Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts Program Summer 2009

Thank you for asking about our writing program. I'll try in what follows to give you some idea of the way we work and respond to the questions most often posed by applicants. As you probably know, we are a small, intensive one-year M.F.A. program. Each entering class has no more than twelve fiction writers, twelve poets, and up to six playwrights; hence, no workshop will have more than a dozen fully enrolled students, indeed, in recent years, we have been aiming for classes of no larger than ten. The standards for admission are high, since we draw from a pool of over four hundred applicants each year. The course of study is, as you might imagine, a full one. For the M.F.A. in creative writing, a student must complete eight classes--at least half of them in the workshops, with the remaining courses coming from the graduate curriculum within Boston University (though up to two courses may be transferred from other institutions). These courses may come from among the vast offerings of what is, after all the fifth-largest private university in the country—from the English Department, or any other department that offers courses that are essentially literary in nature, including the superb Translation Seminar in the Romance Studies Department. Thus, at any given moment a typical student's load might look something like this: two workshops (meant to be complementary--for example, in fiction one might require work in revision, with the other asking for a finished story every three or four weeks), a class in, let us say, the novel, and one more, perhaps taught by Elie Wiesel, for a total of no more than four courses per semester. I'm happy to point out that such distinguished faculty as Christopher Ricks, and his courses are regularly attended by our students.

May a student take a workshop in more than one genre, or add a workshop in place of a fourth academic course? The answer is yes--if the respective workshop leader has the room and approves your submitted material. In addition to completing the eight courses, the student must submit an M.F.A. thesis--a portfolio of perhaps ninety pages of fiction, thirty-five pages of poetry, or a full-length play. Lastly, there is a foreign language requirement, which will ask you to demonstrate moderate proficiency in one of the nationally-standardized SAT II qualifying language tests, or two years of intermediate level coursework as an undergraduate, or to receive a passing grade in Rosanna Warren’s excellent translation seminar, a course so stimulating for creative writers that many choose to take it for its intrinsic worth. Somehow or other, everyone passes this requirement.

Financial Aid. We have a variety of aid packages available whose duty-free grants range up to the full cost of tuition. Moreover, we have the Helen Deutsch Fellowship in fiction and--in honor of our colleague, the late George Starbuck--the program has established a similar fellowship in his name for a graduate student in poetry. Outstanding African-American writers who are U.S. citizens may wish to apply for a Martin Luther King Fellowship, which offers full tuition and a large stipend. Those wishing to apply should contact us by February 1. More recently we have added the Leslie Epstein and the Marcia J. Trimble fellowships in fiction. The latter pays full tuition, plus a living stipend of $17,500. In addition, we offer a number of teaching fellowships, which range from half-tuition to three-quarters tuition, plus a stipend of about $8,750. These graduate fellows teach one course, English 202, an introduction to creative writing, with enrollment limited to fifteen undergraduates. Those who teach this course seem to love doing it--at least in some measure for the insight it gives them into their own writing. Because teaching fellows do not normally take more than two courses in the semester they teach, two literature courses are put off--most often until the summer session. All applicants who indicate a need for financial assistance on the general application will be considered for the Helen Deutsch, George Starbuck, Leslie Epstein (which covers tuition, and provides a small stipend), as well a all other, and Marcia Trimble Fellowships. The deadline for those seeking financial assistance is March 1st, the same as for everything_else. Do note that by transferring two graduate literary courses and taking two courses in our summer school, total tuition costs can be cut almost in half--though so much of value is lost that we urge this procedure only as a last resort.

Admissions materials. Fiction writers, please submit two or three stories or selections from a novel, up to a limit of roughly forty double-spaced pages; poets, fifteen to twenty-five poems, please; playwrights, two one-act plays, or a full-length play if you have one, will do. The manuscript you submit is far and away the most important criterion for selection. We look for the usual things--demonstrated proficiency, an interesting voice, raw talent, quirks that either match or challenge our own--in short, writing done by people we think we'd like to know, spend a year working with, and be of some use to. We pride ourselves on the care with which we read the material, but we are writers, after all, which means opinionated and eccentric, and we know we make our share of misjudgments and mistakes.

(A word to the wise, especially fiction writers: we recommend two or three mid-length stories; we like to see your range. Best not to send one short story of less than 10-15 pages. You may send novel excerpts but give us as much context as you can; you’re better off sending the first chapter; you’re best off sending stories. Double space your fiction and never use both sides of a page. No graphics, please. Remember, this program is not interested in and does not teach creative non-fiction. Don’t slight the personal statement: let us hear your voice and your peculiarities and who you think you are or might become as a fiction writer. A hint: those who write in flowery prose or overly-subjectively -- that is, about dreams, memories, thoughts, states of mind—or who dwell obsessively about sensitive children may find themselves at a disadvantage. Clean prose, without too many adjectives and hardly any adverbs, puts us in quite a good mood, though of course brilliance, in whatever form, wins the day.)

Since we need some assurance that the applicant can handle graduate courses without too much agony or stress, we also require the usual letters of recommendation, GRE scores (we'd prefer both the aptitude and advanced English literature exams, but insist on the aptitude section only), and transcripts. Let me stress again that if we're sufficiently impressed by the manuscript, you'll most likely be admitted, even without high GRE scores (in certain circumstances, the exam requirement might be waived) or in rare cases without a B.A. The manuscript and the personal statement should be sent directly to the Creative Writing Program, while all other materials go to the Graduate School. Do try to meet the March 1st deadline; late applications face many difficulties, including dwindling possibilities of financial aid. Please note that our deadline, March 1, supersedes the January 15 date in the Boston University Graduate School catalog. We do not encourage mid-year applications, though in cases of really exceptional talent we might make an exception. A further note: applicants must decide which genre they wish to apply for. Do not submit poems and fiction, or ask us to make this choice. Important: please include a phone number and if possible an e-mail address at which you can be reached both day and night in March and April.

All the above is the nuts and bolts of the program and the application process. I'd like to say a little more about the faculty here. Like every other writing program, we sometimes bring in visitors to lead the workshops; unlike many other programs, our visiting faculty teach for at least an entire semester and then remain available to help direct and read the students' theses. Perhaps the most remarkable poetry workshop in America occurred when Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck gathered for instruction by Robert Lowell (gathered as often as not at the Ritz Bar, by the way). Other poets and writers over the last few years have included Charles Simic, C.K. Williams, David Ferry, Maureen Howard, Tom Lux, Stephen Dobyns, John Cheever, John Barth, Jayne Anne Phillips, Donald Barthelme, Rosellen Brown, Penelope Mortimer, Stanley Elkin, Richard Yates, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Susanna Kaysen, Gloria Naylor, Ralph Lombreglia, Margot Livesey, and Amos Oz.

Occasionally visitors come for a semester to do something a bit unusual. Geoffrey Wolff once offered a course in biography and Joseph Kanon, the winner of the prestigious Roger Klein Memorial Award for Editorial Excellence, and then director of the trade division at Houghton-Mifflin here in Boston, led a brilliant workshop in editorial techniques; now of course he is a best-selling novelist himself. When Aharon Appelfeld, the world-famous Israeli novelist, teaches here, it is often as much a course in the Old Testament as in prose style or content. Still and all, it is the regular faculty who make up the heart of the program. Here are ours:

Robert Pinsky, critic and poet, has held the Stegner fellowship at Stanford and served as Poetry Editor of The New Republic (1978-1987). His books of poems are Sadness and Happiness, Explanation of America, The Want Bone, History of My Heart (which was awarded the William Carlos Williams Prize of The Poetry Society of America), and Jersey Rain. He is also co-translator of poems by Czeslaw Milosz and an acclaimed translator of Dante's Inferno. His books on contemporary poetry are The Situation of Poetry, and Poetry and the World. The Figured Wheel, his book of new and collected poems, (nominated for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and awarded Ambassador Book Award in Poetry of the English Speaking Union), was published in 1996. The Sounds of Poetry and The Handbook of Heartbreak were published in 1998, followed by Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry in 2002. His latest book of poetry, Gulf Music, appeared in 2007, and since then, he has published new poems in the New Yorker. His latest prose work was Life of David. Robert was named Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2001, and in this position he founded the Favorite Poem Project. He has edited three anthologies which grew out of the project -- Americans’ Favorite Poems, Poems to Read, An Invitation to Poetry, and, most recently, Essential Pleasures: Poems to Read Aloud.

Louise Glück is the author of twelve previous books of poetry, Firstborn, The House on Marshland, The Garden, Descending Figure, The Triumph of Achilles, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ararat, The Wild Iris, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, The First Four Books of Poems, Meadowlands, Vita Nova, The Seven Ages, and Averno. Her most recent collection of poems, A Village Life, is forthcoming this fall. In addition to these, she has published a book of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry. Her awards include the Bollinging Prize, the Lannan Literary Award, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2003, she succeeded Billy Collins as the 12th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Leslie Epstein (fiction): I've published ten books of fiction: P.D. Kimerakov (novel), The Steinway Quintet Plus Four (stories), King of the Jews (novel), Regina (novel), Goldkorn Tales (novellas), the novels Pinto & Sons, Pandaemonium, Ice Fire Water (a novel in the form of three novellas, San Remo Drive: a Novel from Memory. My most recent novel is The Eighth Wonder of the World. I've held a Rhodes Scholarship, Guggenheim Fellowship, had a couple of National Endowment for the Arts Grants, as well as one from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and an award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. I’ve also held a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio.

Ha Jin, our former student, has published a number of books of poetry and the short story collections Ocean of Words, Under the Red Flag, and The Bridegroom. His novels are In the Pond, Waiting, The Crazed, The Bridegroom, War Trash, and A Free Life. His most recent publication is a collection of lectures, entitled Writer as Migrant. His newest collection of stories, A Good Fall, is due out in late 2009. He’s been awarded the PEN/Hemingway, PEN/Faulkner (twice), the Flannery O’Connor prize, and the National Book Award.

Rosanna Warren’s books of poetry include Departure, Snow Day, Stained Glass, Each Leaf Shines Separate, and Disappearances. Her other writing includes The Supplicants, a translation Euripides done with Stephen Scully, and Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the May Sarton Prize, from the New England Poetry Club; the Witter Bynner Prize, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Award; and the Lamont Poetry Prize, from the academy of Academy of American Poets.

Allegra Goodman (fiction) is the author of four critically acclaimed and often bestselling novels, Intuition, Paradise Park, Kaaterskill Falls, and her most recent, The Other Side of The Island. A new novel is due out at the end of 2009, and expect to see Intution on the big screen some time in the near future. In addition to the novels, she has written two collections of stories, The Family Markowitz, and Total Immersion. Her short fiction appears frequently in the New Yorker, and in respected literary journals such as Ploughshares. One such piece was recently selected to appear in the Best American Short Stories Anthology, 2009.

You might wish to look at our work to see if you think we might be congenial spirits and colleagues. Also, I suggest you call (617/353-2510) or write us in December or January to see who our visitors, if any, might be for the coming academic year. We usually know by then. For all further information, contact Matthew Yost at the number above, or send an e-mail to crwr@bu.edu, or write to the Creative Writing Program, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215. Through our Web site bu.ed/writing you will learn about our program. You can request a hard copy of the Graduate School catalog by clicking on bu.edu/cas.

What else? Well, we are in Boston, which has no end of internationally known poets and novelists and playwrights busily at work at one or another university or institute. The pages of the local papers are full of readings, talks, lectures, by and with these folks, and there is a wide web of literary life here (two of our students read a chapter from a work in progress at the New England branch of P.E.N. and were offered a contract for their novels only days later) to get happily stuck in or fly right by, as you wish. We are also the home of the Favorite Poem Project and the distinguished literary journal, AGNI. Our relationship to that magazine not only provides opportunities for our students to take part in its operation (as interns, readers, gophers, and even informal editorial assistants), but is a possible avenue of publication, as well, since quite a few of our poets and fiction writers were first published there and went on to books of poetry and novels of their own.

The city is expensive, a bit provincial, and troubled in various ways; but it is very beautiful, lively enough, and you can walk from our offices to Fenway Park and get a ticket for that evening's game. Speaking of our offices, they are located on the second floor of an old and pleasant building on a charming street of turn-of-the-century townhouses. All our faculty, including the teaching fellows and our program coordinator, are grouped together pretty much around the lounge where many of the workshops are taught. If you twist your neck a little, you can see a bit of the Charles and sails dipping and tacking along it. For added convenience, the rest of the English Department takes up the top three floors.

What can you expect to achieve here? I believe workshops are valuable for writers: hearing the sustained criticism, over time, of one's peers; the exercise of that criticism, evolving into self-criticism, is part of what we try to teach. Will teaching jobs await you? Will you be published? Win prizes? There is, of course, no guarantee of any of those things. We can say that our graduates in each genre have accomplished a good deal. Among numerous awards, our playwrights can list The Heideman Award, The Charles MacArthur Award for “Best New Play,” and six national playwriting awards from the American College Theater Festival. Quite recently our graduates in poetry have won the $30,000 Whiting Award, the Barnard New Women Poets Series, a grant from the NEA, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; there have been three winners in three years of the Discovery/The Nation award, and two winners of the National Poetry Series. In fiction, our students have also won the Whiting Award, along with an inordinate share of the nationwide Henfield Awards. Not a year goes by without a graduate of our program bringing out a novel or book of stories; remarkably, over the eighteen-month period from 2002 to spring of 2004, eleven of our fiction writers brought out first books, all of them from major publishers, and several of these young writers have two book contracts to boot. Since her graduation, Sue Miller has published many such volumes and won a good deal of fame, and some fortune as well. So has Arthur Golden, whose Memoirs of a Geisha was started in our workshops. Two holders of our M.F.A. were on Granta's list of young writers. In 1999 our writers swept every major literary award in the country, with Ha Jin winning the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner, and Jhumpa Lahiri the PEN/Hemingway and the Pulitzer Prize. Moreover, a number of our graduates have found work in teaching, some at schools in the area (Tufts, Emerson, M.I.T., Harvard College and Extension, Phillips Academy at Andover, Exeter, the Groton School). Currently, two of the finest programs in the country, those at Washington University at St. Louis and the University of Michigan are currently directed by two of our graduates, Carl Phillips and Peter Ho Davies.

Over the last decade we have placed more than a score of our graduates in tenure-track positions at major American universities. But let us be realistic. My own hope for our students is simply that during this year they will get some glimpse of the best they can do, and a bit of courage needed to go ahead and do it. That happens.

Again, my thanks for your interest, and a last cheery word: good luck with your writing!

Sincerely,

Leslie Epstein, Director Graduate Creative Writing Program


If after reading this letter you still have questions about any aspect of our program, DO NOT EMAIL THE DIRECTOR OR ANY FACULTY MEMBER but contact Matt Yost, our administrative coordinator. Matt may then advise you to get in contact with the appropriate member of the faculty.