Program Overview
Books are like every other work of art. They’re made with tools by human beings who want to give readers an experience.
You bring your life experience to us, and we will teach you how to use the tools to transform it into narratives. The work is endlessly fascinating. It can be wildly, thrillingly complex. But to begin to understand it in the company of people who love the work as much as you do — the experience is transcendent.
Every single person on our faculty is an expert in both the making of books and the teaching of craft. Our program is designed to build a rock-solid foundation in storytelling with efficiency, rigor, and verve.
You read to understand how narrative forms work. You explore these workings in your critical writing. You practice them on the page with your creative work — all under the guidance of your advisor. Although our program is new, we've refined and developed this system for decades. We know exactly how to support you in creating the best work of your life.
Program Details
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It's a Master of Fine Arts degree, and it's a terminal degree, meaning you can teach at the college or university level.
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It's a four-semester program.
- In your first and second semesters, you will read about 40 books, annotate a bibliography, write craft-based critical essays, and produce creative pages.
- In your third semester, you will do all of this, plus write a critical thesis paper examining a slice of narrative craft.
- In your final semester, you will polish your creative thesis and prepare a lecture based on your critical thesis.
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Twice a year, we meet at the University of San Francisco campus for an immersive learning and community-building experience. Once in winter, and once in summer. You will attend five in all as you earn your degree. Community is at the heart of learning. This is where we build relationships on a foundation of curiosity and respect, and our learning culture, which is defined by openness and rigor.
The program includes faculty lectures, workshops, readings, and time spent in conversation with each other and industry professionals. Residency is also where we pair students with their advisors and where you will have your first one-on-one session with the person who will guide you through the next semester of creating and learning.
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You may have heard horror stories about MFA workshops. We have. This is why we have redesigned ours using techniques that center the writer, their creative vision, and the use of informed questions to facilitate the best possible experience for every writer in the room. At residency, you bring up to 20 pages of a project. You write a one-page letter to your peers and faculty facilitator. The group engages in a thoughtful, careful discussion of your work: its ambitions and the craft skills that can help you realize them. We also offer generative workshops where, under the guidance of one of our faculty, you write new pages. Story Club, led by A.S. King, is one of the most innovative of those. (And yeah, we can’t talk more about Story Club here.)
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Our program focuses exclusively on books for young readers, which many low-residency MFA programs do not. Here, young readers' literature is not an afterthought; it is our primary focus. Our faculty are leaders in the field, each having published many books, won major awards, and hit bestseller lists. We are industry veterans dedicated to providing insight, care, and expertise to bring up the next generation of writers. Our program also pays faculty a fair wage and benefits because we deliberately aim for the MFA degree to provide meaningful wages for artists who want to teach. Other low-residency programs do not do this (although we invite them to join us in this practice).
Required Courses
USF's low-residency MFA program runs a little differently than traditional residential master’s degree programs. Here’s how the requirements unfold:
- Craft Elements and Criticism: During each semester, you’ll read approximately 10 books a month across categories and genres, annotate a bibliography, and analyze essential narrative craft elements. (CE&C 1-4, 2 units)
- Introduction to Critical Writing (First Semester): You’ll learn how to write essays that closely examine an element of narrative craft from single or multiple works, as part of your preparation for your Critical Thesis. (2 units)
- Intermediate Critical Writing (Second Semester): Here, you will write longer essays from single or multiple works, as well as a proposal for your Critical Thesis. (4 units)
- Seminar (Semesters 1 and 2): This is what your other work is geared to support: your creative writing. Each month you will send up to 40 new and revised pages, receiving detailed feedback from your advisor that will help you see your work and the tools of the writer in new ways. (2 units)
- Thesis 1 (Third Semester): In this advanced critical writing course, you will work one-on-one with your faculty mentor to write a critical thesis of up to 30 pages closely examining a facet of narrative craft, contributing to your own and other writers’ understanding of how that element works to engage, compel, and move readers. (4 units)
- Thesis 2 (Fourth Semester): During this semester, under the guidance of your advisor, you will complete drafting and polishing your creative thesis, which consists of 80 pages of a novel or the equivalent in other forms (such as picture books, chapter books, graphic novel scripts, and so on). This could be a piece you started working on earlier in the program. You will also adapt a portion of your critical thesis into a 30-minute lecture that you present to your faculty and peers. (4 units)