Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction
About the Program
Goucher College's limited-residency MFA in Creative Nonfiction allows you to complete most of the requirements off campus while developing your talents as a nonfiction writer under the nurturing supervision of a faculty mentor. The program can be completed in four semesters of work, with residencies of two weeks every summer and a long weekend every spring.
Everything begins with the August residency on our scenic Baltimore campus. For two weeks, you will be immersed in small, intense writing workshops along with craft lectures, panel discussions, and faculty and student readings. Sometimes affectionately referred to as "summer camp for writers," it is a time both exhausting and exhilarating, when you will shut out the world and concentrate on becoming the writer you've always wanted to be.
Off campus, you will complete a minimum of 50 pages of creative writing each semester and participate in online discussions of six to eight books of exemplary creative nonfiction. You will work with a different mentor each semester, receiving feedback online, by mail, and by phone, gaining the perspective of four accomplished writers over the course of two years.
The spring semester begins with a weekend mini-residency in late January, when you will meet with your mentor and his or her other assigned students for three days of workshops and one-on-one conferences.
In your second year, you will broaden your experience and understanding of writing and publishing by completing a 45-contact-hour internship at a literary journal, a commercial magazine, a recognized publishing house or literary agency, or with a published writer. You will also have the opportunity to travel to New York to meet editors and agents at such places as The New Yorker, Harper's, Paris Review, Esquire, Penguin USA, Houghton Mifflin, and the Creative Culture and ICM literary agencies.
The end goal is a 150-page manuscript of publishable quality, many of which have become the basis for a book.
MFA CNF News
| Zoo Story on NPR
Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives, faculty member Tom French's new book, hit stores in early July. In the book, published by Hyperion, Tom goes behind the scenes of Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. He recently appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation to talk about the book. You can hear the broadcast at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128467788&ft=1&f=5
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| Daily Beast Excerpt The Daily Beast recently an excerpt from Terry Greene Sterling's (2004 new book Illegal. You can read it here. You can also hear Terry's interview on NPR by clicking here. |
| Nonfiction Book Award
Corinne Platt's (2000) book Voices of the American West has won the 2010 Colorado Book Award for nonfiction. You can learn more about the book at http://www.voicesoftheamericanwest.com/
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| Phoenix Super Creative Hero The Phoenix New Times blog last week featured Paul Morris (2005) as one if its "100 Creatives." The blog describes the Creatives as "the cultured superheroes--and heroines--of metropolitan Phoenix." You can read about--and see--Paul here. |
| Kentucky Magazine Award
Mary Jo CarledgeHayes (2000) is on sabbatical from writing a column on wellness for a Louisville, KY, magazine. She recently received the first-place award for magazine column writing from the Louisville chapter of the Society of Professional Journalism.
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| CNN Position
Jamie Gumbrecht (2010) has left the Atlanta Constitution Journal to take a job as a producer in CNN's Special Reports division.
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| Congratulations Mother-Daughter Graduates Goucher's MFA in Creative Nonfiction program congratulates our 2010 mother-daughter graduates, Shelley Carey and her daughter Gillian. Shelley will be graduating with her MFA in August, while Gillian received her Bachelor of Arts this spring. Congratulations to our mother-daughter graduates! |
| New Book Contracts and Other News
Jill Sisson Quinn (2008) has signed a contract with Apprentice House for the publication of Deranged: Finding a Sense of Place in the Landscape and in the Lifespan, her MFA manuscript. Chapters from Deranged have appeared in Fourth Genre, Crab Orchard Review, Bellingham Review, Quarter After Eight and American Nature Writing 2003. The book is a collection of natural history essays that has been illustrated by Baltimore artist Cara Ober. It is due out in September. Apprentice House, part of Loyola University in Baltimore, describes itself as a hybrid between a university press and an independent press. Jill sends special thanks to Leslie, Diana, Suzannah, and Kevin, whose critiques, she says, she read over many, many times while revising the manuscript in the two years since graduating from Goucher.
Carrie Hagen (2009) has signed a contract with Overlook Press for we is got him, her MFA manuscript. An excerpt from the manuscript won the literary journalism category of last year’s Chris White Award. Overlook is part of the Penguin Press family. The contract is the program’s 44th book. Rachel Zurer (2010) has been awarded a fellowship to attend "To Think, To Write, To Publish," a two-day workshop led by Lee Gutkind through the Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. The mid-May workshop is for the "next generation" of writers with an interest in science and technology, and will be followed by participation in CSPO's conference "The Rightful Place of Science?" The goal of the workshop is to provide an opportunity for the scholars and writers to work together to publish their work in a mainstream magazine or to develop a book or film proposal. Stewart Green (2007) has two new books coming out from Globe Pequot Press this spring: Knack Rock Climbing: A Beginner's Guide and Rock Climbing Colorado (2nd Edition). Last year, a chapter from Stewart’s MFA mss was the basis for the film “Luxury Liner: The First Ascent of Supercrack,” by Alstrin Films. His historic film footage and audio recordings from 1976 were also used in the film. Since March 2009 he has been the administrator, writer, editor, and photographer for the Climbing website on About.com, a New York Times Company. This year he has contracts for five books with Globe Pequot Press: Best Climbs Denver and Boulder, Best Climbs Moab, Best Climbs Rocky Mountain National Park, Best Easy Day Hikes Moab, and Best Easy Day Hikes Colorado Springs. |