
Writing for Young Readers, MFA
Program Overview
Each element of the program is designed to build into the next. 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.
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:
- Residencies in San Francisco: Your first residency takes place right before your first semester. Then, you’ll attend one between each semester and a final one when you are graduating with your MFA degree. At each residency, you’ll experience lectures, seminars, workshops, readings, and more. It’s an exhilarating experience, after which you return home to do the rest of your coursework under the guidance of your faculty advisor. (Workshops 1-5, 2 units)
- 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 50 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)
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