The Road Less Traveled: Making It Without an MFA
No MFA? No problem. A novelist shares his journey to publication—and becoming a successful full-time writer—without attending a graduate writing program.
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No MFA? No problem. A novelist shares his journey to publication—and becoming a successful full-time writer—without attending a graduate writing program.
A writer and publishing professional reflects on her decision to leave an MFA program, and how academic and workshop language can be used to reify the invisible structures that suppress marginalized communities.
Do some financial planning, head to the library, research locations, and ask around—ten tips to consider before you apply to a graduate writing program.
MFA graduates from around the country share the valuable skills, experiences, and other intangible benefits they took away from their MFA programs.
While most MFA fiction workshops focus on short stories, the director of the creative writing MFA program at the University of Michigan proposes a different form on which to focus: the novella.
A look at 153 full-residency programs and 59 low-residency programs, sorted alphabetically by region.
Grant Faulkner, executive director of National Novel Writing Month and the cofounder of 100 Word Story, leads a literary tour of San Francisco, a city of rollicking rogues and home of the Beats.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the country's oldest low-residency MFA program in creative writing, established by poet Ellen Bryant Voigt in 1976 at Goddard College before relocating to Warren Wilson College in 1981. Contributing editor Jeremiah Chamberlin explores the program’s history and legendary faculty, and how it has served as a model for other low-residency programs across the country.
Writer and teacher Jim Minick recalls his unique experiences as a student in one MFA program while teaching in another, and offers ideas about what an ideal full- and low-residency program might include.
A novelist revisits the challenges of attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a person of color, and explores the importance of inclusion, community, and home.