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Creative writing m.f.a. (ithaca), field of study.
English Language and Literature
Program Description
The M.F.A. Program.
The Creative Writing program in the department of English Language and Literature offers an M.F.A. degree only, with concentrations in either poetry or fiction. Each year the department enrolls only eight students, four in each concentration. Our small size allows us to offer a generous financial support package, details of which are outlined on our department website. At the same time, we have a large and diverse graduate faculty with competence in a wide range of literary, theoretical, and cultural fields.
Students participate in a graduate writing workshop each semester and take 6 additional one-semester courses for credit, at least four of them in English or American literature, Comparative Literature, literature in the modern or classical languages, or cultural studies (typically two per semester during the first year and one per semester during the second year). First year students receive practical training by working as Editorial Assistants for Epoch, a periodical of prose and poetry published by the Creative Writing staff of the department. The most significant requirement of the M.F.A. degree is the completion of a book-length manuscript: a collection of poems, short stories, or a novel.
The Special Committee. Every student selects a Special Committee who will be responsible for providing the student with a great deal of individual attention. The University system of Special Committees allows students to design their own courses of study within a broad framework laid down by the department, and it encourages a close working relationship between professors and students, promoting freedom and flexibility in the pursuit of the graduate degree. The student's Special Committee guides and supervises all academic work and assesses progress through a series of meetings with the student.
Teaching. Teaching is considered an integral part of training for the profession. The Field requires a carefully supervised teaching experience as part of the training for the degree. The Department of English, in conjunction with the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines , offers excellent training for beginning teachers and varied and interesting teaching within the university-wide First-Year Writing Program. Graduate students are assigned to writing courses under such general rubrics as "Portraits of the Self," "American Literature and Culture," "The Mystery in the Story," "Shakespeare," and "Cultural Studies," among others. Serving as a Teaching Assistant for a lecture course taught by a member of the Department of English faculty is another way graduate students participate in the teaching of undergraduates.
Contact Information
250 Goldwin Smith Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853
Concentrations by Subject
- creative writing
Application Requirements and Deadlines
Dec. 15 (Fall term admission only)
Requirements Summary:
(includes Graduate School Requirements )
The application must be submitted online. Detailed requirement summaries for applicants are available for download from the graduate pages of the English Department website .
- Application and fee
- Academic Statement of Purpose
- Creative Writing Sample
- Three letters of recommendation
- Transcripts
- TOEFL or IELTS (International applicants must demonstrate proficiency in the English language)
Learning Outcomes
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- Creative Writing
The Creative Writing Program offers workshop courses in fiction and poetry writing, and sponsors the Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series during the academic year. Readings and receptions are free and open to the public.
More than 500 undergraduates enroll in the program’s courses annually, many from schools outside the College of Arts & Sciences. English majors may concentrate in creative writing; other majors may pursue a minor in creative writing. Classes open to undergraduates throughout the university are Creative Writing, Narrative Writing and Poetry Writing, and Advanced Narrative Writing & Advanced Poetry Writing.
The program also offers an MFA degree . MFA graduate students organize the First-Year MFA Reading Series, and graduating MFA students hold a reading of their works in the spring.
For more information, contact: [email protected] .
The award-winning national literary journal EPOCH is published by the Department of Literatures in English and the Creative Writing Program. EPOCH publishes fiction, poetry, essays, comics, and graphic art. In continuous publication since 1947, the magazine is edited by students and faculty of the MFA Program.
Submission guidelines, advertising rates, an archive of past issues, and featured poetry and prose from the most recent issue are available at the magazine’s full site, www.epochliterary.com . The past ten years of EPOCH are also available to buy as individual issues in the EPOCH shop, along with subscriptions.
Creative Writing Links
Creative writing faculty.
Emily Fridlund
Assistant Professor
Academic Interests:
Ishion Hutchinson
Associate Professor Director of Creative Writing
- Postcolonial and Anglophone
J. Robert Lennon
Ann S. Bowers Professor of English Editor, EPOCH Literary Magazine
Joanie Mackowski
Associate Professor
Valzhyna Mort
Ernesto Quiñonez
Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Richards Family Assistant Professor
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
- African American
Helena María Viramontes
Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in English
Creative Writing Program Events
Search Cornell AAP
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Visual Arts
The two-year Master of Fine Arts in Creative Visual Arts program is an intensive, intimate, and diverse community that supports both interdisciplinary and medium-specific practices, augmented by access to the breadth of fields of study across the university. Students work closely with a special advisory committee consisting of Department of Art and affiliate faculty of their choosing in addition to an average of 15 artists and critical practitioners that come to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) to lecture and conduct individual M.F.A. studio visits. The Department of Art hosts two distinguished Teiger Mentors in the Arts annually and provides both experimental and formal exhibition opportunities in Ithaca and NYC. The program also features access to exceptional resources and facilities, an exploratory international travel experience, graduate assistantships, and generous tuition remission.
M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts Student Takeover
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MFA Program
Poetry: Ishion Hutchinson, Valzhyna Mort, Joanie Mackowski, Robert Ray Morgan, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Fiction: Emily Fridlund, Michael Koch, John Robert Lennon, Ernesto Quiñonez, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Helena Maria Viramontes
The program offers full funding. All students receive tuition, stipend, and student health insurance for the duration of the two years, which includes graduate assistant work in the first year, and teaching assistant assignments in the second year.
The program hosts the Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series and the First-Year MFA Reading Series.
In addition to funding opportunities during the course of the program, students may apply to teach for two additional years after earning their degree.
Melissa Bank, NoViolet Bulawayo, Gabrielle Calvocaressi, Catherine Chung, Ling Ma, Téa Obreht, Emily Rosko, Alexi Zentner
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Home / News / Education
Meet the professor behind Cornell’s new creative writing MFA
Oct. 14, 2019 11:00 am
On the northwest ridge of picturesque Mount Vernon, Cornell College looks the part of any classic novel setting - making it the perfect fit for Iowa's newest creative writing master's in fine arts program, which the school plans to launch next summer.
Cornell's program, though, will differ from the University of Iowa's renowned full-residency Iowa Writers' Workshop in that it will be 'low-residency” - meaning it will involve some amount of distance education, mixed with shorter on-campus residential stints.
In that the Iowa Writers' Workshop - which in 1936 offered the world's first creative writing master's in fine arts degree - is full-residency, Cornell expects to attract a different audience, according to the program's director and designer, English professor Glenn Freeman.
Iowa has 'this incredibly rich literary culture and such a great program at the University (of Iowa) and since our audience is so different, I think we can work with the university and develop resources that might be a benefit to both,” Freeman said. 'I think it just enriches the whole area to have one more program like this, since they're not competing.”
The Cornell MFA will mark the private liberal arts school's first graduate degree program in nearly 100 years. And based on its market research, it will fill a niche as the state's only low-residency version - with the nearest similar programs at Augsburg University in Minneapolis and at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
'That made us realize there was a market for it here,” said Freeman, who has a long history with low- and full-residency writing programs.
Freeman, 56 and in his 15th year at Cornell, in 1991 completed a low-residency program for his undergraduate degree at Vermont's Goddard University. He then shifted his studies 10 miles west to the state capital of Montpelier, where in 1994 he earned a low-residency MFA in poetry at the esteemed Vermont College.
'That's what made me so interested in them is that I have this background and really believe in them,” Freeman said. 'I wanted to make this happen here.”
Program suited to Cornell's unique academic structure
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After his education in Vermont, Freeman pursued a full-residency doctorate in American literature at the University of Florida - a degree that in 2004 landed him his first full-time job at Cornell. The college dates to 1853 and in 1978 adopted its 'one-course-at-a-time” model that allows students and faculty to focus on one subject in 18-day chunks.
In that Cornell is known for its unique academic structure, the uncommon low-residency MFA seems a natural fit, Freeman said. Plus, he said, it will expand Cornell's appeal to non-traditional students.
'This is for maybe midcareer adults who don't have time to pick up and move somewhere for a program,” he said. 'They can continue with their work lives or family lives but pursue a degree.”
The four-semester program will involve four nine-day residencies at the start of each semester, followed by a fifth final residency that will have students give a 60-minute lecture, deliver a public reading and lead a discussion.
Each residency will coalesce each group's 10 to 12 students around a common passion for writing, facilitated by workshops, panel discussions, lectures and a plan of study for the rest of the semester. Each student will be assigned a mentor who will help in the fourth semester finalize a book-length manuscript of publishable quality.
Four guest faculty - who all work at other colleges and universities - have agreed to be Cornell's first mentors, working remotely with students they're assigned during the semesters but coming to campus for the residencies.
'The faculty will hinge on the enrollment,” Freeman said. 'As we go along, we will expand.”
Total cost for all four semesters: $33,475
Freeman said he started pushing the idea of a low-residency MFA in creative writing five years ago as a way to make use of Cornell's campus in the summer.
'It seemed like a really good option for us,” he said.
Although some might ask whether students lose something in the creative process by working away from campus, Freeman thinks low-residencies produce more sustainable writers.
'I think the benefit is that the way that you're working in the program actually models the way you would be working when you're not in school,” he said. 'When you do a full-residency, it's almost unrealistic. You can get a lot of work done, but then when you graduate you have to figure out how to fit writing into your life.
'Whereas with the low residency, that's what you're doing,” he said. 'You're figuring out how to fit writing into your life. So that there's not a huge shift once you graduate.”
Although Cornell began marketing its new MFA only in August - and hasn't started accepting applications - Freeman has received 125 inquiries. The total cost for all four semesters, including fees and room and board during the residencies, is $33,475 - if you're OK with a double room.
A way to ensure expansion rather than contraction
And, at a time of unease across the higher education landscape, Cornell President Jonathan Brand said the new MFA not only serves a state and community niche but helps his institution expand rather than contract.
'The future for colleges and universities is really one of expanding the groups of people we can serve,” Brand said. 'Well, we have a strength in creative writing. We've had a strength in creative writing. We are fortunate to be just up the road from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, one of the strongest academic programs in the country.
'And when you're in the business of generating ideas, we had staff who came to us and they said, ‘We think that there's a need for a low-residency MFA program in creative writing.' ”
It didn't take much convincing, Brand said.
'We think we could meet it beautifully. We think we're well positioned to do it. We have the facilities to do it, including a new Center for the Literary Arts. What do you say we do it?” Brand said.
'And I will tell you, it's very exciting.”
For more information, visit cornellcollege.edu and search for M.F.A. in Creative Writing.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; [email protected]
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Cornell University
New york, united states.
Each year the department enrolls eight students, four in fiction and four in poetry. Our small size allows us to offer a generous financial support package which fully funds every student. At the same time, we have a large and diverse graduate faculty with competence in a wide range of literary, theoretical, and cultural fields. Students choose a Special Committee of two faculty members who provide a great deal of individual attention and encourage students to design their own courses of study within the very broad framework laid down by the department.
Students participate in a graduate writing workshop each semester and take 6 additional one-semester courses for credit, at least four of them in English or American literature, Comparative Literature, literature in the modern or classical languages, or cultural studies (typically two per semester during the first year and one per semester during the second year). First year students receive practical training by working as Editorial Assistants for Epoch, a periodical of prose and poetry published by the Creative Writing staff of the department. Teaching is considered an integral part of the program as well. A carefully supervised teaching experience is required for every M.F.A. candidate during the second year of the program. The Department of English, in conjunction with the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, offers excellent training for beginning teachers and varied and interesting teaching within the university-wide First-Year Writing Program. The most significant requirement of the MFA degree is the completion of a book-length manuscript: a collection of poems, short stories, or a novel.
Contact Information
250 Goldwin Smith Hall Dept. of English Ithaca New York, United States 14853-3201 Phone: 607-255-7989 Email: [email protected] http://english.cornell.edu/mfa-creative-writing
Bachelor of Arts in English/Literature +
Minor / concentration in creative writing +, master of fine arts in creative writing +, graduate program director, j. robert lennon.
Castle. Happyland. Pieces for the Left Hand: 100 Anedotes. On the Night Plain. Broken River. Familiar. See you in Paradise.
http://english.cornell.edu/j-robert-lennon
Ernesto Quinonez
Bodega Dreams.
http://english.cornell.edu/ernesto-qui%C3%B1onez
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Open Interval. Black Swan.
http://english.cornell.edu/lyrae-van-clief-stefanon
Helena Maria Viramontes
Their Dogs Came with Them. The Mothers and Other Stories. Under the Feet of Jesus.
http://english.cornell.edu/helena-mar%C3%ADa-viramontes
Ishion Hutchinson
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He attended the University of the West Indies, Mona, New York University, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. His poetry and essays have appeared in such publications as Attica, Caribbean Review of Books, and LA Review. His first collection, Far District, won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award.
http://english.cornell.edu/ishion-hutchinson
Joanie Mackowski
Joanie Mackowski is the author of View From a Temporary Window (University of Pittsburgh Press 2010) and The Zoo (University of Pittsburgh Press 2002), which was awarded the Associated Writing Programs’ Award Series in Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Other awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Grant, and the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems appear in Best American Poetry 2007 and Best American Poetry 2009, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in such journals as The Yale Review, Raritan, New England Review, Poetry, and others. Her third collection of poems, currently underway, explores lyric poetry from an ecocritical vantage point.
http://english.cornell.edu/joanie-mackowski
Valzhyna Mort
Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Factory of Tears and Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2008 and 2011). Mort has received the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine, and the Burda Prize for Eastern European authors.
https://english.cornell.edu/valzhyna-mort-hutchinson
Emily Fridlund
EMILY FRIDLUND grew up in Minnesota. Her first novel, History of Wolves (Grove Atlantic), was a finalist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. It won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. History of Wolves was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, one of USA Today’s Notable Books, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a #1 Indie Next pick. The opening chapter was awarded the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction. Fridlund’s debut collection of stories, Catapult (Sarabande), won the Mary McCarthy Prize. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of journals, including Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, FiveChapters, New Orleans Review, Sou’wester, New Delta Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Southwest Review. Fridlund received a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where she completed a study of simultaneity in modernist and contemporary narratives by women.
https://english.cornell.edu/emily-fridlund
Nafissa Thompson-Spires
https://english.cornell.edu/nafissa-thompson-spires
Publications & Presses +
EPOCH Magazine
Reading Series +
The Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series ( http://english.cornell.edu/zalaznick )
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Department of English
Creative Writing: The Faculty
Marcus Wicker (First Horizon Foundation Distinguished Associate Professor, Poetry)
Marcus Wicker is the author of Silencer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)—winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award—and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), selected by DA Powell for the National Poetry Series. He is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship , the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cave Canem, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and POETRY. He is Poetry Editor of Southern Indiana Review, a founding editor at SIR Press, and coordinator of the MFA program.
Eric Schlich (Assistant Professor, Fiction)
Eric Schlich is the author of the story collection Quantum Convention (UNT Press), winner of the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the 2020 Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award in Fiction. He is the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and residencies at Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. His fiction has aired on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts and appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Crazyhorse, Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, New South, Nimrod, Redivider, and River Styx, among other journals. He is the editor-in-chief of The Pinch.
Mark Mayer (Assistant Professor, Fiction)
Mark Mayer writes fiction and nonfiction. His short story collection, AERIALISTS (Bloomsbury 2019), won the Michener-Copernicus Prize and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He has been published in American Short Fiction, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, Best American Mystery Stories, and The New York Times. His academic scholarship has appeared in Twentieth-Century Literature and LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory. Mark has taught creative writing as the R.P. Dana Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Cornell College and as a Faculty Fellow in Creative Writing at Colby College. He teaches in the MFA program.
Emily Skaja (Assistant Professor, Poetry)
Emily Skaja 's first book, BRUTE , won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems have been published in Best New Poets, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, FIELD, and The New York Times Magazine, among other places. She teaches in the MFA program and also serves as the poetry co-editor of Southern Indiana Review .
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
The Creative Writing Program offers the MFA degree, with a concentration in either poetry or fiction. MFA students pursue intensive study with distinguished
Land Acknowledgement. Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ
In continuous publication since 1947, the magazine is edited by students and faculty of the MFA Program. Submission guidelines, advertising rates, an archive of
The two-year Master of Fine Arts in Creative Visual Arts program is an intensive, intimate, and diverse community that supports both interdisciplinary and
Core faculty · Glenn Freeman · Curtis Bauer · Steven Dunn · Lily Hoang · Shena McAuliffe · Rachel Swearingen.
Learn more about program faculty and their books. Refresh your memory on the low-residency program details. Take a look at the programs our Center for the
MFA Program · Core Faculty Includes: Poetry: Ishion Hutchinson, Valzhyna Mort, Joanie Mackowski, Robert Ray Morgan, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon · Affiliated
Four guest faculty - who all work at other colleges and universities - have agreed to be Cornell's first mentors, working remotely with students
At the same time, we have a large and diverse graduate faculty with competence in a wide range of literary, theoretical, and cultural fields. Students choose a
Cornell University's Department of Literatures in English. Literature & theory, creative writing & a world-class speaker series.
He is Poetry Editor of Southern Indiana Review, a founding editor at SIR Press, and coordinator of the MFA program. Eric Schlich (Assistant