Goucher College - MFA in Creative Non-Fiction Posted on April 23rd
Goucher College’s limited-residency MFA in Creative Nonfiction allows students to complete most of the requirements off campus while developing their skills as nonfiction writers under the close supervision of a faculty mentor. The limited-residency format is particularly well suited for the education of a writer, providing the nurturing supervision of a mentor while allowing students the freedom and solitude to be creative. To this end, the program has endeavored to recruit and hire faculty members who are respected practitioners in the genre, have excelled in the teaching of creative nonfiction, and can work with a wide range of student interests.
What distinguishes Goucher’s MFA from other graduate creative writing programs, including those that take advantage of the limited-residency format, is its exclusive focus on a single genre. The program is also distinguished by its strong professional focus on writing and publishing. Toward that end, second year students make an annual trip to New York to meet with editors and agents in the publishing world.
The program is normally completed in two years and includes four semesters of work, an internship, two spring mini-residencies, two two-week summer residencies, and a final partial residency the summer the student graduates. The spring residency is not required of students who entered the MFA program prior to Fall 2007.
Balancing original writing with critical reading, it provides instruction in the following areas of creative nonfiction: narrative nonfiction, the personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, travel/nature/science writing, and biography/profiles.
