Thank you for your interest in the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop. Be sure to check out other links on this website to find out more about our program. What follows is a brief description of our program and what we hope it can do for you.
The Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop is a writing-intensive studio program in Creative Writing that uniquely prepares graduates for careers in writing pedagogy and publishing.
The program provides graduate students the opportunity to concentrate on the study, practice, and teaching of Creative Writing in a highly focused writing environment facilitated by writers for writers. At 45 hours, this program will ensure that graduates build multi-genre backgrounds in the popular discipline of Creative Writing through workshops, forms courses, topics courses, a wide variety of electives, and specialized teaching and editing practicums. To ensure individualized attention, the program admits 5 to 8 students annually, with a total population of under 25 students. We offer two publishing assistantships, one with the award-winning national magazine the Oxford American, and one with our new online magazine, Arkana. We also offer the Porter Fund Scholarship, a $4000 yearly scholarship, to one student.
After being trained in both composition and creative writing pedagogy, some students will be offered graduate assistantships for teaching undergraduate writing classes; others work as graduate assistants in the Center for Writing & Communication, in Sponsored Programs or the Graduate School, among others. All students complete a thesis project. Our students will earn practical, hands-on experience by serving on the editorial staff of our new online national literary magazine Arkana. They also have the opportunity to pursue internships with local arts organizations and non-profits as well as with the nationally recognized literary magazine the Oxford American. In addition, a unique course in “The MFA Experience” will help students to maximize their time in the program as they develop as writers and artists.
Students who have graduated from our program since 2015 have published in national venues such as The Rumpus, The Butter, The Washington Post, Longreads, Denver Quarterly and many others. Four are have published or are publishing books of poetry. One has published a novel. They have worked as university teachers, in libraries, as editors and in local and national advertising agencies.
For further information, contact either of our program co-directors Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice at stephv@uca.edu or Dr. M Shelly Conner at mconner3@uca.edu.
We look forward to hearing from you.