MFA Program at Colorado State University

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Colorado State University is for students with advanced abilities in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Our three-year, forty-eight-credit program offers a balance of intimate and intensive writing workshops with courses in literature, form and technique, and related electives both in and out of the English Department. Writers work closely with a distinguished faculty of publishing writers that includes winners of prestigious national awards and fellowships including Guggenheim and NEA Fellows, National Book Award semifinalists, and winners of the Colorado Book Award. Coursework culminates in a thesis—a collection of poetry, short stories, or essays; or a novel or memoir—and the completion of a comprehensive portfolio. A dual-genre thesis option is available to students with exceptional promise in a second genre of writing. Each semester at Colorado State University, the Creative Writing Reading Series welcomes distinguished literary voices to share their work and engage with the Northern Colorado community. In addition to giving a public reading, visiting writers hold audience question-and-answer sessions, book signings, class visits, salons, and other forms of outreach. The series features Pulitzer Prize winners, U.S. poets laureate, National Book Critics Circle Award winners, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winners, NAACP Image Award nominees, Oprah’s Book Club selections, National Book Award finalists, and recognized voices in young adult literature. Graduate Teaching Assistantships are available on a competitive basis, and all students who apply have an opportunity to teach creative writing during their time in the program. We offer a variety of for-credit internships (some paid) in such areas as college teaching, public education, arts administration in literature, and literary editing — including the Center for Literary Publishing and the Colorado Review. The Creative Writing Program at CSU recognizes and affirms the value of, and the need for, stories from people of all backgrounds. We believe that a healthy literary culture must seek out and support work from communities whose voices have historically been marginalized. Our pedagogy, including close mentoring in a supportive community and an embrace of wide-ranging approaches, strives to hear these stories, to respect them, and to bring them into the world.