Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing focuses on students' original creative work. Our faculty members offer students guidance in defining aesthetic values and crafting their art. The program seeks to cultivate literary writers of the highest quality.

The M.F.A. program welcomes writers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction who wish to prepare for careers in writing, editing, and/or teaching. The program is centered around the workshop experience and fosters student publishing. Since the conversion of our long-standing M.A. program in creative writing to the terminal M.F.A. in 2006, our students and recent graduates have published in such venues as The New Yorker, Nimrod, Indiana Review, Pindeldyboz, Glimmer Train, So to Speak, and The Best New American Voices.

Set within the growing and bustling 56,000-student U.C.F. campus, on the eastern edge of Orlando and about equi-distant from Disney World and the Atlantic beaches, our M.F.A. program offers a balance of close community and the openness of city life. Our program—running between about 25 and 35 full- and part-time students at a time—reflects the diversity of our region. We are committed to helping students find their own distinct voices based on their various experiences and perspectives.

M.F.A. students have opportunities to serve as managing editors for our national literary journal, The Florida Review, to assist in the production of the in-house literary journal, The Cypress Dome, as well as to work as Graduate Teaching Assistants, teaching first-year Composition and Introduction to Creative Writing. The program also offers students opportunities to participate in the national and local visiting writers program, Writers in the Sun, and in community service learning programs in mentoring young writers.

For more information about admissions and program requirements and University graduate policies, consult the UCF Graduate Catalog. If you have more questions, please contact the Graduate Programs Assistant.

Highlights

Kelle Groom's memoir gaining national attention

July 2011

UCF alum Kelle Groom is garnering critical acclaim with her newest book. I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl: A Memoir, from Free Press/Simon & Schuster, was recently selected by Oprah Winfrey for O Magazine’s 2011 summer reading list. [Read More]

More Information

• Admissions and Program Requirements
• M.F.A. Student Handbook
• Courses
• Apply Online

Faculty

• Jocelyn Bartkevicius
• Associate Professor

Research Interests: Literary nonfiction; Memoir; Personal Essay; Ecological Criticism and Ecotheory; Virginia Woolf

• Susan Hubbard
• Professor

Research Interests: writing and reading contemporary fiction; creative writing pedagogy; the art and craft of speculative fiction

• Darlin' Neal
• Assistant Professor

Research Interests: Literary Fiction; Literary Nonfiction; Memoir; Poetry and Flash Fiction; Native American Literature; Writing of the Southwest; Southern Writers; Eudora Welty

• David James Poissant
• Assistant Professor

Research Interests: Fiction Writing; The Short Story; Contemporary American Literature; Southern Literature; Creative Writing Pedagogy

• Lisa Roney
• Associate Professor

Research Interests: Fiction, memoir, and personal essay; medical humanities, disability studies, representations of health and illness; images and physical aspects of home and place; the relationships between genres (e.g., architecture and narrative, painting and digital art, fiction and nonfiction); and twentieth-century American literature and women's studies.

• Pat Rushin
• Associate Professor

Research Interests: Fiction writing, screenwriting, contemporary fiction.

• Don Stap
• Professor

Research Interests: Shorebirds. Poetry. The Literature of Fact.

• Terry Ann Thaxton
• Associate Professor

Research Interests: Poetry Writing; Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; Creative Non-Fiction; Literary Arts and Community; Community-Based Learning; Women's Studies; Marginalized Learners