George Mason University

Details about the Program:

Mason's MFA program, started in 1980, offers three concentrations. Each concentration—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—requires 48 credit hours and takes at least three years to complete. Course work blends writing workshops with craft seminars and the study of literature. Each concentration also requires completion of a thesis (a book-length manuscript). The poetry concentration also requires completion of a comprehensive exam. The fiction and nonfiction concentrations offer several options for the capstone comprehensive exam, including an oral exam, completion of a reading list coupled with an annotated bibliography, and designing an individualized project to meet a student’s long-term goals.

 

Required Courses Include:

• a forms course (ENGL 564, 565, 566) that combines reading the historic works in the genre with considering contemporary works and experimenting with a variety of writing styles in the genre

• at least three workshops in the genre

• at least two craft seminars in the genre

• at least two literature courses in the genre

• at least one course in another genre (for experimentation purposes)

• five electives (which can be in any field as long as they are at the grad level). Nonfiction students use one elective to study research methods. TA’s use two electives to study pedagogy.

 

MFA Student Handbook:

• pdf

 

Noteworthy Aspects of the Mason Program include:

• The five electives available to most students (those who are not TA’s) allow a great deal of flexibility in the final design of the program. Students can cross genres within the program or bring into their studies courses in other fields that may influence or inform their writing. Or they merely may take more than the required number of workshops, craft courses, or literature courses.

• Students have a large number of special topics courses that enrich the study within each genre. Students in the poetry concentration, for example, may study the prose poem or war poetry, or they may do work in literary translations. Fiction students are offered special topics courses such as writing the novel, women in fiction, etc. Nonfiction students are offered special topics courses including the personal essay, the memoir, the biography and autobiography, magazine writing, sports writing, or travel writing.

• The program is located just outside of Washington, D.C., not the cheapest place in America for a graduate student to live but a vibrant and exciting locale for a writer to study and work.

• The faculty members are all in residence and teach two courses per semester, rotating through the line-up of courses required for the degree. This makes them routinely accessible and available to students for wide-ranging studies and work.

• Workshops and craft seminars enroll a max of 15 students and upper-level workshops often are smaller—10-12 students. Other graduate courses have enrollment caps of 18 students.

• The pupil-teacher ratio in the poetry program is 8:1 and in prose, its 7:1.

• Literature courses at Mason may be taken with MFA writing faculty as well as with English Department scholars, offering MFA students a chance to look at literature from a variety of perspectives, including from the standpoint of craft.

• At least six visiting writers—two per concentration—come to Mason every semester for intense workshops with small groups of graduate students. In addition, Mason is home to the week-long Fall for the Book Festival in late September of every year. The festival brings more than 100 writers to the Mason campus and to venues throughout the Washington region.

• Graduate TA’s get the best-rounded preparation for the college-teaching marketplace—pedagogical courses in teaching composition and literature, classroom experience in comp, lit, and creative writing. TA’s receive a stipend and full tuition waiver. The program has 34 TA slots; each position is awarded for the three years of the program. It also has four full-time fellowships that offer benefits comparable to those of a TA slot but which require the student to do no work other than writing. Mason also offers research assistantships (RA’s), as well as smaller fellowships, and annual writing awards to recognize the best work.

• The faculty of the George Mason Creative Writing Program stress that the process of reading and writing is the greatest help to developing talent. Faculty also believe that getting an MFA is not the end of the development of craft but rather a major step along the way as well as a commitment made by writers to themselves.