Graduate Programs

Creative Writing Creative Writing

Our MFA program — an intensive, three-year studio-academic experience in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction — joins students who share a common passion and faculty members who provide critical support of their work.

More than just students

Department of Creative Writing faculty view MFA students as colleagues-in-the-making. To help initiate them into the profession, we offer a series of panels and workshops designed to address practical issues that lie outside the scope of the writing workshop.

Our faculty members consider it a privilege to teach in such a community, and our invitation to successful candidates to join our MFA community is an equal privilege and should be regarded as such. We do all that we can to mentor our MFA students to successful lives as writers; in return we ask that they contribute something of value to our writing community.

The Creative Writing, Master of Fine Arts is a 48-hour apprenticeship, requiring a total of 21 hours of writing workshops, 21 hours of literature or other elective courses, and 6 thesis hours, leading to completion and defense of a substantial book-length manuscript of literary merit and publishable quality.

While students apply in and focus primarily on one genre, cross-genre study is encouraged.

Creative Writing, MFA

Our MFA program joins students who share a common passion and faculty members who provide critical support of their work.

Questions?

We hope that the following responses to frequently asked questions and quick links to hot topics will prove useful.

MFA FAQs

Apply

Your application to the MFA program in Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington will be submitted online to UNCW's Graduate School.

Along with your online application, you are required to upload an electronic copy of your manuscript (the writing sample), your personal essay (also called a statement of interest, purpose, or intent), and provide email addresses for three recommenders.

In addition to the application materials submitted online, you will need to mail to the Graduate School your transcripts.

Apply to the MFA Program

^“ I gained valuable teaching experience, served as managing editor of Ecotone, and relished my time with mentors who encouraged and challenged me. Simply put, it changed my life. ^”

Jay Varner MFA nonfiction '07, author of Nothing Left to Burn