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University of North Carolina Wilmington

Wilmington , NC

http://uncw.edu/writers/mfa/index.html

Degrees Offered

Fiction, Poetry, CNF

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Program length, financial aid.

Currently, we support approximately 40 percent of our MFA students with teaching assistantships and other types of awards; we continue to work energetically toward our goal of providing support for all MFA students. All applicants to our MFA program are automatically considered for available teaching assistantships and scholarships, which are awarded on a competitive basis (via confidential application ranking scores). Teaching experience is not necessary.

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While most graduate students in UNCW’s program are writing with the aim of commercial publication, and the knowledge they gain in the Pub Lab will no doubt help them in that regard, we hope that participation in publishing arts courses and internships will broaden and inform their understanding of books and communication in general.

For graduate students hoping to pursue careers in publishing, including management of literary publications and promotion of writers’ events, the Pub Lab provides an excellent training ground. Students completing any of the following publishing courses are eligible for assistantship opportunities in the Department of Creative Writing and elsewhere; Lookout Books interns (chosen each semester by application) gain valuable editorial, design, marketing, and business management skills as well.

Cross-genre study

While students apply in and focus primarily on one genre, cross-genre study is encouraged.

• Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams MFA 2007
• Xhenet Aliu MFA 2007
• Stephanie Andersen MFA (CNF) 2006
• Peter C. Baker MFA (Fiction) 2014
• Michelle Bliss MFA
• Emma Bolden MFA (Poetry) 2005
• Nina De Gramont MFA 2006
• David Harris-Gershon MFA
• Ben Hoffman MFA (Fiction) 2013
• Rochelle Hurt MFA (Poetry) 2011
• Gwendolyn Knapp MFA (Fiction) 2006
• Michael Ramos MFA 2016
• Whitney Ray MFA 2013
• Aurora Shimshak MFA (CNF) 2018
• Laura Price Steele MFA 2016
• Matt Tullis MFA (CNF) 2005
• The Cyborg Jillian Weiss MFA (CNF) 2016

Send questions, comments and corrections to [email protected] .

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The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing is a two-year full residency program with an emphasis on providing studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Our students develop their particular talents through small classes in writing, literature, and publishing. As part of a community of writers, students read and comment on each other’s work under the guidance of distinguished faculty, who also meet with students in one-on-one tutorials.

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Ecotone is the winner of CLMP’s 2023 Firecracker Award for Magazines/General Excellence. Thanks to our contributors and staff!

Work with Ecotone: Opportunities for UNCW MFA students

E cotone is made by faculty and MFA students in the department of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Our work is intense, intensely collaborative, and a lot of fun. MFA editors and designers emerita have gone on to positions at such magazines and presses as Sierra , Southern Humanities Review , Longleaf Review , Graywolf Press, Autumn House Press, the University of Minnesota Press, and Milkweed Editions, to name a few—as well as teaching and publishing their own work. Join us!

Want to be part of the Ecotone team? Prospective MFA students: Details about the MFA program at UNCW can be found on UNCW’s MFA program page , and details about how to apply can be found on our prospective students page . Applications for fall 2023 are due January 7, 2023.

Current MFA students who have not take the Ecotone practicum before: Please see the course descriptions page for details about the upcoming CRW524: Ecotone practicum, offered each fall. Then, using the instructions in the course description, write to editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell to request permission to register. (The address listed on this page is for students and not for inquiries about submissions. Thanks for your understanding.)

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Ecotone readers and staff members (practicum course): The magazine offers two intensive practicums for UNCW MFA students. CRW524, taught by editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell, is for students new to the magazine. This practicum runs only in the fall semester. The work for the course includes learning the magazine’s aesthetic, reading submissions, fact checking forthcoming work, setting run order, drafting paratext, and brainstorming special features and promotions, among other things. The course may be taken more than once. If you’re a current or incoming UNCW MFA student who is interested in working with the magazine and/or applying for an editorial position, please contact Bell for permission to register. Details can be found in the course description, on this page .

Editors (practicum course): Students who have taken the initial practicum in a fall semester may apply in spring for section-editor positions with the magazine, in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Section editors take an advanced practicum, also taught by Bell, in which they manage submissions and reading in their genre, acquire work, top edit, and lead edit, among other tasks.

Graduate assistant/managing editor (paid assistantship): Typically every other year, the editor selects an MFA student to become managing editor of Ecotone. This graduate assistantship, at twenty hours per week, is awarded to a rising second-year MFA student without an existing assistantship. The managing editor works closely with the editor and has the opportunity to learn a wide range of skills related to magazine editing, production, and promotion.

Designers (paid assistantships): The magazine’s interior spreads are designed by teaching assistants in The Publishing Laboratory, supervised by art director Michael Ramos. These assistantships are awarded upon acceptance to the MFA program. In addition, one Pub Lab TA, selected by the faculty before entering their second year in the program, serves as Ecotone ’s designer, and works with the art director and editor on our isssues’ interior layout, among other design projects.

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2022 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

• creative writing

By CanadianKate March 22, 2021 in Literary

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CanadianKate

For those of us who plan to apply for a Creative Writing MFA in 2021 (start date 2022)

• CHRISTOPHER QUANG BUI and Brother Panda

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March 3, 2022

GUYS I GOT INTO IOWA OMFG

March 10, 2022

WAITLISTED AT HOLLINS!!!!!!!

February 11, 2022

Cross posted to Draft but I JUST GOT INTO GEORGE MASON???? FOR POETRY???? WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL??? I'M SO HAPPY I just checked the portal and the decision was there I haven't heard about notifs or

Hi, I may or may not apply this fall. It all depends if I can obtain letters of rec from these continuing studies English instructors since I've been out of school for eight years. It would be my first application cycle.  ?

• CanadianKate , Brother Panda and Leeannitha

Hi! I am an extreme planner and planning to apply this year. Working on getting my list of schools whittled down over the next few months. :) 

• CanadianKate , Leeannitha , Brother Panda and 1 other
• 2 weeks later...

Hello! This will be my second time applying. (Didn’t apply last year but the year before.) I am starting much earlier this year than last time!

So far, I am applying to Iowa (fiction), UMass Amherst (poetry), Stegner Fellowship @ Stanford (LOL- thought I’d give it a shot) and Michener. Going to be adding some more as I narrow it down. 

Brother Panda

On 3/22/2021 at 3:26 PM, CanadianKate said: For those of us who plan to apply for a Creative Writing MFA in 2021 (start date 2022)

Thanks for starting this! Didn’t apply for the season getting results right now but did do some major lurking. 

• 3 weeks later...

On 3/22/2021 at 12:26 PM, CanadianKate said: For those of us who plan to apply for a Creative Writing MFA in 2021 (start date 2022)

Hey, thanks for starting a new thread, Kate! 

Oof, here we go again...

• CanadianKate and Brother Panda
• 3 yr dr. t pinned this topic

Hey all! I'm an MFA student who haunts these forums because I remember what it was like to be waiting to hear back from programs. I have a few things to say to applicants if you're willing to listen. 

1) Only apply to funded programs. I know it's old advice, but  it's still good advice. Even funded programs that are "lower" tier are still better than the best unfunded program. Consider that Columbia costs around 150k, comparable to medical school, and that even doctors have a hard time paying off their loans. So please don't think you'll be paying it off with writing. Only go to a non-funded school if you have 150k to spend, in which case, do it if you really want to. It will still be the same thing--some workshops, some other classes, some award-winning writers. Every MFA has that stuff.

2) Actually do your homework. Read some work by the authors at these programs. If you like the work, mention that author by name in your statement of purpose. Everyone loves to be complimented, and they will feel good knowing that you have actually done the work of seriously looking into the school. And speaking of SoPs, actually take the time to truly tailor each one to the school.

3) Submit your best (and favorite) work. Take your best and favorite story or two (or poem or essay) and revise and revise and revise until every single word can stand trial and still remain in the story. As Raymond Carver said (quoting another author), you are finished revising when, on one pass, you take a single comma out of the story, and on the next pass, you put it back in.

4) Submit and forget. Once you've submitted, go back to doing things you love. Go to the gym. Hang out with friends. Anything that will be good for your soul and push the dreaded decision letter out of your mind.

Good luck everyone! It took me a couple application rounds to get into a program. If you don't get in, just keep living and writing and try again next time.

• jasey roberts , CHRISTOPHER QUANG BUI , evergreen13 and 3 others

Hey, y'all! Glad to see some familiar faces around here. For those of you who don't know me, I've been on GradCafe for a couple years. I did two rounds of applications before I got into the right program, and this board was so helpful! I'll be popping in occasionally to offer my opinions/bother y'all.

It's still way early in the cycle, but I will say: don't underestimate the importance of the research phase! I rushed through it my first round, and it bit me in the butt. If funding is a major concern (and it should be for most applicants), I recommend digging deep for less famous programs. UMass, Michener, Iowa, etc. are great, but applying to 5 programs that accept >1% of applicants gives you much lower chances than applying to one program that accepts 10% (e.g. Hollins -- which is still fully-funded and well-respected). And trust me, each program you add to your list piles on more work than you think.

Aaaanyway, good luck, everyone! I'll see you around :)

I was a bit of  lurker last year. I can't even remember what my username was. But I am taking the 2022 application round much more seriously. I've already started on my writing sample. I know someone else started a thread for 2022. The problem is she called it 2021, which is the same thing the thread was called last year. People are going to end posting on both threads called 2021, and we'll have to check two threads. It is better to have a thread called 2022. So what are people doing: are they editing their writings sample from last year, or are they starting from scratch? 

After getting rejected this year I was finally able to put MFAs out of my mind. I didn't feel at all motivated for this next application cycle, even though I explicitly had the intentions of applying again. Well, now I'm finally sucked back into thinking about it every day.

Janice Salley

Considering applying to (in alphabetical order):

Alabama Alaska Denver Houston Iowa Johns Hopkins Kansas Mississippi Missouri Nebraska Syracuse Tennessee Vanderbilt WashU (in St. Louis)  

lenagator1997

I'm an incoming MFA CW Nonfiction student going to The University of New Hampshire who applied in Fall 2020. If anyone wants any advice on the application process as a whole, or about any of the programs I applied to below let me know! My biggest pieces of advice are:

1. Have your portfolio reflect your best work, as well as the widest range of your abilities as a writer possible. Admission committees like to see your depth.

2. Ask for your letters of recommendation as early as possible to have a stress-free life for you and your professor.

3. Cast a wide net when applying for schools. I know they say rankings and selectivity don't matter but they do. (see book below for some statistics)

4. Figure out what type of program works best for you. Consider if you want high or low res, cross genre or a more focused program, size, faculty, ect.

Also here is a link to the book: The Insiders Guide to Graduate Degrees in Creative Writing, which I wish I would have found sooner in the process: https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Graduate-Degrees-Creative-Writing/dp/1350000418

University of Wyoming

University of Minnesota

Columbia College Chicago

Rosemont College

University of New Hampshire

Hollins College

Sarah Lawrence

UNC Wilmington

Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) University of Washington (Seattle)

Colorado State

Hofstra University

Hey Guys, ( I think I posted on the wrong forum but if not, apologies for the double post!)

Washington University in St. Louis (WashU)

University of Washington (Seattle)

On 5/31/2021 at 12:52 AM, mrvisser said: After getting rejected this year I was finally able to put MFAs out of my mind. I didn't feel at all motivated for this next application cycle, even though I explicitly had the intentions of applying again. Well, now I'm finally sucked back into thinking about it every day.

After being rejected on the first round, I didn't think about my next round of MFA applications until mid July. The urge to apply came, went, then came back again. It's one of the things that stuck in my mind, much like writing, and there wasn't a way to get rid of it completely.

Hi, lenagator1997 .  Where did you hear that you should show "depth"? It just sounds impossible to do with the word caps. 

2 hours ago, molly s said: Hi, lenagator1997 .  Where did you hear that you should show "depth"? It just sounds impossible to do with the word caps. 

This might not be for all MFA programs, but I've observed if the page limits for the portfolios are 30+ or 20+ pages on certain applications, they like to see the different types of skills you have as a writer. (Unless you want to submit 20+ pages of a fiction novel. I'm nonfiction so I am less well versed in what you would do for that.) I made a very diverse portfolio which showed my range of style and thus depth. Even if the page limit was 10 pages, I would submit two very different essays in the two contrasting forms I was strongest in. (I think I had at least four different essays in my portfolio if the page limit was 30+ pages).

" different types of skills." - lenagator1997

Can you list these skills? All them, if possible because I don't really understand. 

11 hours ago, zacv said: " different types of skills." - lenagator1997 Can you list these skills? All them, if possible because I don't really understand. 

By skills I mean anything in your writing that would make you stand out as an applicant. Pick stories, poems, essays ect that best represents your strengths/uniqueness and thus skills as a writer. For example, my strongest skills (and uniqueness) as a nonfiction writer include weaving external research or information into longer personal narratives and playing with form. In contrast my weakest skills are writing shorter essays that require a lot of poetic imagery. So in my portfolio I didn't include any essays that didn't represent the best of what I can do. There isn't any list I can give because the skills you have as a writer are so individual and different for everyone. I think it's important to understand your own work inside and out, especially in what you are submitting in the portfolio know what your writing shows about you as the applicant.

• 4 weeks later...

Just wanted to wish all who are applying or re-applying for Fall 2022 admission this round luck! For those just coming into this world, do your research while making your school spreadsheet! I have seen many a post from people who didn't get in anywhere because they only applied to the top 3 in the whole country. Cast a wide net everyone. Getting into full residency MFA programs are competitive. I personally had no idea. Selectivity percentage should not deter anyone from applying, but to be aware of it is helpful, and these numbers usually fluctuates from year to year. At the end of the day, apply to the places that are the best fit for you and I would hate to see anyone become devastated. Below is information paraphrased (not directly quoted) from "The Insiders Guide to Graduate Degrees in Creative Writing" by Seth Abramson. I believe he is a sound source on this topic.

The heavy hitting schools we have all heard about like; Vanderbilt, University of Iowa, NYU,  Washington University in St. Louis, University of Texas Austin, Boston University, University of Wyoming, UMass Amherst, Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins ect. all have an acceptance rate less than 5%. These also happen to be in the "very selective" category and tend to have a smaller group of students. The schools in the "selective" category like; University of Maryland, University of North Carolina Wilmington, New Mexico State, and University of New Hampshire (UNH) fall around (8-15%). If you want to find out more, check out the book: https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Graduate-Degrees-Creative-Writing/dp/135000040X/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=guide+to+graduate+degrees+in+creative+writing&qid=1609448517&sr=8-2#reader_135000040X

mr. specific

Hey so I applied last year to 5 places (in poetry) and wound up being waitlisted at Michener and Wisconsin. Not a total loss, but I'm finding it hard not to be discouraged and go through the whole thing again, even though I do think my writing is better than this time last year. So who knows. I'm wondering if I should cast a wider net, or if there is some way to improve my application. 

On 7/6/2021 at 8:40 AM, mr. specific said: Hey so I applied last year to 5 places (in poetry) and wound up being waitlisted at Michener and Wisconsin. Not a total loss, but I'm finding it hard not to be discouraged and go through the whole thing again, even though I do think my writing is better than this time last year. So who knows. I'm wondering if I should cast a wider net, or if there is some way to improve my application.     

MFA CW programs are selective at the best of times so casting a wider net may be beneficial! I applied to 13 places in 2020. It was difficult to discern which ones were more selective than others, but I focused more on if I liked their curriculum, faculty, and if I thought my writing style meshed with their programs.

On 7/6/2021 at 11:40 AM, mr. specific said: Hey so I applied last year to 5 places (in poetry) and wound up being waitlisted at Michener and Wisconsin. Not a total loss, but I'm finding it hard not to be discouraged and go through the whole thing again, even though I do think my writing is better than this time last year. So who knows. I'm wondering if I should cast a wider net, or if there is some way to improve my application.     

I tend to be suspicious of casting a wide net for grad apps. That strategy can make it harder to research each program thoroughly, which can lead you to attend one that's a poor fit. For example, there have been a few people in my program that ended up disappointed because they actually wanted cohort with a more conservative, literary aesthetic (in other words, they probably didn't do any research aside from reading the website...).

I know the feeling: you're itching to get in and want to ensure success. But I think you can save yourself a lot of trouble by looking for a handful of programs that are truly what you want -- because those are also the programs most likely to accept you. They're the programs that will get your most inspired personal statements, and they're more likely to have adcoms with similar aesthetics to yours.

If you don't have many specific ideas about what you want, I'd really recommend starting there (e.g. Do you want teaching experience? Do you want to take classes outside your genre? Will it piss you off if you're required to take a lot of literature courses?). I highly, highly advise talking to current students/alums before you even start on your application to a program. Last year, I talked to a student who helped me decide that her program was a bad fit for me. This saved me hours of work and 75 dollars.

Also, keep in mind that 10+ applications is a LOT of work. As you probably know, many programs have different requirements. Moreover, tailoring your personal statement to each school will take twice as long as you expect (at least, this was my experience in my 2 rounds of apps).

The wide net approach can certainly work, as it did for lenagator. But personally, I believe in quality over quantity. And anyway, if you got waitlisted at Michener, you certainly don't need to worry about being "good enough" ;-)

Thanks feralgrad. That makes a lot of sense. 

I guess the first time around I used one metric only—how much was the fellowship, and didn't do any more research. This still seems like the critical question, like can i afford to live on this without debt or taking on another fulltime job outside the program. And I only came up with five that seemed like they promised that—Brown, Cornell, Michener, Wisconsin, Umass, (and Michigan and Florida, but I didn't remember to do these apps). So I'd be interested in other schools people know of that 1) promise funding upwards of ~25,000 a year and 2) guarantee funding (more or less equally) to all their students.  

Not to single any one school out, but I just looked at Hollins' page, which up front claims that they are "extremely well-funded," but after clicking through a few more pages saw that the first year stipend was $7000!    

12 hours ago, mr. specific said: Not to single any one school out, but I just looked at Hollins' page, which up front claims that they are "extremely well-funded," but after clicking through a few more pages saw that the first year stipend was $7000!    

I also had been considering Hollins, but laughed out loud at the stipend. It's nice to offer some funding, but for that you'll have to take out loans, which I am totally unwilling to do for an MFA.

Has everyone decided where they're applying to? So far, I've decided on Alabama, Brown, Chatham, Cornell, Emerson, Hollins, UMich, Vanderbilt, and WashU.

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Spartan Alert

Creative writing, m.f.a.

The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing is a two-year residency program with an emphasis on providing studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Our students develop their particular talents through small classes in writing, literature, publishing, and the arts. 

As a community of writers, students read and comment on each other’s work under the guidance of distinguished resident and visiting faculty, who also meet with students in one-on-one tutorials. 

PROGRAM DISTINCTIONS

• UNC Greensboro’s Creative Writing program is one of the oldest and most distinguished in the country.
• The residential faculty at the MFA Writing Program in Greensboro are not only award-winning writers, but also committed teachers who have spent their careers mentoring young writers.
• Graduates have published more than 200 works of poetry and fiction since 2008.
• Many graduates have received prestigious literary prizes. For example, MFA alumna Kelly Link was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in fiction. 

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

• The program is kept intentionally small, enabling students to work one-on-one with faculty in a close-knit community of writers.  
• 18-24 hours in writing courses are required, including workshop courses for poetry or fiction and tutorials in writing where students work one-on-one with members of the faculty. 
• The program offers fully funded graduate assistantships, including out-of-state and in-state tuition, health insurance, and a stipend. 
• Students serve as fiction and poetry editors for “The Greensboro Review,” the program’s literary journal for more than 50 years. 
• Each year the faculty also invites writers and editors to visit the campus for readings, workshops, and master classes with MFA students.

AFTER GRADUATION

• Alumni from the MFA Writing Program at Greensboro have gone on to teach or direct writing programs at such places as Clemson University, Colorado State University, Cornell University, Florida State University, the University of Vermont, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
• Graduates have continued their literary careers with a variety of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award, and numerous grants including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

APPLY TO Creative Writing, M.F.A

*Only required if there are additional admission requirements

• For a full list of application instructions, visit https://english.uncg.edu/mfa/admission-assistantships/  
• Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores are no longer required for admission to this program.
• Students must submit a writing sample of fiction or poetry to be reviewed by all faculty members in the genre. The primary decider of admission is the student’s writing sample. 

Get more information

Want more information let’s get started, program details.

Degree Type: Master's

College/School: College of Arts and Sciences

Program Type: Majors & Concentrations

Class Type: In Person

Learn More About the Department of English

Similar Degree Offerings

• English, M.A.
• English, Ph.D.

Terry Kennedy Director of MFA in Creative Writing Department of English [email protected] 336-334-5459

Quick Links

• Meet Our Faculty
• Alumni Spotlights

Matt Randal O’Wain

Teaching Assistant Professor / Diversity Liaison

2015, MFA, University of Iowa, Nonfiction Writing Program

Matt Randal O’Wain teaches both fiction and creative nonfiction in the creative writing program at Carolina where his former students have gone on to enroll at prestigious MFA programs, such as UNC Wilmington, NC STATE, UNC Greensboro, George Mason University. Others now work for various publishing houses in New York. He is the faculty advisor for the Asian American Creative Writing Collective and The Shakespeare Society.

About his first book, Meander Belt: Family, Loss, and Coming of Age in the Working Class South, LA Review of Books wrote, “Although the memoir is full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it never feels frivolous. A love letter to Memphis, it is also a send off. In sentence after taut sentence, O’Wain aims for the heart while also deploying humor.” The Literary Review of London said his second book, the short story collection, Hallelujah Station, was “impressive…disarming. O’Wain’s writing is energised and confident without tipping into sententiousness.” The Commercial Appeal wrote about Hallelujah Station: “His characters linger at forks in their roads. In another writer’s hands these lost souls would feel familiar, but O’Wain cores out the humanity beneath the violence, with a keen eye for the quirky, revelatory detail.”

O’Wain has finished a novel, Lesser Nighthawks, about a family in a small town caught in the crossfires of a failed plan set in play by a powerful Senator and his son. The Narrows is a novel that untangles the relationships between those with power who see people and place as commodities and the addicts, wounded, impoverished, religious, strong willed citizens that are inseparable from the landscape where they were raised.

He has finally begun, after six years of research, a nonfiction book about bioluminescence and human desire to be witnessed by and witness transcendence.

Publications:

M. Randal O’Wain, Gary F. Fisher, David Robinson, Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine, Anthem, 2021 

M. Randal O’Wain, Hallelujah Station, Autumn House, 2020

M. Randal O’Wain, Meander Belt: Family, Loss, and Coming of Age in the Working Class South, University of Nebraska, 2019

“Mirrored Mezzanine,” Oxford American (October 08, 2019)

“Barking Hours,” Hotel Amerika (Spring 2019)

“Dear Brother,” StorySouth (Spring 2018)

“Like a One-Eyed Cat,” The Oxford American, (Summer 2015)

“Superman Dam Fool,” The Pinch (Winter 2015)

“The Junk Trade,” Guernica Magazine (Fall, 2014)

“Arrow of Light” in The Oxford American (Winter, 2013)

Teaching Awards

2014 Recipient of the W.R. Irwin Award for Excellence in Teaching at The University of Iowa

2014-2015 Recipient of a University of Iowa Teaching Fellowship at the Frank N. Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing

2012-2015 Recipient of a University of Iowa Teaching Fellowship in General Education Literature

2012 Recipient of a University of Iowa Teaching Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction

2018 Zone 3 Fiction Award for the short story Hallelujah Station

2018 National Endowment of the Arts, Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing, FCI Beckley

2017 Audience Choice Award UNO Film Festival,  Arrow of Light

2017 Official Selection at Oxford Film Festival , Arrow of Light

2016 Official Selection at Pontchatrain Film Festival , Arrow of Light

2016 Official Selection at Memphis Indie Film Festival , Arrow of Light

2012 Departmental Distinction, English, University of North Carolina at Asheville

2012 Distinction as Undergraduate Research Scholar, University of North Carolina at Asheville

2012 Recipient of The University of North Carolina Outstanding Community Service Award, University of North Carolina at Asheville

2012 Winner of Carl Sandburg Award for Poetry

2011 Recipient of a Summer Travel Grant from the UNC Asheville Undergraduate Research Committee

2011 Recipient of The University of North Carolina William Comfort Scholarship for Excellence in Creative Writing

2010 Winner of the Oculus Award for Screenwriting

2009 Winner of the Thomas Wolfe Award for Fiction

Courses Taught:

• ENG 138 Intro to Creative Nonfiction
• ENG 208 21st Century Essay
• ENG 404 Advanced Creative Nonfiction
• ENG 693 Honors Thesis
• ENG 130 Intro to Fiction
• ENG 206 Intermediate Fiction

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Research interests:, faculty type.

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing The Write Stuff for Writers

Credit Hours

View Courses

100% online, 8-week courses

Transfer in up to 50% of the degree total

Grow Your Writing Passion into a Career with Liberty’s Online MFA in Creative Writing

Many people write creatively, but few hone their skills to develop their writing craft to its highest form. Even fewer learn the other skills it takes to become a successful writer, such as the steps needed to get a book published and into the hands of readers. Liberty’s 100% online Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing can help you develop your writing passion into a career so you can set your works free to impact culture and the world.

Employers in every industry need professionals who have strong writing skills, so you can be confident that your ability to write effectively can also help set you apart in your current career. With in-demand writing expertise and the ability to customize your degree with electives in literature or writing practice, Liberty’s online MFA in Creative Writing can help you achieve your professional writing goals.

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is designed to help you build on your writing skills with specific workshops dedicated to the craft of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or screenwriting. With a work-in-progress approach to writing practice and mentorship from our faculty of experienced writers and scholars, you can learn the specific skills you need to make your writing stand out.

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• Private Nonprofit University
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• No Standardized Testing for Admission
• Transfer in up to 75% of an Undergrad Degree
• Transfer in up to 50% of a Grad/Doctoral Degree

Why Choose Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing?

Our online MFA in Creative Writing is mainly offered in an 8-week course format, and our tuition rate for graduate programs hasn’t increased in 9 years. Through our program, you can study the writing process and develop your creative skills through workshops with experienced writing professionals. With our flexible format, you can grow in your creative writing while continuing to do what is important to you.

As a terminal degree, the online MFA in Creative Writing can also help you pursue opportunities to teach writing at the K-12 or college level. You will gain comprehensive and in-depth exposure to writing, literature, publishing, and many other professional writing skills that you can pass on to students. Partner with the Liberty family and learn under faculty who have spent years in the field you love. Your career in professional writing starts here.

What Will You Study in Our MFA in Creative Writing?

The MFA in Creative Writing program is designed to help you become an excellent creative writer across the genres of creative fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and poetry. You can learn how to produce aesthetically and culturally engaged creative works while gaining professional knowledge and practice. You will also study foundational contemporary literature so that you have a background in studying important works to draw on for your writing.

To help you in your professional writing, you will also study many essential skills in editing, layout, and the business of publishing so that you can best position yourself for success in the market. Through your creative writing courses and workshops, you can develop your craft so that you will be ready for your thesis project.

Here are a few examples of the skills Liberty’s MFA in Creative Writing can help you master:

• Marketing your projects and pursuing new writing opportunities
• Organizing writing and adapting it to different types of writing
• Tailoring writing to specific audiences and markets
• Understanding what makes art effective, compelling, and impactful
• Writing compelling stories that engage readers

Potential Career Opportunities

• Book and magazine writer
• Business communications specialist
• Creative writing instructor
• Publications editor
• Screenwriter
• Website copy editor and writer
• Writing manager

Featured Courses

• ENGL 600 – Editing, Layout, and Publishing
• ENGL 601 – Writing as Cultural Engagement
• ENGL 603 – Literary Theory and Practice
• WRIT 610 – Writing Fiction

Degree Information

• This program falls under the College of Arts and Sciences .
• View the Graduate Arts and Sciences Course Guides (login required).
• Download and review the Graduate Manual for MFA .

Degree Completion Plan (PDF)

Not sure what to choose?

Speak to one of our admissions specialists to help you choose the program that best fits your needs.

• Tuition & Aid

Your success is our success, which is why we are committed to providing quality academics at an affordable tuition rate. While other colleges are increasing their tuition, we have frozen tuition rates for the majority of our undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs for the past 9 years – and counting.

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Admission Information for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Admission requirements.

• A non-refundable, non-transferable $50 application fee will be posted on the current application upon enrollment (waived for qualifying service members, veterans, and military spouses – documentation verifying military status is required) .
• Unofficial transcripts can be used for acceptance purposes with the submission of a Transcript Request Form .
• Creative Writing Sample – A creative writing sample of one creative writing work of at least 2,500 words or a culmination of creative writing samples totaling 2,500 words.*
• Applicants whose native language is other than English must submit official scores for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or an approved alternative assessment. For information on alternative assessments or TOEFL waivers, please call Admissions or view the official International Admissions policy .

*A sample of one or more poems totaling a minimum of 750 words may also be submitted. Song lyrics are not accepted at this time as writing samples.

Preliminary Acceptance

If you are sending in a preliminary transcript for acceptance, you must:

• Be in your final term and planning to start your master’s degree after the last day of class for your bachelor’s degree.
• Complete a Bachelor’s Self-Certification Form confirming your completion date. You may download the form from the Forms and Downloads page or contact an admissions counselor to submit the form on your behalf.
• Submit an official/unofficial transcript to confirm that you are in your final term. The preliminary transcript must show a minimum of 105 completed credit hours.
• If you are a current Liberty University student completing your undergraduate degree, you will need to submit a Degree/Certificate Completion Application .
• Send in an additional, final official transcript with a conferral date on it by the end of your first semester of enrollment in the new master’s degree.

Dual Enrollment

Please see the Online Dual Enrollment page for information about starting graduate courses while finishing your bachelor’s degree.

Transcript Policies

Unofficial college transcript policy.

Unofficial transcripts combined with a Transcript Request Form can be used for admission. Official transcripts are required within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first, and will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

Before sending unofficial college transcripts, please make sure they include the following:

• Your previous school’s name or logo printed on the document
• Cumulative GPA
• A list of completed courses and earned credit broken down by semester
• Degree and date conferred (if applicable)

Official College Transcript Policy

An acceptable official college transcript is one that has been issued directly from the institution and is in a sealed envelope. If you have one in your possession, it must meet the same requirements. If your previous institution offers electronic official transcript processing, they can send the document directly to [email protected] .

If the student uses unofficial transcripts with a Transcript Request Form to gain acceptance, all official transcripts must be received within 60 days of the admissions decision or before non-attendance drops for the first set of matriculated classes, whichever comes first. Failure to send all official transcripts within the 60-day period will prevent enrollment into future terms until all official transcripts have been received.

Admissions Office Contact Information

(800) 424-9596

(888) 301-3577

Email for Questions

[email protected]

Email for Documents

[email protected]

Liberty University Online Admissions Verification

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Lynchburg, VA 24515

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Liberty University is dedicated to providing world-class educational experiences to military students across the globe.

Who May Qualify?

• Active Duty
• Reserve/National Guard
• Veterans/Retirees
• Spouses of Service Members and Veterans/Retirees
• Current Department of Defense Employees

Available Benefits:

• Tuition discounts – $275 per credit hour for graduate courses
• Additional discount for veterans who service in a civilian capacity as a First Responder (less than $625 per course) *
• 8-week courses, 8 different start dates each year, and no set login times (may exclude certain courses such as practicums, internships, or field experiences)

*Not applicable to certificates.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an mfa in creative writing.

A Master of Fine Arts degree, or MFA, is a terminal degree in an artistic craft that demonstrates that you have achieved the highest level of training and skill in your discipline. Like a doctorate, an MFA often allows you to teach courses at the graduate level while also providing many opportunities for scholarship and leadership in education. If you want to grow your creative writing skills to become the best writer you can be, then the Master of Fine Arts can help you get there.

How will students work towards developing their writing skills?

With creative writing workshops and a thesis project, you will receive support and guidance to help you become the best writer you can be.

How long will it take to complete the MFA in Creative Writing?

You can complete the MFA in Creative Writing in just 48 credit hours!

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MFA Program Overview

Goals and philosophy.

The primary mission of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of North Carolina is to prepare graduate students for careers as professional artists. The secondary mission is to prepare graduate students for teaching positions. MFA students work to develop the practical skills necessary to execute their creative work while refining the intellectual content within the work. Whether students create art within traditional disciplines or transgress disciplinary boundaries, the faculty expects them to engage in meaningful work with personal significance. The department is interdisciplinary so that students work with faculty members in all disciplines. We believe students need to explore the concepts that motivate their work in the most appropriate genre and media, and the faculty is committed to working with each individual to find the most appropriate means of articulating her/his ideas.

Work in the MFA program demands a self-directed and motivated approach. Students are provided with studio space and are expected to work independently. Students have access to all faculty members for both technical information and critique. MFA students may enroll in upper-level undergraduate courses to augment both formal and conceptual frameworks.

The Program

The Master of Fine Arts degree at UNC-Chapel Hill is a two-year, 60-hour program. We are a medium-sized department that offers a 1:1.5 faculty to student ratio. MFA students have studio space and most receive graduate or teaching assistantships with the opportunity to teach their own classes. Students earn 26 of the 60 required credits through independent study and critique under the direction of a faculty member or visiting artist.

Interaction with other members of the studio faculty occurs through a series of scheduled individual and group critique/reviews. In the first year, students interact with the entire studio faculty. During the second year, students select a Thesis Committee composed of at least three members, two of whom must come from the UNC-Chapel Hill studio faculty. Other committee members may be faculty with whom the student has worked outside of the studio program. The Thesis Committee guides the student formally and conceptually toward producing work that represents her/his unique convictions.

The studio faculty believe that technique serves ideas, and we stress object and image-making as integral to the execution of artwork. As each student formulates her/his point of view, faculty members serve as guides and instructors in form and content.

Because of the department’s interdisciplinary approach, students need not choose a particular medium for specialized concentration, but may use different media to express a variety of aesthetic and conceptual goals. This approach does not preclude a media focus, but does mean that considered choices are integral to students’ intellectual and aesthetic explorations.

Extended Programming

Our faculty of artists and art historians work closely with graduate students in developing the exhibitions in our Allcott Gallery and programming of the Hanes Visiting Artist Lecture series. These programs bring some of the most prominent contemporary critics, curators, artists, and thinkers to campus. Additionally, our Visiting Arts Professional program invites curators to visit the graduate students in their studios, allowing them to speak with each visiting professional about career concerns and opportunities in a candid setting. Full archive of past Hanes Visiting Artists can be found here.  Recent Visiting Arts Professionals include Sarah Workneh, Nova Benway, Natasha Becker & Paola Gallio, Valerie Cassel Oliver, and Raqs Media Collective.

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University of North Carolina, Wilmington

North carolina, united states.

The UNCW Department of Creative Writing is a community of passionate, dedicated writers who believe that the creation of art is valuable to self and culture. Our faculty encourages a rigorous yet supportive environment in which writers can grow as artists and as individuals. We believe excellence starts with an informed application of craft and we encourage writers to explore aesthetics and methods across genre lines.

The Department of Creative Writing is an independent department housed in its own building, keeping its undergraduate and graduate communities all in one place. It offers BFA and MFA degrees in Fine Arts (Creative Writing), both programs also having the potential of an extensive publishing and editing component.

UNCW’s MFA Program is celebrating its 20th anniversary and there is no better way to do that than by looking back on the successes of our students. That is where we pride ourselves. Our students and alumni have published more than 90 books and chapbooks. Jason Mott’s first novel became last season’s ABC TV series The Returned; Brad Land’s debut memoir Goat is being filmed as I write this; Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams received a $25,000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a $50,000 Whiting Writers Award; Arianna Nash won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry; Rochelle Hurt won the Barrow Street Book Prize; Leah Osowski won the Wick Poetry Prize at Kent State; Emily Carr won the New Measures Poetry Prize; Xhenet Aliu won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize; the list of books goes on and on-- publishers such as St. Martins; Algonquin; Viking; Ballantine; Morrow; Random House; Simon and Schuster. Alumni have published some hundreds of poems, stories, essays, reviews in prominent and vital venues. Indeed, here are a few of the magazines with which recent students published while still in the program: The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, The Journal, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, Agni, North American Review, Green Mountains Review, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Passages North, Oxford American, River Teeth, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre; The Paris Review Daily, Poetry International, Granta Online, and The Nation.

We are a faculty of 15 seasoned, well published, working writers, all teaching graduate coursework in writing, literature, translation, or publishing, editing and book design. We offer the traditional tracks of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, with a graduate course available in screenwriting.

We enjoy a community of 63 students undertaking a three-year program of study in an independent department of creative writing housed in its own building. The community is all in one place. Cross-genre study is not only encouraged—it is required. Our workshops are capped at 14 and often run much smaller. No one phones it in here. We take pride in mentoring our students. And we take pride in engendering a rigorous, but very supportive atmosphere amongst the students.

We offer 9-10 GTAships each year, each paying a stipend of $15,500 and involving the teaching of creative writing or publishing and editing, or, in two cases, film studies, at the undergraduate level.

One opportunity that sets us apart is our Publishing Laboratory and its imprint Lookout Books. Students have now edited, designed and published five national titles, one of which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Pub Lab also houses two national literary magazines, Ecotone and Chautauqua.

Please visit our website (below) and view a short video about us. We are proud of our MFA and BFA programs in Creative Writing, and of that unique, state-of-the-art Publishing Laboratory, where both graduate and undergraduate students learn all aspects of publishing in a hands-on environment that is unique in higher education. You can also read about our award-winning semiannual journal, Ecotone, and its sister book imprint, Lookout Books, at ecotonelookout.org.

Get to know us. Check out the faculty.

Then, we hope you’ll consider joining us.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Contact Information

601 S. College Road Creative Writing Department Wilmington North Carolina, United States 28403 Phone: (910) 962-3331 Email: [email protected] Fax: 910-962-7461 http://http://uncw.edu/writers/

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Undergraduate program director.

Students may declare a major in Creative Writing and enter the BFA degree program only after submitting a successful portfolio for review by the faculty. Students must also have demonstrated their talent and dedication in one of the basic prerequisite courses in creative writing by receiving a grade of B or better.

The BFA program provides an intensive apprenticeship in writing, informed by the close study of literature, to serious, aspiring writers, among a community of accomplished professional writers. Training is provided in the art of writing within the context of studies in aesthetics, the literary tradition, the craft and profession of publishing, and broad liberal arts subject matter relevant to the student's need and goals. Our primary educational goals include: 1) providing dedicated and talented students with a rigorous apprenticeship in the art and craft of creating literature; 2) developing students' critical faculties, their understanding of literary forms, and their aesthetic judgment; 3) providing students with a strong intellectual foundation in the historical literary tradition, grounding their practice of the art of writing in an understanding of how that art has been practiced by the greatest classic and contemporary authors; and 4) providing a thoughtful interdisciplinary foundation for understanding creative writing's relationship to other arts and scholarly areas.

We value and promote cross-genre versatility. The major and minor require a beginning creative writing course in the chosen genre, then specialization in one or more genres, culminating in a senior seminar, a senior thesis, and a reading. Courses are also offered in screenwriting and playwriting. Atlantis is the undergraduate literary magazine, fully staffed by student editors. Each year, based on a judging of undergraduate manuscripts, the program awards the Sam Ragan Prizes in Poetry and the Jessie Rehder Short Story Awards. Students benefit from contact with numerous nationally-known visiting Writers-in-Residence and speakers, including guests during the department's annual week-long Writers' Symposium.

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Graduate program director.

We enjoy a community of approximately 66 students undertaking a three-year program of study in an independent department of creative writing housed in its own building. The community is all in one place. Cross-genre study is not only encouraged—it is required. Our workshops are capped at 14 and often run much smaller. No one phones it in here. We take pride in mentoring our students. And we take pride in engendering a rigorous, but very supportive atmosphere amongst the students.

We offer differing numbers of GTAships each year, but each pays a stipend of $15,000 and involves the teaching of creative writing or publishing and editing, or, in one case, film studies, at the undergraduate level.

One opportunity that sets us apart is our Publishing Laboratory and its imprint Lookout Books. Students have now edited, designed and published five national titles, one of which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Pub Lab also houses two national literary magazines.

Please visit our website (below) and view a short video about us. We are proud of our MFA and BFA programs in Creative Writing, and of that unique, state-of-the-art Publishing Laboratory, where both graduate and undergraduate students learn all aspects of publishing in a hands-on environment that is unique in higher education. You can also read about our award-winning semiannual journal, Ecotone, and its sister book imprint, Lookout Books, at ecotonelookout.org!

Natural Causes, Thirty-Seven Years from the Stone, Smoulder: Poems

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/cox.html

Nina de Gramont

The Last September; The Boy I Love; Meet Me at the River; Of Cats and Men; Gossip Of The Starlings

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/degramont.html

Clyde Edgerton

Papadaddy's Book for New Fathers,The Night Train, The Bible Salesman, Solo: My Adventures in the Air,

Lunch at the Piccadilly: A Novel (2003)

Where Trouble Sleeps ,Redeye: A Western ,In Memory of Junior, Killer Diller , The Floatplane Notebooks (1988)

Walking Across Egypt ,Raney

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/edgerton.html

David Gessner

All the Wild That Remains; The Tarball Chronicles;)

My Green Manifesto; Soaring with Fidel; The Prophet of Dry Hill; Sick of Nature; Return of the Osprey; Under the Devil's Thumb; A Wild, Rank Place

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/gessner.html

Rebecca Lee

Bobcat and Other Stories, The City Is a Rising Tide

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/lee.html

Robert Anthony Siegel

All Will Be Revealed, All the Money in the World

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/siegel.html

BFA Coordinator, work in Haunted Voices, Haunting Places: An Anthology of Writers of the Old and New South, Big Muddy, 55 Words, Prick of the Spindle, Aries, Calliope, winner, Authors in the Park Short Story Prize

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/bass.html 

Malena Morling

Ocean Avenue; Astoria; The Star By My Head: Poets from Sweden; On Foot I Wandered Through The Solar Systems

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/morling.html

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

A Pocket Book of Forms; 32 Poems, Colorado Review, the Southern Review, the Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. VII: North Carolina, the Raintown Review, Southern Poetry Review, the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Really System, Canary, and 111O.

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/phillips.html

author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and … Hide Behind Me… His debut novel, The Returned, was optioned

-pre-release!- by actor Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, as a television series and premiered on the ABC network in 2014 under the title Resurrection (2 seasons). His second novel, The Wonder of All Things has been optioned -also pre-release!- by Lionsgate Films for the big screen.

https://jasonmottauthor.com/

Sayantani Dasgupta

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/dasgupta.html

Michelle Donahue

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/donahue.html

KaToya Ellis Fleming

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/fleming.html

Jill Gerard

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/gerardj.html

Melody Moezzi

https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/moezzi.html

Michael Ramos

 https://uncw.edu/writers/faculty/ramos.html

Sarah Domet

https://sarahdomet.com/the-guineveres/

Emily Louise Smith

https://www.emilylouisesmith.org/

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What You Won’t Learn in an MFA

An mfa can teach you skills, but will it prepare you for a writing career.

By 2018, I had written five books and decided to pursue an MFA in creative writing with a concentration in fiction. For me, earning an MFA gave me the time and space I needed to quit my day job and transition to writing full-time, but that was something I had been building toward for over a decade. Of course, I can’t speak to all MFA programs, but in many cases, they focus almost exclusively on writing skills and don’t give writers the concrete skills they need to make money writing and publishing. I often found myself answering questions for my classmates about what publishing was really like. It simply wasn’t being taught, sometimes because faculty themselves were struggling with how to navigate writing as a business.

An MFA program may be the right choice to help you become a better writer, or because you want the qualification to teach writing at a college; it may not give you insights into navigating the publishing landscape.

Here are some of the professional development skills you may need to gain outside of the classroom on your writing journey.

Getting published

Many MFA programs don’t talk to authors about the good, the bad, and the ugly in both traditional publishing and self-publishing. There is often an assumption that if you’re in an MFA program, you’ll be seeking a traditional publishing deal. But most programs also don’t teach writers the skills to query small presses or agents who can query large presses. Even as self-publishing has become an increasingly popular publishing choice, many MFA programs aren’t giving students a clear picture of what it involves.

Contracting

My MFA program was great, but never once during my studies did I hear anyone talk about how to read, negotiate, or understand a contract. As an indie author, you’ll have fewer contracts to interact with than authors who choose to traditionally publish their work, but contracts will still come up—contracts with designers who are working on your books, contracts with podcasts or magazines publishing excerpts of your work. In my MFA program, students who were publishing were left to talk with each other to try to understand how contracts work. Most writers aren’t legal experts, and we benefit from having either a private attorney or an attorney through an organization such as the Author’s Guild review our contracts. I would love to see MFA programs better prepare writers to navigate these business interactions, to negotiate writing rates, and to understand what rights we may be signing away with a particular contract.

Writing to market

The culture of MFA programs often shames or diminishes the idea of writing to market, and instead prioritizes creating literary art for the sake of art. This is a completely valid way to approach your writing life. However, if your goal is to publish your work and sell books, understanding the market and how to write books that appeal to readers is important. There’s nothing wrong with writing books with mass-market appeal, but, depending on the program you attend, you may not hear that in classes. Especially for writers considering the self-publishing route, learning how to understand current trends and how to write books that connect to them is invaluable.

Writing is your passion, and seeing your name in print might be your dream, but when it happens, your writing also becomes a business. Understanding how to manage a writing business is something that most new writers won’t have a lot of experience with. For example, when you get paid from book sales, speaking arrangements, or most anything to do with your books, taxes aren’t going to be withheld. Instead, you’ll need to put money aside to pay your taxes. MFA programs generally don’t cover these details or highlight the importance of hiring an accountant or tax professional to help you with setting up your writing business. You may need to form an LLC for your self-publishing business, open a business bank account, and file taxes appropriately for your writing work. As a self-published author, you also may need to keep records tracking orders and inventory.

Most authors are not able to make a living from books alone. Many writers are balancing a variety of different content creation and income streams. This may include teaching at a college or university (for which a terminal degree such as an MFA is required), freelance writing, and independent teaching, to name a few possibilities. The more writing programs can give MFA students the tools they need to understand the business side of their work, the more successful they will be.

Sassafras Lowrey writes fiction and nonfiction and was the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for emerging LGBTQ writers.

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