History & overview

Founded in 2002, the MFA Program in Creative Writing is a highly selective program providing a rigorous two-year course of study. All MFA students receive generous financial aid, teaching opportunities, and a full semester of teacher training and support.

Only six students are admitted to the program each fall, providing a total of 12 MFAs in residence each year. Our small size guarantees students personal attention from faculty, visiting writers, and peers. At the same time, Madison's vibrant literary community, both on and off campus, makes the program far more dynamic than the numbers may initially suggest.

One innovation unique to our MFA Program is that we admit fiction writers and poets in alternating years. This means that our poetry faculty concentrates on just one group of poets for the entire two years those students are with us and our fiction faculty similarly concentrates on just one group of fiction writers. This format provides a great deal of individualized attention.

Here are some other factors that make our little program so big:

Our MFAs interact socially and collegially with our Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing fellows, some of the best recent MFA recipients in the country.
Our students are not isolated by genre. While cross-genre writing certainly isn't mandatory, many of our students choose to explore additional genres. These students report that taking workshops outside their primary genre not only improves their writing in both genres, but leads to greater camaraderie among all the writers in the program.
Because we believe writers benefit and learn from conversation and interaction with those who share their passion for the written word, we provide both literary and social events for our students. Whether it's dinner at the home of a faculty member in honor of a visiting writer, dessert at a local restaurant following an evening reading, or pizza in the Creative Writing Suite while we chat about a topic of interest such as the academic job market or the ins and outs of publishing, these get-togethers foster bonds among all participants.
Each October, the Wisconsin Book Festival turns Madison into a national literary destination, and our students get to be in the center of all the excitement. In recent years students have chatted with agents and editors; shared drinks, jokes and tales of the writing life with Festival participants such as Richard Bausch, Tony Earley, Charles Baxter, Joan Silber, and Mark Winegardner; and participated in contests, readings, panels, and other Book Fest events.
The program sponsors a popular MFA reading series ("The Blue Ox Reading Series") held in a downtown bookstore.
When we bring visiting writers, editors, and literary agents to campus, everyone gets to spend time with them. Since the inception of the MFA program, writers who have engaged with our MFA students have included Dean Bakopoulos, Charles Baxter, Jo Ann Beard, Kevin Brockmeier, Dan Chaon, David Clewell, Michael Cunningham, Charles D'Ambrosio, Nicholas Delbanco, Jonathan Franzen, Blas Manuel de Luna, Junot Diaz, Carl Djerassi, Beth Ann Fennelly, Alice Fulton, Jane Hamilton, Aleksander Hemon, Heidi Julavits, Douglas Kearney, Agymah Kamau, Tony Kushner, Ann Lauterbach, Fiona McCrae (editor), Rob McQuilken (agent), Diane Middlebrook, U Sam Oeur, Pamela Painter, Hermine Pinson, Holiday Reinhorn, George Saunders, Joan Silber, Carol Houck Smith (editor), Scott Spencer, Peter Straub, Jean Valentine, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, and Amy Williams (agent).
Former and graduating MFAs may apply for the Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship and the Friends of Creative Writing Award. Click here for details.