|Program Overview_____________

• The MFA program in Creative Writing at SJSU is a 48 semester-unit studio/research program.  Graduation requirements include writing workshops in the primary and secondary genres, literature seminars, and professional training courses and/or internships. In addition, students must complete a full-length creative thesis and pass a comprehensive exam.

• The MFA program at SJSU is a dual-genre program that provides concentrations in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting/screenwriting.  Students must declare a primary and a secondary genre to apply for admission.

• Admission is based on a writing sample in the primary genre, in which the student will complete a full-length thesis.

• MFA students have the opportunity to apply for teaching associate positions in the English Department in their second year.  Teaching associates are limited to taking two courses (6 semester-units) while teaching one or two sections of lower-division General Education courses, usually Freshman Composition.  Teaching associates receive, in addition to a modest salary, a 6-unit fee waiver.

|Program Description_____________

The MFA in Creative Writing at San Jose State University opened to students in the Fall 2001. Prospective students can apply to be admitted for the following academic year until February 1.

The MFA at SJSU requires students to complete an equal amount of work in writing workshops and literature seminars. The program is designed to give students the opportunity to develop their talents in more than one genre while increasing their knowledge of modern and contemporary literature in a variety of forms and across a diverse range of cultural and critical perspectives. The program also features courses that provide hands-on preparation for beginning one's writing career in a globalized, technologically enhanced world.

Established on the SJSU campus in downtown San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley, the MFA program will offer students a portal into the writing life. Students will be taught by instructors who are themselves publishing poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, translators, and editors--many of whom work in both traditional and cutting-edge forms, and who are involved in the arts and technology networks of Silicon Valley. In addition to the curriculum of workshops and seminars, students will have the opportunity to serve as interns in the Valley, working in educational institutions, community centers, nonprofit arts organizations and agencies, and technology companies. Students will also have the opportunity to work for REED Magazine, SJSU's distinguished, student-run literary journal.

Of the required minimum 48 units, students must take 15 units in writing workshops and 15 units in literature seminars (all courses count for 3 semester units). Nine of the writing workshop units must be taken in the student's primary genre-either poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction or scriptwriting. Six units must be taken in the student's secondary genre(s). Working closely with creative writing faculty, students will demonstrate their mastery of a primary genre and show their proficiency in secondary genre(s). Once students have successfully completed the workshop requirement, they may then take 6 units (2 semesters) of thesis, working with a three-person faculty committee who will monitor the work in-progress. The final thesis manuscript will be a publishable work of poetry, collection of short stories, collection of creative nonfiction pieces, book-length work of nonfiction, or novel, written under the supervision of the committee. To complete the MFA degree, students must also pass the MFA exam.

The program offers courses taught annually by a distinguished writer-in-residence who will join the faculty as the Lurie Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing. Ursula K. LeGuin, Carolyn Kizer, Al Young, Molly Giles, Simon Winchester, and Ishmael Reed have been Lurie Professors in the years 1999 - 2005. Santa Cruz-based novelist and nonficiton author James D. Houston will be the Lurie Professor, in Spring 2006.

The Center for Literary Arts regularly schedules distinguished writers to come to the SJSU campus for short residencies. As part the Major Authors Series, visiting writers give public readings, lectures, and/or seminars. Writers appearing in the series have included: Sherman Alexie, Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, John Barth, Ann Beattie, T. C. Boyle, Russell Banks, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Michael Chabon, Carlos Fuentes, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Gordon, Maxine Hong Kingston, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen, Arthur Miller, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, Amy Tan, Paul Theroux, William Styron, Luis Valdez, Yevgeny Yevteshenko, Derek Walcott, Wendy Wasserstein, John Wideman, and Tobias Wolff.