The Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
                      ~ Mark Twain, Hartford, Conn.

"The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug."    
                      ~ Mark Twain

The M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Southern is a full-residency, terminal-degree program, preparing students for careers as writers, teachers, editors, and professionals in the publishing world. With its main focus on the writing workshop and the creative thesis, the M.F.A. also requires students to study literature at the graduate level and provides opportunities for students to train for teaching collegiate-level writing.

Located midway between New York City and Boston in New Haven, Connecticut, Southern offers a thriving and long-lived culture, tradition, and community of creative writers. Along with a nationally-recognized, award-winning creative-writing faculty, Southern is also home to the graduate literary magazine Noctua Review, and partial home to the national, award-winning literary arts periodical, The Connecticut Review.

The Creative Writing Program's visiting writers' and editors' series brings nationally-renowned writers to campus to read from their work, as well as editors from such prestigious national publications as Sou'wester, Louisiana Literature, Cincinnati Review, and The Gettysburg Review. Visiting writers have included authors Steve Almond, Dale Peck, Brock Clarke, Marilyn Nelson, Stewart O'Nan, Erin McGraw, Andrew Hudgins, Michelle Richmond, Sandra Rodriguez Barron, Tom Perrota, Michael Martone, Penelope Pelizzon, and Alan Michael Parker, and Allison Joseph.

Our students have been published in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The South Carolina Review, Phoebe, Southern Review, McSweeney's, Quarterly West and American Letters and Commentary, and have accumulated a range of national awards, fellowships, and book contracts.

Admission to the M.F.A. program is competitive, with roughly six poets and six fiction writers admitted each year. The deadline for applications is March 1. Applications will be reviewed in the order they are received, and applicants will be notified of their status no later than mid-April.

To see Associated Writing Program's "Annual Report on the Academic Job Market," click here.