| MFA Course Work | ||||||||||||||||||||
The MFA Program traditionally begins with the first of three intensive 14-day summer residencies, followed by three non-residential semesters of creative writing/critical reading and writing and one non-residential semester of thesis preparation. Students may opt to begin the program in the spring non-residential semester. See traditional and non-traditional course sequences below. The MFA at Ashland offers one of the only cross-genre options in the country, in which students may take one semester in another genre. All non-residential courses and the writers' workshops during summer residencies are taught on a mentorship basis, with each faculty mentor working with no more than five students per class. Download the MFA Student Handbook (PDF, updated 2/25/2008). |
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| Traditional MFA Course Sequence | ||||||||||||||||||||
Students beginning in the summer will have a projected schedule of courses as follows:
Total number of credits: 45 |
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| Non-Traditional MFA Course Sequence | ||||||||||||||||||||
Students beginning in the spring will have a projected schedule of courses as follows:
Note that students enrolling in the spring will have a spring semester off in between completion of English 701 and the final residency. Students are encouraged to continue working on their thesis during this period. Total number of credits: 45 |
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| The Cross-Genre Option | ||||||||||||||||||||
After being admitted to the program in poetry or creative nonfiction, students interested in both genres may petition the MFA Director to take either English 632: Mentorship II, or English 633: Mentorship III, in a secondary genre. For example, a student accepted into the MFA Program in creative nonfiction might petition the MFA Director to take one course, either English 632 or English 633, in poetry. Poetry would then become that student’s secondary genre. Students must support such requests with writing samples in the secondary genre. In making decisions to grant or deny student requests to study in a second genre, the MFA Director will consult appropriate MFA Faculty. Decisions will be based on the student’s writing sample and on progress the student has made in his or her primary genre. Students taking courses in two genres must complete English 631: Mentorship I and English 701: MFA Thesis, and either English 632 or English 633, in their primary genre. |
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| Course Descriptions | ||||||||||||||||||||
English 501: Summer Residency I: This gateway residency will be taught over 14 days. There will be three major components to the course:
Students will attend ten 2 hour and 45 minutes Writers' Workshop/Mentor Tutorial sessions and ten hour and a half Craft, Style, and Publishing Seminars. Students are encouraged to attend Evening/Weekend programs. In addition, students will meet individually with their mentors to define a writing/reading project for the non-residential course, English 631: Mentorship I. There will also be new student orientation sessions, academic advising sessions, and computer support sessions. English 631: Mentorship I: This course represents the first step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or nonfiction (culminating in the MFA Thesis). Via the internet, each student will work individually with his or her faculty mentor, and collectively with student peers, to develop the craft of drafting the body of a book. Students will also develop skills in judiciously applying constructive criticism to improve the quality of their writing, and skills in articulating constructive criticism of both published and student work. While students will actively engage in the revision process, the emphasis of the course will be on the generation of new material. English 632: Mentorship II: This course represents the second step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or nonfiction (culminating in the MFA Thesis). Via the internet, each student will continue to develop the craft of drafting new poems or pieces of nonfiction by working individually with a faculty mentor, and by working collectively with student peers. In addition, students will work toward the completion of a group of poems or pieces of nonfiction worthy of serving as the core of a book. While students will continually create new work, there will be an emphasis on the revision process, and on the ability of students to articulate the nature and degree of aesthetic coherence in their own developing manuscript, as well as in existing works of literature.
English 502: Summer Residency II: This mid-program residency will be taught over 14 days. There will be three major components to the course:
Students will attend ten 2 hour and 45 minutes Writers' Workshop/Mentor Tutorial sessions and ten hour and a half Craft, Style, and Publishing Seminars. Students are encouraged to attend Evening/Weekend programs. In addition, students will meet individually with their mentors to define a writing/reading project for English 633: Mentorship III. There will also be academic advising sessions, and computer support sessions. English 633: Mentorship III: This course represents the third step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or nonfiction. Via the internet, students will continue to develop new writing by working individually with a faculty mentor, and by working collectively with student peers. Students will also sharpen the ability to articulate traits, on the level of theme, form and/or style, that characterize the well-crafted books encountered in the assigned reading, and that characterize their own developing manuscripts. While students will actively work toward the creation of new essays or poems, and will continue to revise individual works, there will be an emphasis on the ability to articulate key formal and thematic characteristics that contribute to the resonance and aesthetic integrity of a body of writing.
English 701: MFA Thesis: This course represents the fourth and culminating step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or essays. Via the internet, students will develop further the craft of shaping a book-length collection of poems or nonfiction by working individually with a faculty mentor, and by working collectively with student peers. Though each student will actively work toward the creation of new poems or new pieces of nonfiction, and toward the revision of individual works, the primary emphasis of the course will be on developing the student's ability to shape a book-length collection of writing into an aesthetic construct that is at once informed by, and larger than, the sum of its parts. English 503: Summer Residency III: This exit residency will emphasize post-thesis concerns. Each student will defend his or her thesis before a faculty committee, participate in a thesis reading, and develop a deepening awareness of the publication industry through advisement from faculty, visiting writers, agents and editors. There will be individual meetings with editors and agents, in addition to the regular three components of the summer residency: 1) Writers’ Workshop/Mentor Tutorial Sessions 2) Craft, Style, and Publishing Seminars 3) Evening/Weekend Readings and Discussions Emphases in the Writers’ Workshop/Mentor Tutorial Sessions will vary but might typically involve a focus on new writing unrelated to the thesis, on outtakes from the thesis that might form the nucleus of a new book, or on the further development of the completed thesis into a publishable manuscript. Students will attend ten 2 hour and 45 minutes Writers' Workshop/Mentor Tutorial sessions and ten hour and a half Craft, Style, and Publishing Seminars. Students are encouraged to attend Evening/Weekend programs. |
About the MFA at AU |
Prospective Students |
Summer Residency |
Current Students |
River
Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative |
Faculty & Student News |
Joanna Robinson, MFA student, has had her lyric essay, "Mars" selected for publication in an upcoming issue of The Southern Review . |
Joy Gaines-Friedler's first book of poems, Like Vapor, has been published by Mayapple Press. |
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 essay on poetry and politics is now featured on Poetry Daily. He won a Pushcart Prize for his poem, "Just Now." |
Robert Root's The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction will be published in paperback edition in August 2008 by Rowman and Littlefield. |
Stephen Haven's new book The River Lock: One Boy's Life Along the Mohawk has been published by The University of Syracuse Press. |
Angie Estes has had three of her poems translated and published in the recent Russian anthology Contemporary Poetry in the United States: A Bilingual English-Cyrillic Edition. New poems also appear in the Spring 2008 issue of FIELD. Her lyric essay, "Want," was just published in the anthology Every Passing Breath: Contemporary Poets Respond to the Psalms. |
Amy Campbell, Incoming MFA student, was a finalist for the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize for her piece, "A World Away." |
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. |