Fairfield’s two-year, low-residency MFA program helps writers develop their literary voice and make connections that lead to publication. Students receive mentorship from an award-winning faculty of authors and gather for nine-day residencies on Enders Island. Degrees are offered in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or dramatic writing. Concentrations are available in publishing, spiritual writing, social justice, and literary health and healing.
View full November eLitPak Newsletter here.
Application Deadline: January 1.
One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials; take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction; and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at our website.
View full November eLitPak Newsletter here.
Guest Post by Samantha Tucker
When I applied to MFA programs, it was with the intention of finding a writing community. During my time at The Ohio State University, I was lucky to foster strong relationships with my classmates through our shared experience and dedication to the written word. To this day, I continue to edit and be generously edited by a group of talented writers, most of whom I met in my very first class, a nonfiction workshop with the writer Lee Martin.
But what is a writing community when the people sharing their art are only able to do so virtually? And when writers find themselves in the middle of so many American catastrophes, where do we find the urge to create at all? I asked Lee Martin, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State, for insight on his teaching and writing life during a pandemic.
Lee: We seem to be adapting well. I love my students, and the level of engagement seems to be high. It’s not quite the same, of course, as sitting around a table, but we’re doing fine. I’ve had some students comment on how our Zoom meetings give them a chance to feel a part of our writing community, so that’s a good thing. I just wish we could do the things we used to do—go out for $4 burger night at Brazen Head Pub, have spaghetti dinners at my and Cathy’s house, have bowling parties, etc. Ah well, I hope we’ll be able to do those things and more very soon.
Lee: I find myself writing steadily as a way of escaping the reality of what’s going on in the world around me. It’s a comfort to me to escape into the worlds of my own making in novels and stories set before the pandemic. I’m only now working on something more current that, of course, will eventually have to face the pandemic head-on.
Lee: I’ve been thinking a lot about how to stay in the present moment of what delights me rather than thinking about all that depresses me or makes me fear for the future. Silence is a good thing. If we can find those places of silence we can fill them with the efforts of our own choosing rather than the worries and the fears that the current climate places upon us. Today, for instance, Cathy and I went out to Inniswood Metro Gardens and disappeared into the natural world and immediately felt our breath coming more easily. Such places and moments are all around us. All we have to do is look for them.
Reviewer bio: Samantha Tucker is an anti-racist essayist in Columbus, Ohio. Find her words at www.theamericandreamstartshere.com.
Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, home of the flagship low-residency Spalding MFA in Writing program, is launching a new online literary magazine, Good River Review. The first issue will appear in Winter 2021.
Good River Review resides at Spalding in Louisville, Kentucky, which sits on the Ohio River, providing inspiration for the name: Ohio is a Seneca word for good river. Issues will appear twice a year. Between issues, the website will regularly publish interviews; book reviews; reviews of new plays, television, and films; craft essays; and literary news.
“We intend to publish the best writing in all the genres we teach in our graduate writing programs,” Kathleen Driskell (chair of the School of Writing who will serve as editor-in-chief) said. “We love writing that blurs boundaries, so contributors will find their work published as prose, lyrics, or drama.” The journal will also publish writing for children and young adults, as well as original web, TV, and short film productions.
The journal’s submission period will be ongoing. Good River Review allows for simultaneous submissions and does not charge reading or submission fees. For more information, email goodriverreview@spalding.edu.
Application Deadline: January 1. One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials, take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction, and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at mfagreensboro.org.
Earn your MA with an emphasis in Creative Writing in the vibrant city of Mobile, near some of our country’s best beaches. Tuition waivers and assistantships are available as are additional scholarships for excellence and summer creative writing projects. Home of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing. For more information, visit our website: www.southalabama.edu/colleges/artsandsci/english/.
Application Deadline: January 1
One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials; take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction; and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at our website.
Application Deadline: January 1.
One of the first creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program offering fully funded assistantships with stipends and health insurance. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials, take courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction, and pursue opportunities in college teaching or editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at mfagreensboro.org.
The MFA in Creative Writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato seeks to meet the needs of students who want to strike a balance between the development of individual creative talent and close study of literature and language. The program helps to develop work in the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Students typically spend three years completing coursework, workshops, and book-length theses.
Current faculty includes Robin Becker, Candace Black, Geoff Herbach, Diana Joseph, Chris McCormick, Richard Robbins, and Michael Torres. Recent visiting writers include Juan Felipe Herrera, Marcus Wicker, Leslie Nneka Arimah, Danez Smith, Layli Long Soldier, and Ada Limón.
Students have the opportunity to grow within a rich and active community of writers with the Good Thunder Reading Series, the Writers Bloc Open Reading Series, and working on literary magazine Blue Earth Review.
Stop by their listing at NewPages to learn more.
MFA in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is designed to help graduate students develop their talents and abilities as writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Graduate teaching assistants teach special topics undergraduate creative writing courses as well as first-year and second-year writing. Students also have the option to work as editors of the prize-winning literary magazine, The Journal, and to serve on the editorial staff of two annual book prizes.
All students are fully funded for three years in a program well known for its sense of community and a faculty that is committed to teach as much as they are to their own writer. Current faculty includes Kathy Fagan Grandinetti, Michelle Herman, Marcus Jackson, Lee Martin, Elissa Washuta, and Nick White. Recent writers who have visited the program include Tarfia Faizullah, Melissa Febos, Garth Greenwell, Dan Kois, Nicole Sealey, and Danez Smith.
The program also offers special topics in addition to the regular workshops so opportunities abound for students to experiment.
Stop by NewPages to learn more about the program.
The Michener Center for Writers is the only MFA program in the world that provides full and equal funding to every writer, yet it is the extraordinary faculty and sense of community that most distinguishes them. Theirs is a three-year, fully funded residency program with a unique interdisciplinary focus. While writers apply and are admitted in a primary genre—fiction, poetry, playwriting, or screenwriting—they also study a secondary genre during their time in Austin.
Enrolled students have no teaching duties, allowing them to fully commit themselves to their writing. Only 12 writers are admitted to the program each year so that faculty have ample time to devote to every writer. Current faculty includes Joanna Klink, Lisa Olstein, Roger Reeves, Dean Young, Edward Carey, Oscar Casares, Peter LaSalle, Bret Anthony Johnston, Elizabeth McCracken, Deb Olin Unferth, Stuart Kelban, Richard Lewis, Cindy McCreery, Beau Thorne, Annie Baker, Liz Engelman, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Kirk Lynn, and KJ Sanchez.
Writers also have the opportunity gain professional editing experience with literary magazine Bat City Review; a collaborative process between the Michener Center for Writers, the New Writers Project, and Studio Art.
Stop by their listing at NewPages to learn more.