Course of Study

The two-year course of study includes 36 credits as follows:

9 credits of required writing workshops in the student's primary genre (fiction or poetry). Workshops are held in the first, second, and third semesters. There is no workshop in the fourth semester, when students instead work closely with their theses directors and devote their writing time to the preparation of their theses.
3 credits of a required pedagogy seminar. This seminar is taken during the first semester.
15 required thesis credits. Students take 3 thesis credits in each of the first, second and third semesters. Students take 6 thesis credits in the fourth semester.
9 credits of electives drawn from appropriate courses across the curriculum. While students are expected to focus on and produce book-length theses by the end of their two-years here, they are also encouraged to pursue other intellectual interests via these electives. In the past MFA students have fulfilled their elective requirements by enrolling in literature courses, studying foreign languages, pursuing other artistic interests such as dance and classical guitar, augmenting research for historical novels by taking appropriate history classes, and honing their writing skills in other genres. MFA students may take intermediate and advanced undergraduate workshops and graduate level workshops, all outside the genre in which they were admitted, as electives with the permission of the instructor.

A typical course of study in the MFA Program, then, would look like this: