Dear Applicant,

I'm glad you've decided to look into our MFA Program in Creative Writing. Please listen to a few words from Tim O'Brien. I wanted you to hear Tim speak because his remarks sum up the deeply supportive nature of our program.  If you join us, you’ll never be overlooked.  If a strong bond isn't shared among everyone in a program, then much of what's said in seminar rooms won't matter. 

You're deciding where to spend three years of your life.  You want to know what it is to be a writer.  You want to live around and talk with other writers.  That's what we offer here, and that's what you'll become a part of if you become one of us.

We’re a unique program, given our distinguished faculty, our Endowed Chair, our Adjunct Thesis Faculty, our extensive Visiting Writers series, and our affiliation with the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center, which has been designated a National Literary Landmark.

As we are a studio/academic program, a large number of our students secure teaching jobs. Graduates now teach at nearly eighty universities and colleges around the country, and one has just been selected to direct a new MFA Program in Chicago.

We enroll sixty students, eighty percent of whom are from out of state.  Approximately thirty MFA students hold TA positions, and another ten hold IA positions.

But for now, listen to Tim read "The Lives of the Dead,” and to C.D. Wright and Forrest Gander talk with writers about poetry, keeping in mind that all of our visiting writers teach a workshop and hold an intimate Q & A session during their stay.  Then read some of our literary journal, Front Porch, which is run – for credit – exclusively by MFA students.  After you’ve done so, you'll find all the information you need to apply to our program via links on this site.  By then you'll know who we are, and that's all that really matters.

I hope to see you here later this year.

Sincerely,
Tom Grimes, MFA Director