Queens University of Charlotte - Low Residency MFA Creative Writing Posted on April 26th
The low-residency MFA program at Queens involves four semesters of coursework, each of which includes a seven-day on-campus residency and — in the periods between residencies — an on-line workshop where you share your writing with three or four other students and your faculty mentor for that semester.
Each residency offers seven days of workshops, seminars on the craft and profession of writing, and readings, with considerable formal and informal contact between faculty and students. Over these four semesters of course work, you’ll be developing material for your thesis.
At the end of two years, you’ll finish the program by returning to campus for a fifth residency, a graduating residency, in which you’ll present your thesis, offer a public reading from your work, and lead your fellow students in a craft seminar that you’ve developed with a faculty advisor.
What courses of study are available at Queens?
Students can concentrate in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or writing for stage and screen. Students who are accepted in more than one genre can focus on different genres in different semesters.
Why offer a low-residency program at Queens?
With four faculty members selected (1994, 1996, 1999, 2000) as North Carolina Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and with strong foundations in both the traditional liberal arts and pre-professional programs, Queens has a long history of teaching excellence.
Moreover, the low-residency MFA program at Queens is located in the heart of one of the fastest growing and most dynamic cities in the southeast. As the only low-residency MFA program located in a major city in an eastern state, the Queens MFA program offers easy transportation to and from the campus and an exciting, vibrant city to explore outside of class.
What are the distinctive features of the Queens low-residency program?
–The Queens MFA program was the first and is still one of the only low-residency programs to use a workshop format both during residencies and in the distance learning component of each semester.
–With workshops that never exceed a four-to-one student-teacher ratio, the Queens MFA program offers the lowest student-teacher ratio of any MFA program.
–The Queens MFA program is a studio arts program. All four semesters of course work are devoted to creative writing.
How does the workshop system function at Queens?
All MFA students participate in small workshops that begin during the residencies and continue on-line through the remainder of the semester. At intervals of four to six weeks and twice during each residency, MFA students submit new work to their instructors and to the other two or three students in their workshop. After receiving work from the other students in her or his workshop, each MFA students will submit a written critique, which must be between 300-500 words in length, on each of their colleagues’ work. These critiques are submitted to the instructor and to all participants in the workshop. After receiving critiques from all students, the instructor responds both to the work and to the discussion of the work.
Why use a workshop system?
One principal objective of any MFA program—and perhaps especially a low-residency program—is to foster a community of writers to help surmount the necessary isolation that writing also requires. The workshop system at Queens strengthens our community of writers by insuring that all students must regularly share their own work and respond to other students’ writing. In this way, the bonds developed during residencies deepen over the course of each semester.
A workshop system also provides important training for both writing and teaching.
All writers, of course, must have acute critical instincts. Critiquing the work of other writers sharpens the critical skills that any writer must bring to her or his own work.
Moreover, MFA graduates who pursue teaching careers will almost certainly be teaching writing classes in which they will be required to critique their students’ work. The ability to craft responses that are reasoned, insightful, and tactful is, like any skill, strengthened through continual application and practice.
Does Queens require a semester-long critical project?
No. For any writer—and perhaps especially students in low-residency programs—the time to write is precious and often secured at great cost. Four semesters, two years, is not a long time. We want you to spend as much of that time as possible on your own work.
What are the critical requirements in the Queens MFA programs?
All students must read between 12 to 15 books each semester in preparation for seminars at residencies and must write regular response papers for seminars.
All graduating students must design and present a craft seminar to their fellow students at the graduating residency. In preparation for this seminar, all graduating students must compose a critical essay that explores in depth the topic to be discussed at the seminar.
Within our workshop system, all students will write between 12 and 18 formal critiques of their colleagues’ work each semester.
What are some achievements of Queens students and alumni?
Our students and alumni have had books accepted by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Scribners; Random House; Simon & Schuster; Carol & Graf; and both university and small presses.
Their work has appeared in many publications, including The Missouri Review, The Mississippi Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, West Branch, The Kenyon Review, The Potomac Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, The New York Times, More magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Among the honors our students and alumni have achieved are Pushcart Prize nominations, scholarships to Bread Loaf, a fellowship at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a fellowship at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, fellowships at The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and a nomination for a National Magazine Award.
When are the residencies?
We have two semesters a year, a summer/fall term that begins with a residency in the last full week of May and a winter/spring term that begins with the residency in early January. Students can enter the program in either term.
How much does it cost?
The cost of the program is $5400 a semester, with a $1200 charge for the fifth graduating residency that is paid in two installments of $600 each with tuition for the third and fourth semesters. If you’d like to stay on campus during the May residency, lodging is generally available at a very low cost: $30 a night for a private room. Meal plans in the campus dining hall are also available. In our January residency, the program is housed at nearby hotels for around $89 a night.
