Master of Fine Arts - Admissions & Degree Requirements

KU's newly established MFA program offers students tracks in fiction writing, poetry writing, playwriting, and creative nonfiction. The full-time creative writing faculty of seven has been widely published and anthologized and has been awarded such distinctions as the Gertrude Stein Award, the Kenyon Review Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize, the Kennedy Center Gold Medallion, and the Pushcart Prize. Students who finish their course work in two years may have the third year devoted almost entirely to the writing of the thesis. Internships are available with Cottonwood, KU's nationally recognized literary review, as well as the department's award-winning English Alternative Theater, and students with assistantships have the opportunity to teach a course in creative writing. In recent years, writers Salman Rushdie, Rita Dove, Cristina Garcia, Kent Haruf, Ted Kooser, Sherman Alexie, Cherrie Moraga, Nuruddin Farah, Diane Williams, Paul Muldoon, Sam Lipsyte, and many others have come to the campus to give seminars and readings.

• Thesis: 15 hrs
• Writing workshops: 12 hrs
• Other courses: 9 hrs
• Literature courses: 12 hrs

Total: 48 hrs

Admission requirements to the MFA program include the submission of a resume or CV; statement; letters; GRE; transcripts, and a writing portfolio consisting of thirty pages of fiction or creative nonfiction, ten to fifteen pages of poetry; or a one-act play.

MFA candidates will present appropriate, original work in fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction, or some combination of these, as a thesis.

Application Deadlines:

• December 31 for fellowship and GTA consideration.
• March 1 for admission to the program.

Graduate Teaching Assistantships and Internships with Cottonwood, a nationally regarded and distributed literary review, and/or the English Alternative Theater, an award-winning theatre company, are available. A number of annual prizes and awards recognize outstanding achievements in teaching and creative writing. If you are applying for a teaching assistantship, please have your letter writers indicate your qualifications and/or potential for teaching.

For more information regarding admission or program requirements, please contact the Associate Chair of the English Department, Tom Lorenz or call him at (785) 864-2516.

For more information regarding Graduate Teaching Assistantships, please contact the Director of the Freshman Sophomore English Program, Michael L. Johnson call him at or (785) 864-2507.