Writing

Overview

About this Degree

The intimate nature of the program allows students to work very closely with writing faculty and each other within the quarterly cross-genre workshop.

The MFA Program in Writing at the University of California, San Diego is a two-year residency program foregrounding the interconnectedness of literary arts practice, modes of production and distribution, and the rigorous study of literatures, arts, and cultures. The program offers the option of extending residency a third year.

All graduate writing workshops are cross-genre and often interdisciplinary, investigating and often undermining a studio-versus-academic distinction in advanced literary education. Moreover, the program encourages interdisciplinary research and holistic approaches to teaching and learning. Therefore, teaching creative-critical reading and writing skills as a Teaching Assistant is a popular choice among all Writing students in the MFA program, most of whom are eligible for scholarships and fellowships in addition to union-represented compensation for Teaching Assistant work.

Program participants are encouraged to focus exclusively on writing, teaching, research, and art-making during their residency, allowing writers to integrate pedagogical training and artistic practice as a way to prepare for future scholarly endeavors while creating a book-length work of literature. To that end, each quarterly cross-genre workshop discusses writing-in-progress and published works in terms of poetics, prosody, and literary conventions alongside the interrelationship between aesthetic intervention/ experiment and radical social change across cultures, nations, regions, and movements.