dates, times and locations for these events, check the event calendar.

• Alumni Writers Extravaganza The Alumni Writers Extravaganza is a celebration of Ohio State alumni creative writers and of creating writing at The Ohio State University. This major event takes place every three years. The next AWE will be in 2021. Please check back for more information as it becomes available. 
• Editors Panel This event, coordinated by the Writer's Guild, provides MFA students, as well as the greater university and Columbus community, with the opportunity to get firsthand advice from editors and, in some cases, literary agents. MCs ask questions provided to them by students. 

Epilog is an annual public performance which showcases creative work by third-year students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing. Epilog is an opportunity for the public to discover the prose and poetry that is being created by current MFA students. Following brief introductions by creative writing faculty, participating students give readings of their poetry, essays and stories in a formal, gala-like atmosphere. Chapbooks including selections from each of the presenting students are available at the event. This event is sponsored by the Writer's Guild.

• Student-Faculty Readings Twice each semester, a faculty member teams up with several MFA students to give a reading that is open to all. These events are a special showcase for the MFA students to read their work.
• Mother Tongue (MoTo) Mother Tongue evenings offer MFA students an opportunity to read work to their peers in a spirited setting off campus. Students often dedicate much time and creativity to their introductions of one another, fostering an entertaining evening rich with camaraderie. This event is coordinated by the Writer's Guild.
• Native Craft Reading Series

Writer's Guild

Each Ohio State University MFA candidate is a member of Writers Guild, an organization dedicated to enhancing student life and the university community through fundraisers, social activities, industry panels and recognition of graduating classmates. Its board serves as a liaison between graduate students and faculty to discuss developments and communicate news.

English Graduate Organization

The English Graduate Organization is a professional development, networking and advocacy group for all graduate students in the English department. EGO allows graduate students to have a tangible impact on departmental decisions and policies. Elected to specific committees, EGO officers coordinate academic and social events, serve on faculty committees and act as liaisons between graduate students and administration, providing a crucial voice in discussions that affect students’ day-to-day lives and future careers. In addition to promoting the interests of a dynamic graduate student body, EGO offers a valuable opportunity for its officers to prepare for service responsibilities in a profession that thrives on self-governance. EGO officers can vote at monthly English Department Council meetings, which all graduate students can attend.

The award-winning literary journal of The Ohio State University,  The Journal  contributes significantly toward the literary landscape of Ohio and the nation.  The Journal  seeks to identify and encourage emerging writers while also attracting the work of established writers to create a diverse and compelling magazine. 

The Young Writers Workshop is a week-long summer program for high school students in Columbus City Schools, charter schools in the City of Columbus, South-Western City Schools, and Reynoldsburg City Schools. Each year, the Ohio State creative writing faculty choose 30 students from the application pool to come live on campus and study writing with writers from around the country, including current students in and alumni of the Department of English's MFA Program in Creative Writing. Students are selected based on the promise of their writing — we don’t ask for grades or letters of recommendation, just a statement of intent and writing samples. The program is entirely funded by a generous donor, and all participating students receive full scholarships. 

Students attend daily workshops and courses taught by Ohio State faculty, graduate alumni and graduate students and have time to work on their own writing every day as well as attend readings, sessions with visiting writers in various fields, and other events, and participate in an open mic reading of their own work. The program concludes with a capstone event honoring the students and their families.

The deadline for all awards is  Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 11:59 pm EST . Please open the attachment below for award information, submission links and instructions.

To view a list of award winners, visit the Graduate Student Awards page.

Students in the MFA program must complete 39 semester hours of graduate-level course work, including:

• English 6763.01 Graduate Workshop in Poetry (3 credits)
• English 6763.02 Graduate Workshop in Poetry for MFA Students in Fiction or Creative Nonfiction (3 credits)
• English 6765.01 Graduate Workshop in Fiction (3 credits)
• English 6765.02 Graduate Workshop in Fiction for MFA Students in Poetry or Creative Nonfiction (3 credits)
• English 6768 Graduate Workshop in Creative Nonfiction (3 credits)
• English 6768.02 Graduate Workshop in Creative Nonfiction for MFA Students in Poetry or Fiction (3 Credits)
• English 6764 Graduate Workshop in Screenwriting (3 credits)
• Nine (9) hours of English other than creative writing workshops. A maximum of 3 hours of Independent Study may be counted toward fulfilling this requirement.  English 6781 (Introduction to the Teaching of First-Year English), English 6662 (Literary Publishing), and English 6769 (Professionalization) may be counted toward this total. Students are encouraged, but not required, to choose additional courses from OSU's broad offerings in literary studies, including the study of narrative, as well as folklore, film, linguistics and other areas.
• Three (3) hours of a course in literary forms (English 7871). Forms of Poetry and Forms of Fiction or Nonfiction are offered every year.  Topics vary; this course may be repeated.
• Three (3) hours of electives in related areas (e.g., other art forms such as music, theater or the visual arts; philosophy; history; literature as offered by departments other than our own, such as foreign language departments; comparative studies–or another relevant course approved by the student's advisor).  Courses must be taken at the graduate level (5000 level or above).  (Other elective courses, not counted toward credits required for graduation, may be taken at any level.)
• Nine (9) hours of creative thesis tutorial (English 8998); and an approved creative thesis, followed by an oral defense.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

All admitted students are fully funded for our three-year MFA program in Creative Writing. In addition, all students receive either a graduate teaching associateship, a Graduate School fellowship or a combination of the two. Funding is renewed on a yearly basis as long as the student maintains satisfactory academic progress.

• Graduate teaching associateships: Departmental funding is most often in the form of a graduate teaching associateship, for which the student receives a stipend of at least $22,000 for the nine-month academic year. The university also subsidizes 100% of student health insurance premiums and provides a tuition waiver for all GTAs. Students are responsible for COTA bus, student activity, Student Union and Recreation Center fees. Students on GTA appointments teach one course per term during the regular academic year.  
• Graduate School fellowships:  In addition to the funding provided by the Department of English, the Graduate School awards Recruitment Fellowships  on a competitive basis to students who are new to graduate education at Ohio State. The Department of English's admissions committee submits nominations to the Graduate School’s competition, and a selection committee reviewing nominations from across all graduate programs in the university awards the fellowships. Students may not apply directly for fellowship support. Each graduate program has a limited number of students who may be nominated for fellowship consideration. All Graduate School fellowships provide a monthly stipend, academic tuition and fees and a subsidy of 100% of the student health insurance premiums. These fellowships are nonrenewable and may not be deferred. 

The Graduate Admissions Committee for the Department of English will accept applications to the MFA program from students with an undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university.

The Graduate School requires that those admitted have an undergraduate grade point average of at least 3.0 on a scale of 4 (where 4.0=A) and at least a 3.0 on all previous graduate work. Our departmental criteria are higher: A GPA of at least 3.2 overall is preferred. Coursework in a foreign language is not required for admission.

If you have already earned an MFA in creative writing or are in the process of completing an MFA program in creative writing, you are not eligible for admission to our program. 

Submit all following items through the  Graduate Admissions Office :

• Application form and fee:  If you are interested in a fee waiver, please visit  this Graduate and Professional Admissions webpage .
• Three letters of recommendation: Please have your recommenders submit letters electronically using the link that will be provided when you select this option in the online application. Our preference is that your recommenders be faculty who have taught you or writers familiar with your work, as these are likely to be most useful to us.  But we understand that for those who have been out of school for some time and those who have not participated in writing workshops or conferences, this may be impossible. You will not be penalized for this, but we do ask that you choose your recommenders carefully from among the options you do have — those who have had the opportunity to work with you or supervise your work, for example. 
• Transcripts or record of marks for each university-level school attended:  Visit  this Graduate and Professional Admissions page   for detailed information about transcript submission. Send transcripts to the Office of Graduate and Professional Admissions; do not send transcripts to the Department of English. Include English translation of each of any foreign documents. Please do not send transcripts of course work taken at Ohio State as the Office of Graduate and Professional Admissions will obtain them directly from the Office of the University Registrar (at no cost to you).
• Personal statement  (one to two single-spaced pages): that describes your background as a writer and your purpose in pursuing this degree; this statement should address your writing interests and can also briefly describe your interest and/or experience in teaching.
• Creative writing sample:  15 to 25 pages of poetry; or 20 to 40 double-spaced pages of fiction; or 20 to 40 double-spaced pages of nonfiction. On the application uploader, upload your creative writing sample to the “Writing Sample” option. The writing sample is the most important part of your application. Please note that admission is to a single genre, so applicants should choose carefully the genre in which they wish to be considered.
• Curriculum vitae/resume  of no more than two pages.

Please note: As of autumn 2018, the Department of English at Ohio State no longer requires GRE scores for applications to its PhD or MFA programs. 

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

If your native language is not English:

• 19 on each section of the paper-based TOEFL
• 79 on the TOEFL iBT or TOEFL iBT Home Edition
• 550 on the TOEFL ITP for students in the American Language Program
• 7.0 on the IELTS Academic test or IELTS Indicator 
• 120 or higher

You can read more about the university's proof of English proficiency requirements here .

All admissions to the MFA program are made for the autumn semester only; the application portal for autumn 2025 will open on September 1, 2024. The application deadline for domestic applicants is December 2, 2024, and the application deadline for international applicants is November 25, 2024

Students must apply online and submit all materials (Graduate Admissions and Department requirements) electronically through the  Office of Graduate Admissions . Please note that your recommenders will receive an email from the university 1-3 days after you submit your application and they should follow the instructions in that email for uploading their letters.

• Do you accept applications for genre fiction? While we don’t in any way dislike or discourage genre fiction, our program is known for its literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry instructors and graduates. Familiarizing yourself with them and their work might be your best and most productive research as you consider to which programs you will apply.  
• Can I talk to current students and/or faculty at Ohio State? We very much appreciate your interest in our program, and we wish that all prospective students had the opportunity to speak with current students and/or faculty. With the volume of applications we receive each year, however, we are unfortunately unable to accommodate these requests. Admitted students are invited to attend our open house in the spring and meet current students and faculty members at that time.  
• I don’t have the required amount of English coursework listed on this page. What should I do? We would encourage you to apply. If your writing sample and application materials match what the committee is looking for, the credit requirement will be waived. It will not negatively impact your application in any way.  
• Can I apply for a fee waiver? If you are interested in applying for a fee waiver, please visit  this  webpage. Please note that the “PGD Program” option is unavailable to students applying for admission to the Department of English.  
• What if my recommenders don’t know me in a creative writing capacity? Our preference is that your recommenders be faculty who have taught you or writers familiar with your work, as these are likely to be most useful to us. However, we understand that for those who have been out of school for some time, and those who have not participated in writing workshops or conferences, this may be impossible. You will not be penalized for this, but we do ask that you choose your recommenders carefully from among the options you do have — those who have had the opportunity to work with you or supervise your work, for example.

For questions that can't be answered by the information above, the Creative Writing Program can be reached by  email   or by phone ( 614-247-9670 ).

[pdf] - Some links on this page are to Adobe .pdf files requiring the use of Adobe Reader. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact  [email protected] .

Creative Writing (MFA)

Program description.

The MFA Program in Creative Writing consists of a vibrant community of writers working together in a setting that is both challenging and supportive. This stimulating environment fosters the development of talented writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The program is not defined by courses alone, but by a life built around writing.

Through innovative literary outreach programs, a distinguished public reading series, an exciting public student reading series, special literary seminars with visiting writers, and the production of a high-quality literary journal, students participate in a dynamic literary community actively engaged in all aspects of the literary arts—writing, reading, teaching, publishing and community outreach. Students also have the opportunity to enjoy America's most literary terrain; New York University is situated in the heart of Greenwich Village, a part of the city that has always been home to writers.

The MFA in Creative Writing is designed to offer students an opportunity to concentrate intensively on their writing. This program is recommended for students who may want to apply for creative writing positions at colleges and universities, which often require the MFA degree. The MFA program does not have a foreign language requirement.

All applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) are required to submit the  general application requirements , which include:

• Academic Transcripts
• Test Scores  (if required)
• Applicant Statements
• Résumé or Curriculum Vitae
• Letters of Recommendation , and
• A non-refundable  application fee .

See Creative Writing for admission requirements and instructions specific to this program.

Program Requirements

Special project, program information.

Taken in four separate semesters. Students are required to take workshops in the genre in which they were admitted to the program.

Craft courses may be repeated provided they are taught by different instructors.

With the permission of that department and of the director of the CWP. 

Additional Program Requirements

A creative special project in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction consisting of a substantial piece of writing—a novel, a collection of short stories or essays, a memoir, a work of literary nonfiction, or a group of poems—to be submitted in the student’s final semester. The project requires the approval of the student’s faculty adviser and of the director of the CWP.

The MFA degree may also be earned through the Low Residency MFA Writers Workshop in Paris. Under this model, degree requirements remain the same, although Craft courses and Workshops take the form of intensive individualized courses of study with the faculty, including three substantial packet exchanges of student work per semester. All students earning the MFA degree through the low-residency program must also participate in five ten-day residencies in Paris, which involve a diverse series of series of craft talks, lectures, readings, special events, faculty mentorship meetings, and professional development panels.

Sample Plan of Study

Please note : The following is a sample plan of study for a student enrolled in the poetry track. Fiction and creative nonfiction plans of study would parallel the below, substituting the Workshop requirements accordingly (i.e., Workshop in Fiction or Workshop in Creative Nonfiction, respectively).

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the program, graduates will have achieved the following learning outcomes:

• Graduate students in the Creative Writing Program at NYU work intensively with faculty mentors in writing workshops and individual conferences to learn and master the basic elements of the craft of fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry.
• Students are expected to read widely and deeply, and to acquire a broad practitioner’s knowledge of literature in their declared concentration (poetry, creative nonfiction, or fiction).
• Students are taught to read carefully and critically, and in doing so learn to read as writers. By studying great novels, poems, and works of literary nonfiction by other writers, students learn how to write their own.
• The two-year program of intensive study culminates in the completion of a creative thesis— a novel, a collection of stories or essays, or a collection of poems. The thesis manuscript, ideally, is a working draft of a first book. Many program alumni go on to publish books and win awards for their writing.

Grading and GPA Policy

Nyu policies, graduate school of arts and science policies, program policies.

To qualify for the degree, a student must have a GPA of at least 3.0, must complete a minimum of 24 points with a grade of B or better, and may offer no more than 8 points with a grade of C (no more than 4 points with a grade of C in creative writing workshops). A student may take no more than 36 points toward the degree.

University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages .

Academic Policies for the Graduate School of Arts and Science can be found on the Academic Policies page . 

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• UC Berkeley
• Letters & Science

Creative Writing Minor

Graduate programs, university of california, berkeley graduate admissions office.

http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/prospective/

The University of California, Berkeley does not offer a graduate program in Creative Writing. Below is a list of selected Creative Writing graduate programs offered by other colleges and universities:

Creative Writing graduate programs

ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY – Los Angeles, California – Creative Writing M.F.A. at AULA ARIZONA STATE – Tempe, Arizona – Creative Writing M.F.A. at ASU BOSTON UNIVERSITY – Boston, Massachusetts – Creative Writing M.F.A. at BU BROOKLYN COLLEGE – Brooklyn, New York – Creative Writing M.F.A. at BC COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY – New York, New York – Creative Writing M.F.A. at Columbia CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY – Montreal, Quebec, Canada – M.A. in English (Creative Writing Option) at Concordia GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY – Fairfax, Virginia – Creative Writing M.F.A. at GMU GODDARD COLLEGE – Plainfield, Vermont – Creative Writing M.F.A. at Goddard INDIANA UNIVERSITY – Bloomington, Indiana – Creative Writing M.F.A. at IU NEW YORK UNIVERSITY – New York, New York –  Creative Writing M.F.A. at NYU or M.A. in English with Concentration in Creative Writing at NYU SAINT MARY’S COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA – Moraga, California – Creative Writing M.F.A. at SMC SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY – San Francisco, California – Creative Writing M.A. and M.F.A. at SFSU TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY – San Marcos, Texas – Creative Writing M.F.A. at Texas State STANFORD UNIVERSITY Stegner Fellowship – Palo Alto, California UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA – Birmingham, Alabama – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Alabama UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA – Tucson, Arizona –  Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Arizona UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS – Fayetteville, Arkansas – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Arkansas UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – Creative Writing M.F.A. Options at UBC UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS – Davis, California – English M.A. with an Emphasis in Creative Writing at UCD UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE – Irvine, California – English M.F.A. in Writing at UCI UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE – Riverside, California – M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at UCR UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA – Norwich, United Kingdom – Creative Writing M.A. at UEA UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA – Gainesville, Florida – Creative Writing M.F.A. at UF UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON – Houston, Texas – M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing and M.F.A. in English: Creative Writing at UH UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO – Moscow, Idaho – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Idaho UNIVERSITY OF IOWA – Iowa City, Iowa – Creative Writing M.F.A. in English at U of Iowa and M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing at U of Iowa UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND – College Park, Maryland – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Maryland UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN – Ann Arbor, Michigan – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Michigan UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA – Missoula, Montana – Creative Writing M.F.A. at U of Montana UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA – Las Vegas, Nevada – Creative Writing M.F.A. at UNLV UNIVERSITY OF OREGON – Eugene, Oregon – Creative Writing M.F.A. at UO WARREN WILSON COLLEGE – Asheville, North Carolina – MFA Program for Writers at WWC

Announcements

• Fall 2024 Course List
• Summer 2024 Course List
• Spring 2024 Course List
• Berkeley Holloway Poetry Series – Fall 2024
• UC Berkeley Lunch Poems 2024-25
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