Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (49 credits)

Over a two-year, four-semester period, students will take 12 credits per semester, as outlined in each semester's study plan contract, and will attend a nine-day residency at the beginning of each of four six-month semesters. Following the fourth semester, graduating students will spend three days at a final residency to conclude the program. Grades for each semester will be pass/fail, accompanied by a narrative evaluation by the faculty mentor. As a final requirement for graduation, students will present a craft seminar and give a reading from their work.

First Semester

GCRWT 6000: Creative Writing I 6 credits
Under the guidance of their faculty mentor, students design an appropriate study plan involving the production of both new work and revisions in their genre, and submit four submissions of creative writing over the distance-learning semester. Much of the first-semester students' creative writing reflects the techniques encountered in Keynote and First-Year Genre residency seminars—such as Making a Scene; Shaping the Short Story; Dialogue: the Deliberate Illusion; From Meter to Free Verse; and Types of Imagery—as well as their residency writing workshops

GCRWT 6001: Craft & Reflection I 3 credits
Under the guidance of their faculty mentor, students develop a reading list of books in their genre that will be the basis for a series of papers focusing on specific craft issues and their relationship to the student's own writing. Students also compose detailed cover letters for each distance-learning submission, in which they reflect upon their artistic development. Students prepare for their work in Craft & Reflection I in residency seminars such as Reading as a Writer, Reading and Writing for the Stage and Screen, Time and Ambition, and Writing Craft Annotations.

GCRWT 6002: Interdisciplinary Studies I   3 credits
The central purpose of the interdisciplinary project is that it should feed the student's creative writing. In consultation with the assistant coordinator and other program staff, students design individual, 3-credit interdisciplinary projects for the first three of their four distance-learning semesters. Options for these projects include: taking a graduate course at Lesley or the Art Institute of Boston; pursuing an independent study class in anything from The Art of the Author Interview to Writing the Ten-Minute Play; working in another genre; developing their own research plan under the guidance of an experienced faculty in that field; working as publishing interns, teachers or teaching assistants. See below for a further description of the program's interdisciplinary component.

Second Semester

GCRWT 6500: Creative Writing II 6 credits
In their second residency and semester, students work with a new faculty mentor in their genre, designing a study plan that grows out of the work they produced and revised in their first distance-learning semester. Attending residency writing workshops critiquing new work or substantially revised work, students anticipate a semester of more rigorous revision and greater subtlety of expression. Second-semester residency seminars— The Truth in Fiction: Joyce's Dubliners; When Writing Takes on the World; Metaphoros: Making Transformation in Poetry and Prose; On Observation: Seeing as a Writer—reflect this increased complexity.

GCRWT 6501: Craft & Reflection II 3 credits
In their reading lists and critical writing for Craft & Reflection II, students build on the discoveries and accomplishments from their first semester, the craft annotations serving as their first steps toward the third-semester craft essay. In many cases, a student's interdisciplinary work—in book reviewing, in literary journalism, in the art of the author interview—contributes to increased sophistication in writing about writing. Students continue to write detailed, reflective cover letters.

GCRWT 6502: Interdisciplinary Studies II   3 credits
As second-semester students begin to grow and deepen their writing skills, they pursue another or continue an ongoing interdisciplinary project. Students are encouraged to continue to find new ways to feed their writing.

Third Semester

GCRWT 7000: Creative Writing III 6 credits
Creative Writing III inaugurates the students' second year, introduces them to a third faculty mentor's aesthetic approach, and signals a qualitative leap in sophistication. Advanced Topic residency seminars—Type-A Revision and Shaping the Book, for instance—reinforce the increasing subtlety of craft issues explored. Residency workshops and study plans also raise the aesthetic bar. During the third residency, students attend their first thesis-preparation meeting, to help them anticipate the quantitative and qualitative requirements of the MFA thesis.

GCRWT 7001: Craft & Reflection III   3 credits
In addition to their reflective cover letters, students' critical work for Craft & Reflection III consists of a single craft essay of approximately 12-18 pages (3,500 to 5,500 words). MFA candidates and faculty mentors discuss this essay during the study plan conference and specify the reading required or the essay and the schedule for submitting drafts. Like the craft annotations, the third-semester craft essay explores, in detail, a question of style or technique, but with a more ambitious scope.

GCRWT 7002: Interdisciplinary Studies III 3 credits
Third-semester students approach their final interdisciplinary project by taking stock of their previous interdisciplinary studies and finding new ways to nurture their writing as they begin to think about the post-MFA writing life.

Fourth Semester

GCRWT 7500: Creative Writing IV 6 credits
During the fourth residency's thesis study plan conferences, the MFA Candidate and the Thesis Advisor discuss what proportions of new work (GCRWT 7500 Creative Writing IV) and revision (GCRWT 7502 Creative Thesis) are likely to make the most sense for the MFA Candidate's thesis-in-progress. New creative writing is now firmly focused on the creative thesis, and the border between revision and “new writing” becomes appropriately blurred. Thesis students attend a second, more detailed thesis-preparation meeting, and the Capstone residency seminars—Prize-Winning Writing, How to Design a Seminar, The Uses of Self-Doubt in Writing—focus, in part, on students as working and publishing writers in the world.

GCRWT 7501: Graduating Seminar Preparation 3 credits
Under the direction of the candidate's fourth-semester faculty mentor serving as the Graduating Seminar Advisor, the candidate prepares a 30-45 minute Graduating Seminar to be offered during the graduating residency. Based on a class agenda and reading list refined during the semester, the seminar is relevant to the student's writing concentration, but can include multi-genre or interdisciplinary elements.

GCRWT 7502: Creative Thesis 3 credits
During the thesis semester, MFA candidates prepare and submit a creative thesis for evaluation by the thesis advisor and one other MFA faculty member in the candidate's field of writing, who serves as the graduating candidate's thesis reader. A Creative Thesis passes only after a Thesis Approval Form is signed by two MFA Writing Faculty Members and the Program Director

Graduating Residency

GCRWT 7503: Final Residency Requirement: Graduating Seminar Presentation 1 credit
As a final requirement for graduation, students return for a portion of a fifth residency to present their graduating seminars, as electives, to returning students. An MFA Creative Writing Faculty member monitors the student's seminar, offers pedagogical advice, and submits his or her approval electronically to the Program Director.