Stonybrook University

At the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton, we welcome aspiring writers who seek to create original work primarily in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. We offer guidance that is friendly, rigorous, professionally useful and hands on. Enrollment in our writing workshops is capped at twelve. Unlike most MFA programs, ours encourages students to take workshops in all kinds of writing, rather than being tracked upon acceptance into a single genre. We invite students to explore, in the belief that writing outside their genres informs their primary areas of interest.

Beyond the familiar categories of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, we offer workshops in other forms of creative expression relevant to understanding and mastering a world constructed out of words and images. Recent course offerings have included graphic novel, children’s literature, and poetry with a bookmaking emphasis. Our literature courses are taught by working writers, with an eye to how reading informs craft. (More traditional graduate literature courses are also available.) And devoted genre-busters will find ample opportunities to collaborate with practitioners in theater, film and the visual arts. Those disciplines attract an equally broad range of distinguished professors, whether during the summer sessions or throughout the year.