Creative mfa program

If they have trouble submitting their recommendations, please contact crw-admissions english. The minimum scores for students holding a teaching assistantship in the Creative Writing department are, for the TOEFL, on the written Speaking Portion or 28 on the internet-based test. The department may accept students with scores of on a conditional basis pending the satisfactory completion of a course in Academic Spoken English.

Florida law requires all non-U. Transcripts: International students may use unofficial transcripts for the admissions process. However, once admitted, they must provide official transcripts and certificates of degree. UF requires transcripts in the native language and an English translation, as well as copies of the degree certificate in the native language and an English translation.

Further useful information may be obtained through the University of Florida International Center. The materials you will need for your application are: Test scores: We no longer require GRE scores for admission. Pursuant to Florida Statute, your application requires inclusion of all post-high school education and employment, as well as information about ongoing international affiliations and research funding.

Statement of purpose: We do not require a statement of purpose. Writing Sample: Upload online as a pdf file. Fiction applicants should submit two stories, part of a novel or longer narrative, or a story and part of a novel or longer narrative, the total not to exceed 6, words. That is the gift. Our students sift through language, lands, and experiences and come out the other side with some of the finest writings being produced today.

You can check out our track record and it's all there—the student successes, the publication credits, all of that. But what you can't see are all the hours our MFA students spend with faculty polishing their voice and craft, or that moment when an emerging writer experiments with another genre or medium and comes away with a hybrid artsy work that shines and shines.

I'm honored to be a part of our writing community here at NMU because we are the perfect mix of weirdness and dedication, seriousness and playfulness, and we also have cats. Students will take workshops in more than one genre we offer fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and occasionally screenwriting , two literature courses plus one critical theory course. All new teaching assistants also take a Teaching Practicum to ready you for teaching responsibilities your first semester.

While you're here, check out our literary magazine Passages North , which is run primarily by graduate students, and our events page , which details our visiting writers program. A strong application includes a writing sample that gives us a sense of your aesthetic and your obsessions, a personal statement that helps us understand what you'd like to get out of your three years studying writing in a wintery place, and some sense that you are a kind and enthusiastic community member.

Prospective students may apply as writers of poetry, nonficiton, fiction, or hybrid work, and may apply in more than one genre. Once enrolled in the program, students do not need to commit to a genre; our official MFA degree is in creative writing, rather than any particular genre, so students are free to write across and between genres.

Health insurance is not at this time included in the package although some free services are provided by the University's Health Center. After the first year, other Graduate Assistantships are also available, including as the managing editor of Passages North or the assistant director of the Writing Center.

Lake Superior, the most incredible body of freshwater on Earth, is part of our campus. So are the massive Northwoods. Student writers at NMU have the opportunity to take a class on an island, snowshoe into a field camp writing retreat, and workshop stories around a beach fire. There really is no other program like it. We're a hybrid-heavy, snow-laden MFA program tucked in the north woods. I love the open-minded, exploratory feel of our MFA.

Both students and faculty are encouraged to try new modes and disciplines, and our collaborative community supports creative risks. Because our program allows students to change or expand their genre after enrolling, writers are free to follow what moves them, building new audiences and awarenesses along the way. Our MFA students are creative artists whose reach expands beyond written word to images performances, film, music and more.

I feel so fortunate to be part of such a dynamic and forward thinking artistic community. What I like about the creative writing program is that students have such a large and wide-ranging group of modest and accomplished writing teachers to study with, and that the community and landscape they will be living and writing and thriving in is, well, cooler than cool. Students in our MFA program tend to build strong connections that last long after they leave NMU, keeping in touch to share writing, to play fantasy football, to continue reading for Passages North just for kicks.

Every year, some of my favorite people in the world graduate from the program and move on to something new far away with three years of UP experience including I hope at least one albino deer sighting and so many pages and tactics ready to carry them forward, and the loss of those people in my everyday life is, every time, a good kind of heartbreak.

I love the productive and multi-faceted playfulness of our program—the ways in which we encourage genre fluidity and the making of hybrid work; the ways in which we and our students uncover the secret conversations between nonfiction, fiction, and poetry and, in some cases, the lyric impulse and the biological fact, verse and mathematical theorem, image and text….

Frankly, the much of the work that the students produce at the end of their three years here resembles no other work that I know which has been increasingly attracting the attention of publishers, and compelling our disciplines forward into exciting new territory. And this emphasis on creative whimsy, alongside our TA-ships, and editorial internships with our lit mag, Passages North, yields such a close and generous sense of community, and a program that honors both art and practicality, preparing our students not only for innovative book-making, but also for careers in teaching and publishing.

And all of this wonderfulness takes place next to a big beautiful lake, surrounded by the woods, the deer, the bird-life, the frogs, and the ever-inspiring dragonflies. Below is a narrative calendar, of sorts, to guide your three years in the MFA program, including links to relevant pages.

We also have an English Department Share Drive , which provides teaching resources and sample documents meant to serve as models for grant apps and other academic paperwork situations. During your first semester, many of you will take EN Teaching Practicum and some of you will be teaching for the first time. A workshop will get you writing, will connect you with other writers in all stages of the program, and will introduce you to a faculty member who may end up being a part of your thesis committee.

In semesters when you may not have a workshop, your own writing time may slip to the bottom of your to-do list, but if you take a workshop early, and you establish some writing habits and expectations for yourself, you may find yourself more insistent about guarding your writing time even when it is not assigned. Keep in mind the larger plan of study for the program.

Every year there will be a couple of required Professional Development days PD days for funded graduate students. For details, see the Application Procedures link or the Apply Now button in the left menu. The community that I have been welcomed into the past two years is full of dedicated artists who are brimming with passion and grit.

The creative writing program requires 48 credit hours of study evenly divided between writing courses, and literature courses designed to inform that writing. A written comprehensive exam and an applied project are required. While students are expected to satisfy these requirements in the genre in which they were accepted, the program encourages cross-genre study and electives can include courses taken outside of the creative writing program, even outside the English department.

Students are expected to satisfy the degree requirements in the genre in which they are accepted. Electives may be taken out of genre, with the permission of the instructor. Possible English courses include:. Department of English.