Many thanks to Jeff Mann at Virginia Tech’s MFA program for answering a few questions. Virginia Tech’s first graduating class earned their MFAs in 2008 and the program and soared to one of very high ranking. Learn a little more about this special program.

Can you describe the general course of study at Virginia Tech? For example, how heavily does it focus on writing as opposed to teaching or working at one of the literary journals?

The major focus is on writing: we require 15 hours of writing workshops. MFA students also take Literary Editing (a course in which students choose creative work for The Minnesota Review), as well as courses in form and theory and literature. They’re required to take 11 hours in composition pedagogy. After completing that requirement, they teach freshman composition classes. In their final semester, they usually get to teach Introduction to Creative Writing. (more…)

Many thanks to Professor Gerri Brightwell from University of Alaska at Fairbanks’ MA/MFA program for taking the time to answer a few questions about what makes their program so special.

How would you describe the curriculum and goals of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks?

Our curriculum is designed to give students a solid grounding in the study of their genre through craft courses, workshops, and working one-on-one with faculty. Our students also take classes in literary theory and literature. Not only do these classes expand their expertise, they make them stronger writers. We want our students to leave UAF with a surer sense of who they are as writers, and with publications already under their belt.

Can you explain the combined MA/MFA program available?

Because our MFA students take classes in critical theory and literature, we created the MFA/MA to offer them the opportunity to further explore their scholarly interests and earn a qualification in both creative writing and literature. Students in the combined program take two sets of comprehensive examinations (as opposed to one for MFA students) and produce both a creative thesis and either a scholarly thesis or scholarly essays.

In what way does the natural environment of Alaska factor into the program?

In Alaska, you can’t avoid the natural environment! If affects how you live — temperatures can drop to as low as -50 in the winter, and you might get into your car only to find a moose blocking your driveway. We’re hundreds of miles from the next biggest city — Anchorage. But our environment is not something to be endured. It’s a source of inspiration for many, and for those that chose, it offers a way to live differently. Some of our students live in apartments in town; others rent cabins in the woods. Here you can ski for six months of the year, you can trap, or hunt, you can fish, you can mountain climb. (more…)

We spoke to Eliza Hornig, Administrator of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College. Take a look at what they have to offer MFA students and pay particular attention to Ms. Hornig’s advice for incoming students. She offers some valuable insight for writers in any program. Thank you, Brooklyn College, for such a thoughtful interview.

I found the Fiction section of Brooklyn College’s MFA program very informative. You offer a very clear picture of how time pursuing an MFA through Brooklyn will be spent. Is your program unique in its structure? What makes Brooklyn’s MFA program unique in your eyes?

The fiction program at Brooklyn College is rigorous, intimate, and supportive. Our students receive extensive feedback from faculty members inside and outside of class; it is not unusual for a faculty member to critique a new draft of a student’s work months or even years after a workshop has ended. Our students have the unusual opportunity to take a novel workshop, if they wish. They are grounded in the essentials of craft with a first-semester craft course, which equips them to wrangle with difficult questions of voice, pacing, point of view, language, dialogue, uses of time, child narration, etc., over the course of the program. During their second year, students participate in one-on-one revisions and thesis tutorials, which offer them the chance to work closely with faculty members, practiced writers from around the city, and editors from major literary journals and publishing houses. Because we wish to prepare our students for the realities of the publishing world, we offer an editors’ panel each fall, and an agents’ panel each spring; after each event, students have the opportunity to meet with an editor/agent and submit a sample of their work for consideration. Our student reading series, held at Freddy’s Bar in the South Slope, gives students a chance to share their work in public, while our Intergenre Reading Series allows students to hear the work of established fiction writers, poets, and playwrights in an intimate setting. Just as important are the happy hours, parties, dinners at faculty members’ homes, summer trips to Brooklyn Cyclones games, and post-workshop drinks, all of which contribute to an extremely warm and congenial sense of community in our program. Our students tend to leave the program with lifelong friends and mentors—and, therefore, with lifelong support for their writing and publishing endeavors.

Your program makes mention of intergenre workshops. Can you describe those a little more? Many authors would like to learn about other areas of writing and I hear limited intergenre exploration as a criticism to other programs.

Each year, we offer an intergenre class, taught by a member of the MFA faculty and taken by students from the poetry, playwriting, and fiction programs. In these classes, students are asked to write in genres other than their own. (Topics for these classes have ranged from “Dictionaries” to “Modernism.”) The intergenre format allows students to learn about the practices, mindsets, and aesthetics of other genres; it sometimes results in cross-genre collaboration, and very often in cross-genre friendship.

Would you describe Brooklyn’s MFA in fiction as highly literary or broader in focus?

Although our students have gone on to write in a variety of genres—our alums have published literary novels and short story collections, young adult novels, children’s novels, mysteries, etc.—our program’s primary focus is on the creation of literary fiction. (more…)

The University of Oregon

For our newest program profile, we were lucky enough to interview The University of Oregon. Oregon’s full-residency MFA program is one of the best in the country, providing concentrations in fiction and poetry. A highly funded program, Oregon is also known for its teaching fellowships and small size (Poets and Writers ranks them #8 in both fellowship placement and selectivity). We’ve included a few highlights about their program below, but for more information on pursuing in MFA at Oregon, check out their webpage.

Oregon’s MFA Program is consistently ranked among the best in the country. What do you think makes Oregon’s program so special?

All of our faculty members are committed to teaching—in workshops, craft seminars, and individual tutorials.  We give our students a great deal of attention, much of it individual.  In addition, because every student accepted to our MFA Program receives a teaching fellowship and tuition waiver, there is a strong sense of community (rather than competition) among our students.  The students in the program also get together frequently for social and program events of their own making—for example, the yearly student-run Live Lit West Reading Series at Tsunami Books in town.  Finally, we are located in a city conducive to student life, including great public transportation, numerous movie theaters and venues for live music, affordable cafés and restaurants catering to students, and numerous bookstores, with the coast and mountains close at hand.  The economic and geographic stresses which might be obstacles to student life in larger cities are not present in Eugene, and this in turn allows our students to focus on the development of their art.

Many MFA programs now provide students the option of pursuing an MFA in genre writing. Would you describe Oregon’s program as highly literary or broader in focus?

Highly literary.

What aspect of Oregon’s program are you most proud of?

The high level of rigor, instruction, and expectation in all the graduate classes.

This can be difficult to articulate, but to the best of your ability, can you describe what Oregon looks for in applicants?

High intelligence and talent, a commitment to work hard, and an informed interest in working with our specific faculty.

Most MFA applicants know they’ll be focusing on their own writing. How much of their time focuses on other areas related to craft? For example: applied criticism, reading other work, examining literary tradition, or teaching?

FIRST YEAR

Writing = 2/5

Reading and craft study = 2/5

Teaching = 1/5 

SECOND YEAR

Writing = 3/5

Reading/Craft study = 1/5

Teaching = 1/5

A special thanks goes out to Pacific University’s MFA program for being the first in a series of profiles we’re doing on MFA programs around the country. We spoke with Pacific University professor Marvin Bell, who shed some light on what makes Pacific’s program just so special.

Generally speaking, what do you think is unique or beneficial about a low-residency program?

The age range. These are writers who can keep their paying jobs, and their home lives, and can still be smack dab in the midst of a serious writing community. Some have been in the game for a long time. They know the score.

Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program is consistently ranked among the best in the country. What do you think makes Pacific’s program so special?

The faculty. Spirited writers known for strong, individual literary voices. Then, their energy and, not to be slighted, their sense of fun. Also, a beloved director who engages the faculty on every matter.  It is the opposite of micro-managed. To the contrary, we plan and ad-lib on behalf of the students. The faculty attracts unusual and talented students. The graduating students invariably break our hearts when, unbidden, they use up some of their reading time to thank their teachers, speaking specifically of how each made a difference to them. We neither ask for, nor expect, such public thanks, yet they continue to do it, often speaking with great feeling.

Would you describe Pacific’s MFA program as highly literary or broader in focus?

Literary in the best sense, whether the writing is sociopolitical, or surreal, or bravely personal, or of a style never before encountered, or just a good version of “mainstream.” How a piece is written is what brings back a reader for another go.

What aspect of Pacific’s program are you most proud of?

The spirit and variety of students and faculty, of course. But also, and you may smile at this, the dignity maintained by the program, which does not lean on applicants or bribe them or make unworthy promises. It’s high class and the opposite of laborious. The program maintains a focus on the excitement of writing and the possibilities.

Most MFA applicants know they’ll be focusing on their own writing. How much of Pacific’s program focuses on other areas related to craft? For example, applied criticism, reading other work, and literary tradition are listed as other areas of study for MFA students at Pacific.

There are craft talks and classes at the residencies, of course. There is a reading requirement, too, with the intention that the student learn to read, not like a scholar, but like a writer. Students write about their reading, and talk books with their teachers, from start to finish. The student even includes the bibliography of his or her reading in the thesis.

I understand you were Flannery O’ Connor Professor of Letters at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. How is it different teaching in a full-residency scenario as opposed to a low-residency one?

The age range and, thus, the life experiences of the students are different. Also, the combination of intense residencies and periodic interchanges is a very different dynamic. Students sometimes make a leap in confidence and verbal nerve between packets. I didn’t realize until I signed on how effective this sort of teaching can be, or how much I would enjoy this particular MFA. It’s a kick, it’s a hoot, it’s a workshop in the best sense of the term—that we are all in this together.

I know this can be difficult to define, but can you describe what Pacific looks for in applicants? What makes an ideal candidate?

It’s all about the writing sample.  Sometimes, the personal statement is of use, if only that it reveals a mind and one’s ability to write prose. But in the end, it’s all about being a writer, not a critic or a scholar or even a teacher.  The ideal applicant shows in his or her writing an interest in language and the influence of having read good writers. But then there are applicants who may not have written or read much but whose language knocks your socks off.  That’s big.

If you could provide a piece of advice for current or upcoming MFA students, what would it be?

Welcome the influence of good writers. Write more than required. Be a writer every day, whether or not you write that day. Understand that the good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff. Don’t let anyone turn the excitement of writing into mere labor. Write with abandon. Avoid those who encourage you to write like them. Jonathan Williams, the poet who founded Jargon Press, once said that “the trouble with American poets is that they each want everyone else to write like them, but not as well.” Read writers who write differently from you. The poet Jordan Smith once said to me, “I have learned that, when I read a book of poetry and hate it, a year later I will love that book.”

We’re introducing a new blog series, which highlights different MFA programs across the country. Stay tuned for our first profile, which will post this week. If you’d like to suggest a school or program to be profiled, please send suggestions and questions to: contact@masters-review.com.