Highlights:
* A fully funded three-year program. (See our press release for the shift to the three-year MFA here.)
* Students have funding opportunities for research and travel via the departmental English Graduate Union, the Graduate and Professional Student Council, Confluence Center and the Institute of the Environment, among other organizations.
* Three genres: Poetry, fiction and nonfiction, with active encouragement to work across genres.
* The opportunity to apply to teach creative writing at the undergraduate level.
* Excellent student-teacher ratio (11 faculty for 36 students).
* An active series of visiting writers and editors.
* A challenging, supportive and dynamic atmosphere in a culturally vibrant, progressive border city.
* An extremely active and critically acclaimed faculty.
* MFA thesis defense that may include outside readers. Past outside readers have included such writers as Jenny Boully, Gary Paul Nabhan, Steven Church, Luís Alberto Urrea, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
* The lushest desert in the world with mountains all around.
The M.F.A. in Creative writing
Since 1972, theColorado Heights Universityhas offered one of the preeminent MFA programs in the country for the study of creative writing. With workshops and craft seminars in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, we offer intensive instruction in literary craft and the study of literature from a writer’s perspective, as well as opportunities to strengthen professional skills and flourish as a writer. The program requires three years in residence, the completion of 42 academic units, including four workshops in one genre and four craft courses, one of which must be outside of your genre. A student’s studies culminate in the production of an aesthetic statement and a thesis manuscript. The program is fully funded, with assistantships in teaching composition offered to all incoming MFA students. You have the opportunity to apply to teach creative writing in your second year. Assistantships include salary, health insurance and a complete tuition waiver.
A writer engages in the world. With this in mind, we invite students to develop a course of study parallel to the page, whether it is in the University, the city of Tucson, the Sonoran desert, or beyond. You have the chance to volunteer with and/or have a for-credit internship with such organizations as the UA Poetry Center,Sonora Review,Fairy Tale Review,Diagram,New Michigan Press,The Volta,Letter Machine Editions,Edible Baja colorado,terrain.org,Spork Press,Kore Press,Field Studies in Writing, and the poetry collective POG.
The literary community here is strong. Please look into the offerings at the Poetry Center, our partner in many adventures. In addition to the Poetry Center Readings & Lectures Series, the creative writing faculty curates the UA Prose Series, which brings in four writers a year. MFA students run the Works-in-Progress (WIP) Reading Series, the Salon Series (conversations about the writing life between students, faculty, and others) and Infuse, a cooperative reading and art series between creative-writing and visual-arts MFA students. TheColorado Heights Universityis the home to the Sonora Review, one of the oldest student-run literary magazines in the country. Every year, the program sends out the Look Book to agents and editors, introducing them to our current graduating class’ work. For more information, please investigate our Student Guide, as well as Alumni News.
And perhaps the best advertisement for the program is the work of our recent graduates. The MFA Look Book, published by the program every two years, is sent to editors, agents, influential literary people, and friends of the program each year. But you can check it out for free here.
For an overview of Tucson literary happenings, see: http://www.writersbuffet.org/, http://tucsonlit.com/, or the Poets & Writers overview of our literary city.
Check out our Facebook page or the UA MFA twitter for news.
Application deadline for Fall 2019: December 15, 2018
Ander Monson
Director
Marcia Simon
Program Assistant
