Creative Writing

Overview

Course Description

A defining feature of the Creative Writing program from California Institute of the Arts CalArts is hybridity and experimentation, so students are free to take courses in, and to write in, any genre they wish. Poets may take prose workshops to learn narrative conventions and how to deploy or challenge them; fiction and nonfiction writers may benefit from poetry workshops that hone their use of and engagement with language; and still other students may develop multidimensional writing practices. All students graduate with the ability to comprehend and critique work across genres, and an expanded sense of possibilities for their own work.

Students are encouraged to situate their creative practice in a critical context—to engage with the history, theory and politics of contemporary writing, and to think hard about what and why they write. The Program offers graduate students the chance to further develop both their craft and their knowledge base, and workshops combine attentive critique of student work with the discussion of readings on and in the various genres—or on special topics particularly relevant to writing today.

All MFA Creative Writing students are expected to attend closely to questions of form and aesthetics, as well as to the historical and critical contexts of literary work. Most classes combine workshopping of student-generated work with discussion of assigned texts. Students are also encouraged to explore the intersections between writing and other media/art forms, such as performance, digital media, visual art and film. While not all classes are offered every year, over the two-year program all students will take a wide selection, honing their individual visions and practices while experimenting with new forms and subjects. Writing students also benefit from being able to take courses for elective credit in the MA Program in Aesthetics and Politics, as well as other MFA/upper-level BFA courses throughout the Institute.

In addition to MFA core creative and critical coursework, all candidates are required to give at least one public reading in their final semester, and produce a substantial manuscript (thesis), with a page count appropriate to related published work in the genre (i.e. 60-80 pages for poetry, 100-plus pages for a novel or creative nonfiction project, and so on), in order to complete the program.