Indiana University

Indiana University

Bloomington, IN

https://english.indiana.edu/graduate/master-of-fine-arts-degree/index.html

Our award-winning faculty works hands-on with candidates throughout a three-year program focused on the learning, application, and integration of craft concepts and the generation and workshopping of original student poetry and fiction. Your thesis is a book-length manuscript in the genre of your choice.

Our graduate program is relatively small, currently enrolling fewer than fifty students. We normally accept eight new students each year (four in fiction, four in poetry), and work to recruit a strong and diverse class.

We believe that while it usually takes only two years for writers to do the requisite course work for the M.F.A., support of your work shouldn't end there. Our program offers a third funded year to allow for more time to write your graduate thesis, which we hope will be a strong step toward your first published book. Writers need time, ideally funded time, and we offer it. In fact, many of our graduates in poetry and fiction have gone on to publish books that began as thesis projects written largely during their three years in Bloomington.

Degrees Offered

MFA

Genres

Fiction, Poetry

Residency type

Full

Program length

60 credits (3 years)

Financial Aid

Fellowships and TAships are available for qualified students.

Teaching opportunities

A typical three-year teaching assignment is as follows. During the first year, the A.I. normally teaches two sections of introductory creative writing: one section during the fall semester, and one during the spring. In the second year, the A.I. teaches a section of 100-level freshman composition during the fall semester, and either two sections of composition or a section of a composition and a 200-level creative writing workshop during the spring. In the third year, the A.I. normally teaches two or three creative writing courses. All third-year A.I.s are eligible to request an assignment to one of several 100-, 200-, or 300-level literature courses, or to serve as a consultant to first-year A.I.s teaching the fall semester sections of our introductory creative writing course. More than half of our third-year A.I.s are awarded reduced teaching loads. The M.F.A. program has also developed a 200-level course in publishing and editing, Literary Editing and Publishing, for our third-year creative writing A.I.s to teach.

Editorial opportunities

Editing positions are available to students with the department’s journal, Indiana Review. These include Editor, Associate Editor, and genre editor positions. The journal also offers students the opportunity to read submissions for decisions on publication.

Cross-genre study

Rarely

Graduates

Send questions, comments and corrections to info@creativewritingmfa.info.

Disclaimer: No endorsement of these ratings should be implied by the writers and writing programs listed on this site, or by the editors and publishers of Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.