ASU Department of English

ASU Creative Writing offers an exceptional program in creative activity—a curricular model that guides talented individuals in writing original poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Equally, this model informs service projects that reach out to Arizona, the nation, and an international community of writers. Program innovation and vitality together with exemplary mentorship from a superior teaching faculty combine to shape and define pragmatic, successful outcomes for students of the Master of Fine Arts program—new century graduates we distinguish as artist-citizens.

Nationally classified by the Associated Writing Programs as a major interdisciplinary “studio/academic program,” MFA students divide work equally between writing workshops and literature and theory courses. In a flexible curriculum, poets and prose writers work mainly with professors in the Department of English. While the MFA is a professional, not a vocational degree program, each student confronts the challenge of producing primary works of literature in a real-world setting. Courses such as “Creative Writing and the Professions” and “Internship for Community Outreach” encourage students to envision life beyond graduation, providing training that will lead to mainstream publishing and performance, moving students from the classroom to performance, and from theory to first book.

Creative Writing, with deep historic roots at ASU, has been a part of the English Department since the 1930s. With the inception of the MFA degree in 1985, Creative Writing became a professionally ascendant unit, ranked within the top twenty MFA programs in the nation by US News and World Report. In the past seven years, ASU Creative Writing faculty members have produced twelve books of fiction, four collections of short stories, twelve volumes of poetry, a memoir, and forty-four plays. During this period, they have garnered multiple awards including Pushcart Prizes, two Howard Foundation Fellowships from Brown University, an H. D. Fellowship, a Cleveland State Poetry Prize, the Gettysburg Review Annual Poetry Prize, the University of Akron Press Poetry Prize, a National Hispanic Playwriting Award, a Lannan Foundation Literary Selection, lifetime achievement awards from the Western Literature Association and the Arizona Historical Museum, the Pen USA Literary Award for Poetry, and a Poetry Finalist for the National Book Award.

Over these last seven years, the faculty has appeared in all major American literary anthologies and in prestigious journals from The Atlantic to The New York Times. Creative Writing faculty members have developed an increasingly international reputation, having works performed in varied and celebrated venues including off-Broadway theater, the London stage, and Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac.” Public art grants have funded projects such as the “Arizona Poetry Model for Palliative Care Patients,” The Museum Heart” a twelve-foot steel poetry installation at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and a 603-tile granite installation “Words Over Water” around the Tempe Town Lake.

Faculty and administrative staff have mentored graduate students in more than two-hundred community-outreach efforts in an informed ethic—a campus mall stretching from the “ASU Community Writers’ Workshop” to Phoenix and nearby Native American communities, and to the farthest corners of the state and the world. Through Creative Writing’s Virginia G. Piper Center, students recently have been supported in outreach programs to China and India.

The ASU Creative Writing is and has always been an unswervingly student-first program. It remains a place of shelter for graduate students where the centuries-old apprenticeship model thrives within a New American University.

Admission

Applicants should have an undergraduate major in English or Creative Writing, with a GPA of 3.00 or above; however, students applying for graduate study who do not have either of these undergraduate majors may be admitted on the basis of writing excellence. We no longer require the Miller Analogies Test (MAT) or the Graduate Record Exam (GRE); however, our faculty is interested to see those scores if students submit them. Applicants must submit three letters of recommendation using the forms provided http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/forms/recltr.doc. Also include a personal résumé or curriculum vitae; a statement of career goals including the writer’s intended area of specialization; and a manuscript sample of one of the following: 20 pages of poetry, 30 pages of prose, or 40 pages of a combination of these literary forms.

Apply online at http://www.asu.edu/graduate. Have your official transcripts sent (from each college attended) directly to the Graduate College, Box 871003, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1003. The Graduate College will not act on applications that do not include complete transcripts and the application fee.

Send your creative manuscript, résumé, statement of aims, Teaching Assistant application materials, and letters of recommendation directly to the Creative Writing Program office, Box 870302, Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-0302. Do not send your writing sample to the Graduate College!

Selection

All application materials must be received by January 15th of each year. Selection is based on the following: talent and promise demonstrated in the manuscript sample; academic record; strength of letters of recommendation; and compatibility of the applicant’s career goals with the purpose and design of the ASU degree program.

Graduate Assistantships

Students admitted with regular status to the MFA program will be awarded a Teaching Assistantship in the Department of English: http://www.asu.edu/english/gradstudies/ta.htm Students should apply for assistantships at the time they apply for admission. Send all forms to Creative Writing in the Department of English. Tuition is waived for all graduate assistants working in a 50% position. Health insurance is provided by ASU for 50% graduate assistants. If awarded a 25% position, the graduate assistant is considered an Arizona resident, and one-half of in-state tuition is waived. All graduate assistants must enroll for a minimum of six semester hours during each semester.

Creative Writing Program faculty members select candidates to receive Teaching Assistantships. These appointments provide teachers for the First Year Composition program. During the first year of teaching, TAs can expect to teach one or two independent sections of English 101 or 102 and to be enrolled in the Teaching Assistant Seminar, which may be used to fulfill three hours of literature elective credit on a creative writing Program of Study.

During two subsequent years as Teaching Assistants, students may apply to teach beginning creative writing by submitting a request to the Director of Creative Writing. Selection of teachers is made by faculty in the appropriate genres. All MFA candidates will teach creative writing classes by the time they graduate from ASU.

Financial Aid

Fellowships are awarded to admitted graduate students who have submitted excellent application packages. Graduate College Fellowships provide another source of funding. Virginia G. Piper Fellowships are available for top Creative Writing candidates. One second-year MFA candidate is selected each year to receive a Teresa A. Wilhoit Fellowship of $25,000 for the student’s third-year in the MFA program, the award administered by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing

Graduate Student Organizations

The Creative Writing Students' Association (CWSA) is composed of graduate students who are interested in creative writing. CWSA sponsors activities for participants including a reading series for students and community writers, the CWSA Gala, informal seminars on professional development, workshops, and a weekend retreat to mountainous Camp Tontozona each October. This organization is re-invented annually by in-coming students. The Graduate Scholars of English Association (GSEA) is the official organization for graduate students in the Department of English. GSEA represents the interests of students from all disciplines in the department and conducts seminars of interest to English students.

Competitions

Each year MFA candidates are invited to participate in writing competitions sponsored by various ASU donors and organizations including the Associated Writing Program’s INTRO Awards, the English Department Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards in Writing, The Robert C. Martindale Educational Foundation Award in Fiction, the National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Competition, and the Katharine C. Turner Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Outreach Activities for MFA Students

In an earnest and creative attempt to prepare students as artist-citizens, the Creative Writing Program has created and implemented the following professional opportunities:

Hayden’s Ferry Review , a publication of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, is a national literary and critical journal created in an effort to provide students with hands-on editorial, publication, and managerial experiences applicable to the field they propose to enter.

The ASU Writers’ Community is a program that invites the community into the university classroom in a non-graded and free-seminar setting. MFA students volunteer to direct and facilitate the often-spirited discussions. Community members bring their own writing, give reasonable and constructive reactions to the writing of others, and learn from this unique literary, cooperative experience.

The ASU Young Writers at Work Program sends MFA candidates into the community to teach at schools, libraries, and art centers, sites where an understanding of writing is not based on theory but on the real world.

The CWP Reach-Out Projects send graduate students into specific communities, such as Tempe Adult Day Care, to work with Alzheimer’s patients in an arts internship that moves beyond therapy. Other outreach programs are based at sites like half-way houses, homeless shelters, and detention centers.

The Virginia G. Piper Distinguished Visiting Writers Series establishes a high-profile evening literary reading series allowing students to gain exposure to leading talents in the field. Each semester, visiting writers teach masters’ classes for MFA candidates.

Through the Creative Writing Student Association, MFA candidates organize an annual Brown Bag Series of literary discussions and afternoon colloquies. This series allows students to explore the work of visiting writers who are emerging talents or in mid-career.

The Arizona State University Virginia G. Piper Writers’ Conference each March features a host of world-renowned prize-winning authors, emerging writers, agents, publishers, and ASU alumni rising stars. The Piper Center brings nationally and internationally known writers to ASU each year for readings and residencies.

ASU Creative Writing has a good working relationship with the Associated Writing Programs (AWP), the field’s professional organization. In addition, we work as an active clearinghouse for literary concerns in the Valley of the Sun and the state of Arizona, having initiated and developed a strong collaborative network of literary presenters. Students may elect to work as an intern for an organization like the Arizona Humanities Council in producing cooperative literary ventures such as the AZ Book Festival.

History

Since its beginning, Arizona State has encouraged original literary production and publication. Recognizing this fundamental capacity of the university, the Arizona Board of Regents in 1980 selected the Creative Writing Program as one to receive “special emphasis and distinction.” Since the mid-nineties, this program with deep, historic roots has been ranked by various sources as one of the top in the country. ASU Creative Writing is distinguished by an outstanding faculty that has garnered national and international attention: Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, a Pulitzer Prize and several Pulitzer nominations, two Flannery O’Connor Awards, The Western States Book Award, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, as well as Pushcart Prizes, the 2002 Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, and two Medals of Achievement from the National Society of Arts and Letters. The writing program has always been committed to achieving cultural diversity, applying principles of affirmative action and equal opportunity in recruitment and retention of faculty, staff, and students.

Course Requirements

In the English Department, a 48 hour studio/academic program requires poets and prose writers to divide work equally between writing workshops and literature courses. This flexible curriculum allows candidates time to study with several gifted writers and scholars in a stimulating atmosphere, time to get quality advice on writing, and time to explore and develop their talents. In the Theatre Department, a 60 hour studio/academic program emphasizes the collaborative process of playwriting. Working with actors and directors, playwrights' workshops include informal readings, stated readings and workshop production of student plays

Transfer of Credits

Subject to the recommendation of the supervisory committee, a maximum of nine semester hours taken before admission, not as part of a completed degree at ASU and/or another institution, may be used to fulfill degree requirements. All course work for the ASU Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing must be completed within a six-year time limit. Financial aid is not extended beyond the third year.

For more information contact:

MFA Coordinator

Department of English

Arizona State University

Box 870302

Tempe, AZ 85287-0302

480-965-3528

fax 480-965-3451

For questions email: enggrad@asu.edu

Graduate College

Arizona State University

Box 871003

Tempe AZ 85287-1003

480-965-6113

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Updated: July 2, 2008