ASHLAND
Menu

About the MFA at AU

   MFA Home

   Course Work

   Faculty

   Praise for the MFA

   Student Publication News

   Alumni Book Prize

   MFA Monthly

Prospective Students

   How to Apply

   Financial Aid

   Student Accounts

   Tuition and Fees

   Forms

Summer Residency

   Overview

   Visiting Writers
   Schedule of Events

   Room and Board

   2007 Readings

   2007 Craft Seminars

Current Students

   Forms

   Student Accounts

   Links

   WebCT Login


River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative

The Ashland Poetry Press

AU English Department

Faculty & Student News

Valerie Due, MFA student, has had her essay "The Skinning Board" selected as the winner of the Writers at Work nonfiction fellowship competition, which includes prize money, publication in Quarterly West, a featured reading at the Writers at Work Conference, full tuition for the conference, free housing, and a manuscript consultation with a visiting writer or agent while at the conference. Abigail Thomas, the judge of the contest, had this to say about Due's piece: "I love the emotional restraint coupled with the ravishing prose of the piece. It serves so perfectly the young narrator whose initiation into the harsh realities of life--and death--on a farm is being presented here."
Peter Campion's poem, "The Lions," is coming out in the spring number of Blackbird (with audio). His essay on political poetry has been published in the current Poetry Northwest. His essay titled, "Sincerity and its Discontents in American Poetry Now," was recently published by Poetry and is available on their website for free. His review of Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music was published in The Boston Globe. He recently gave readings at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Wor-Wic College in Maryland.
Robert Root's essay "Terra Cognita" will be published in the Summer 2008 issue of Colorado Review.
Joanna Robinson, MFA student, has had her lyric essay, "Journey Through the Trees" selected for publication in an upcoming issue of Tampa Review.
Amy Campbell, Incoming MFA student, was a finalist for the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize for her piece, "A World Away."

Stephen Haven, Program Director, has had his poem, "The Word Wonders" selected for publication in The Cincinnati Review.

Jill Christman's short essay, "The Sloth," was recently published in Brevity.

Timothy West, Incoming MFA student, has had his poem "To My Daughter on a Workday" selected to be featured on an RTA bus card in Cleveland, Ohio for the annual Moving Minds: The Verse and Vision Project.

Joy Gaines-Friedler was a finalist for the 2007 MARGIE poetry contest.  Her poems will be published in the next issue.

MFA Program in Poetry & Creative Nonfiction

Spirit of the Program

Ashland University offers the only two-genre low-residency MFA Program in the country, with a cross-genre option and separate degree tracks in poetry and creative nonfiction. 

The program is characterized both by an insistence on high aesthetic standards for the creation of new literature and by an emphasis on a supportive community of writers.

The Ashland MFA Program embraces a Whitmanesque sense of the writer's radical good cheer and the skeptic's insistence to confront realities.  While accepting no easy assumptions--not even assuming the ability of language to embody the full range and richness of the most simple, human moment--we are interested in what poets and nonfiction writers can learn from one another. 

What, for example, does it mean to write within an orientation to "the truth," as poets often do and nonfiction writers must?  What might it mean for a nonfiction writer to emphasize the imagination as fully as a poet?  How might an associational movement of thought, imagery, emotion, and sound offer an entry into the multi-layered nature of the radically real?                                         

We invite accomplished poets and nonfiction writers who are drawn by the interplay between poetry and nonfiction to apply to our program.  Come join the celebration!


While our admissions period closes May 1, we will consider applications from exceptional students interested in enrolling for this summer through June 1.

Attention: The Ashland University MFA Program announces its new faculty mentors for 2008-2009.  Visit the Faculty page to read more.

Congratulations to our MFA students who have won awards or have had pieces selected for publication recently!

2008-2009 Program Handbook is available to download. (PDF)

The 2008 Summer Residency Packet and Residency Preference Sheet are available to download. (PDF)

Live Online Open House

Register for an online, live web conference with an MFA representative.
Click here to register

Roadsign: Horse and Buggy Crossing

Where the horseshoe

meets the highway...

Dates & Deadlines

Summer & Fall Registration

April 1 - May 15

Summer Residency Preference Sheet due May 15 (New students: June 15)

Application Deadlines:

Summer 2008 Semester - extended to June 1

Spring 2009 Semester - December 1

Apply to the MFA at Ashland

Summer Residency - July 13-26

"The total immersion was exhausting, but wonderful.  The published guest writers who came were excellent.  I felt very honored to have been able to attend readings and workshops with them.  Invaluable.  The faculty have been 100% supportive and positive with their praise and their criticisms.  They have taken what feels like an overwhelming task, this writing, and made us believe we can be successful.  Even as many of us are starting from the ground up.  I’m glad the summer residency is completed, but I don’t want to leave either." - Quote From Program Evaluations, Summer 2007
 

 

photo of covered bridge:  David FitzSimmons