Creative Writing Program

Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton, a diverse community with all of the cultural advantages of a major metropolitan setting, is located three miles from the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. Students in the MA and MFA programs specialize in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, pursuing half of their coursework in creative writing workshops and half in literature and theory seminars. Both programs require completion of a creative thesis and feature small, rigorous workshops and seminars. The MFA is a 48 credit hour program. Students complete seven courses in writing workshops/special topics, six courses in literature/literary theory, ENG 6009 Research Methods for Advanced Literary Study, and six credit hours of thesis. The MA is a 30 credit hour program, consisting of four courses in writing workshops/special topics and three courses in literature/literary theory, plus ENG 6009 Research Methods for Advanced Literary Study, as well as six credit hours of thesis. Interdiscliplinary coursework is also available, in such fields as screenwriting and playwriting, through the School of the Arts in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.

Courses

Each year in addition to the traditional workshops in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, a number of special topics courses are available to students. Recent examples have included The Poem in Practice, Writing The Short Story Sequence, Writing the First Novel, Teaching Creative Writing, and Writing Across Genres. Recent offerings in literature have included History of the English Language, Women in Literature, Latino Literature and Theory, James Joyce, Langston Hughes, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, Thinking Like a Poet, African-American Autobiography, American Science Fiction and The Cold War, and Food and Identities in Asian-American Literature. Thesis hours are conducted one-on-one with individual faculty.