The Michener Center for Writers is a Masters of Fine Arts program in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin. It is widely regarded as one of the top creative writing programs in the world. Bret Anthony Johnston is the current director of the program. Previously, James Magnuson ran the program for more than 20 years. UT Resident English Department faculty include Elizabeth McCracken, Edward Carey, Roger Reeves, and Michener Center faculty include Amy Hempel, Joanna Klink and rotating guest faculty.
The program was founded in the early 1990s through an endowment from James A. Michener and Mari Sabusawa Michener. It was originally called the Texas Center for Writers, but changed its name to honor Mr. Michener after his death in 1997.
The MFA in Writing is a three-year, full-time residency program, unique in its dual-discipline focus. [1] While writers apply and are admitted in a primary field of concentration—chosen from fiction, poetry, playwriting or screenwriting—they have the opportunity to develop work in a second field during their program of study. The program operates through competitive entry and offers a generous fellowship that includes tuition, a stipend, and other fees. Classes are taught by nationally recognized writers as visiting and adjunct faculty and by faculty in the Departments of English, Radio Television and Film, and Theatre & Dance. Fellows are eligible to submit to the Keene Prize for Literature. Winners receive $50,000 and three runners-up receive $20,000.
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.
The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 87 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2.7% and 3.7%. On the university's behalf, the workshop administers the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
The Columbia University School of the Arts is the fine arts graduate school of Columbia University in Morningside Heights, New York. It offers Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees in Film, Visual Arts, Theatre and Writing, as well as the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Film Studies. It also works closely with the Arts Initiative at Columbia University (CUArts) and organizes the Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), a week-long program of screenings, screenplay, and teleplay readings.
A Master of Professional Writing Program is a type of graduate degree program in professional writing. Chatham University in Pennsylvania has an online MPW program. The University of Southern California's MPW program ended in May 2016, at which point it moved to the Vermont College of Fine Arts under the new name the School of Writing and Publishing.
Catherine Barnett is an American poet and educator. She is the author of Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space ; Human Hours, winner of the Believer Book Award; The Game of Boxes, winner of the James Laughlin Award; and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award. Her honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She has published widely in journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Nation, Pleiades, Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Washington Post. Her poetry was featured in The Best American Poetry 2016, edited by Edward Hirsch. Barnett teaches in the graduate and undergraduate writing programs at New York University. She has also taught in the MFA Program at Hunter College, Princeton University, The New School, and Barnard College. She also works as an independent editor. She received her B.A. from Princeton University and an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.,
Richard Henry Wilde Dillard was an American poet, author, critic, and translator.
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Sabina Murray is a Filipina-American screenwriter and novelist. She currently is a professor in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
William Baer is an American writer, translator, editor, and academic. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright (Portugal), and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Texas State University Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a three-year graduate program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, USA. Fiction writer Doug Dorst is the current director of the program.
Randall Silvis is an American novelist, the author of short fiction and nonfiction, a playwright, a screenwriter, a poet, and a teacher of creative writing.
Gotham Writers Workshop is an adult-education program for aspiring writers based in New York City. Established in 1993, it offers courses in-person and online, and has been recognized for its classes in science fiction and mystery writing. In 2004, it published Gotham Writers' Workshop Fiction Gallery: Exceptional Short Stories Selected by New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School.
The Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing is a graduate program in creative writing based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine, United States. Stonecoast is one of the oldest low-residency creative writing programs in the United States and is notable for being one of only two such programs in the country to offer a degree in popular fiction. The Stonecoast MFA program is a low-residency program. Ten-day residencies for students, faculty, and visiting writers are held each January and June. The rest of a student's academic work during the two-year program is pursued on a one-on-one basis under the leadership of a faculty mentor.
Matthew Dickman is an American poet. He and his identical twin brother, Michael Dickman, also a poet, were born in Portland, Oregon.
UCLA Extension Writers' Program is a unit within UCLA Extension, the not-for-profit and self-supporting community outreach arm of the University of California, Los Angeles. Located in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, the UCLA Extension Writers' Program offers approximately 400 annual open-enrollment screenwriting and creative writing courses for all levels of writers. Courses are available online and on the UCLA campuses in downtown Los Angeles and Woodland Hills. All courses are approved by the UCLA Academic Senate.
Kelly Cherry was an American novelist, poet, essayist, professor, and literary critic and a former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010–2012). She was the author of more than 30 books, including the poetry collections Songs for a Soviet Composer, Death and Transfiguration, Rising Venus and The Retreats of Thought. Her short fiction was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and won a number of awards.
Robin Russin is an American screenwriter, director, playwright, author and educator.
Michelle Bitting is an American poet who was honored on March 8, 2012 with the position of Poet Laureate of Pacific Palisades, California.
Max Garland is a notable poet and author, known for his contributions to American literature. He has authored several poetry collections, including "The Postal Confessions," which won the Juniper Prize for Poetry in 1995; "Hunger Wide as Heaven," the winner of the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition in 2006; and "The Word We Used for It," which received the Brittingham Poetry Prize in 2017.
Geffrey Davis is an American poet and professor. He is the author of Revising the Storm (2014) and Night Angler (2019). He teaches in The Arkansas Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He also serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.