university of virginia creative writing faculty

• How to Apply

THE MFA PROGRAM

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia is a three-year graduate program that admits four poets and four fiction writers each academic year. Our program is full time and residency is required.* Because the program is so small, our admissions process is extremely competitive. We believe students apply to our program because of our creative writing faculty; the significant financial support all our MFA students receive; and the outstanding reputation of the University of Virginia, its libraries and special collections, and its renowned English Department.

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Our system will open for applications for 2025 in October 2024. Those 2025 applications must be completed and submitted before  11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 15, 2024  (we advise submitting earlier in case of last-minute technical glitches). We do not have any rolling admissions or allow accepted students to defer to a subsequent year.

HOW TO APPLY

The full instructions for the online application appear on the  Graduate School’s admissions system . Your online application will include

• your basic biographical and contact information and your academic history
• a writing sample
• a statement of purpose
• a personal narrative
• college transcripts (which can be unofficial versions)
• two letters of recommendation

Writing Samples:  fiction samples may include one short story, several short stories, or a section of a novel, but must not exceed 20 pages in length using 12-point type and a conventional font, one-inch margins, and standard double-spacing. Poets should send a sheaf of poems of no more than 12 pages. Formatting is the same as fiction, except that poems can be single-spaced. Again, please keep your fonts conventional and at or above 12-points.  Please do not exceed our page maximums, which could result in your application being denied.  The writing sample is the primary focus of our evaluation process. 

• Applicants to the UVA MFA Program do  not  need to submit Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores. GRE scores are not part of our evaluation process. Please focus on your writing sample, statement of purpose, and recommendations.
• For the purposes of your application, unofficial transcripts are fine. You will only need to send official transcripts if you receive an admission offer and accept it.
• The online system accepts recommendation letters from Interfolio. It can also prompt your recommenders for individual uploads. All recommendation letters must be submitted online.
• The University of Virginia does not send notice of receipt of materials. The online system allows you to check the status of your application.

You can apply to our program in both fiction and poetry, but in the event of acceptance, you would be admitted to just one and will not have the option of enrolling in the other genre. Should you choose to apply to both genres, you only need to submit one online GSAS application with its associated fee. 

Please do not send us additional materials by email or other means. All materials need to be in your online application. You can write [email protected] for queries about modifying an existing application.

OUR EVALUATION PROCESS

After our December 15 deadline, we distribute the applications to faculty readers in an online system. In this first round of reading, each manuscript is read and evaluated by its assigned faculty member. The program often recruits alumni or outside readers to provide additional input on these first-round manuscripts. The faculty members then nominate applicants for a second round of reading by all faculty members in a genre. In late February or early March, our faculty members convene for selection meetings and collaboratively decide which applicants will receive initial offers and to establish our waitlists. We do not release ranked waitlists or our waitlist sizes. If an existing offer is declined, the faculty reconvenes to decide on the next offer. 

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

International students are welcome to apply (we have a long history of enrolling fiction writers and poets from abroad, and we have international students currently enrolled), but all international applicants should carefully review U.S. immigration regulations and research the expense and lead time needed to secure an educational visa. Our program's funding for international students is the same as it is for U.S. citizens. Some of our students seek outside employment in addition to their fellowship support, but educational visas limit most international students to on-grounds UVA employment only , even in the summer months. U.S. tax treaties with other countries often require mandatory withholding from international students' fellowship and wage income; however, international students do receive tax support and advice from UVA's International Studies Office. Our program does not fund travel costs to/from the program or allow for semesters abroad. 

English as a Second Language students may submit appropriate TOEFL scores or alternate documentation of English proficiency in their application. Matriculating ESL students should take the UVA English Language Proficiency Exam upon their arrival in Charlottesville to help them decide if they need any additional university support.

APPLICATION FEE WAIVERS

The criteria and procedures for automatic application fee waivers appear on the Graduate and Postdoctoral Diversity Program webpage . Applicants eligible for fee waivers include those with certain organizational affiliations, with veteran status, with need-based eligibility, or who come from minority-serving institutions (see the fee waiver page above for full details). Applicants who indicate citizenship of any of the countries listed here will automatically have their application fee waiver applied at the time of application submission.

Students who do meet the automatic waiver requirements may write to [email protected] to petition for an individual waiver exception on a case-by-case basis. Please provide a brief explanation of why your circumstances make paying the required graduate application fee a signficiant financial hardship.

PRE-OFFER VISITS AND SESSIONS

Applicants often ask if they can visit our offices, sit in on classes, or get in contact with current students or faculty. Given limited resources, we can only help coordinate these visits and correspondence for applicants with current offers. However, the University of Virginia is a public institution, open to self-guided tours and visits, and if you come to our offices in Bryan 422, we'll do our best to give you a brief overview of the program, resources permitting.

ADMISSIONS DECISIONS

Decisions on admission into the Creative Writing Program will be announced by April 1 of each year, though we generally try to make our notifications several weeks before that date. If an applicant does not respond to their offer by 11:59 p.m. EST on 15 April, we will assume that the offer is being declined. There will be a waiting list. We do not allow students to defer admission. 

Our applicants include some of the strongest student writers in the country, and many are accepted by several writing programs. These programs sometimes ask for an early decision. According to the Council of Graduate Schools April 15 Resolution, no student accepted at any of its hundreds of member institutions should be under obligation to respond to an offer of financial support prior to April 15. For more information, the full text of this resolution and its signatories appears here . After April 15, we typically require any new offer to respond within forty-eight hours.

FINANCIAL AID

Additional work-study opportunities and student loans are administered by Student Financial Services, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400204, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4204, and can be reached at (434) 982-6000, or by visiting  their website . Please contact that office directly for application forms and information. In the fall and spring semesters, UVA graduate students can only undertake twenty hours per week of wage work unless they petition for an exception. The ENCW and ENWR courses our students teach count as ten hours of wage work per week per course.

* By "residency is required," we mean that we are a full-time, traditional "in residence" graduate program and expect our MFA students to live in/near Charlottesville and attend classes and program events. We have had students live in nearby cities like Richmond or Lexington due to family or other needs, but we cannot alter our curriculum or teaching times to accommodate students who choose to commute.

• About Our MFA
• MFA Funding
• MFA Curriculum
• Curriculum and FAQ's
• Area Program in Poetry Writing
• Area Program in Literary Prose
• Calendar of Events
• Alumni Books
• Alumni Awards
• Rea Writers
• Kapnick Writers
• Henfield Prize
• Sydney Hall Blair Fellowship
• Media Links
• MFA Instructor Resources
• Faculty and Staff
• Contact/Visit

Creative Writing

• [email protected]
• (434) 924-6074

The UVA Creative Writing Program offers one of the best MFA programs in the country, along with undergraduate English concentrations in poetry and literary prose and elective coursework.

Explore Creative Writing Events

Creative writing stories.

Stanley Stepanic on Fact and Fiction in "A Vamp There Was"

According to Stepanic, scholarship on vampires is valuable because analysis of vampire folklore provides insight into humanity.

https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2024/09/stanley-stepanic-on-fact-and-fiction-in-a-vamp-there-was?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_featured

‘Where Faulkner Was Happy’: William Faulkner Abroad, at Home and at UVA

Last spring, UVA acquired 16 letters from Faulkner to his mother written while he traveled through Europe in the fall of 1925.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/where-faulkner-was-happy-william-faulkner-abroad-home-and-uva

Quiz: What Kind of Reader Are You?

Our friends over at the University of Virginia Library have offered their own reading recommendations with every quiz result.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/quiz-what-kind-reader-are-you

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The Graduate Program

At a time of rapid transition in the field of literary and cultural studies, we are intent upon sustaining our offerings in traditional historical periods, elaborating those in diverse world literatures, and engaging fully with the spectrum of current theoretical concerns. The University of Virginia is also widely recognized as a leader in digital humanities, an area for which much of the initiative comes from faculty and graduate students in the English department. We take pride in offering graduate study superintended by an internationally renowned faculty.

The Master of Arts  Program provides advanced training in literary studies, preparing students for either admission to Ph.D. programs or careers in a variety of fields that require intellectual ingenuity, skills in writing or research, or training in literary criticism and theory. Those who wish to pursue doctoral degrees regularly gain admission to other fine programs. Those seeking careers immediately following the MA have found jobs in secondary teaching, technology, the public sector, business, publishing, and higher education. The MA degree may be completed in three full semesters, though students opting to write an MA thesis often take a fourth semester. 

Students may also opt to complete an MA on a part-time basis, so long as they complete the degree within five years. Some students take a full load in their first semester and then finish the degree as a part-time student, but other schedules are possible.  Some sample MA timelines may be found here .

Note: The funding of an MA degree can be challenging, as few sources of scholarship support are currently available, either at UVA or nationally. This is a matter of much current concern and discussion in graduate education circles.  (See the description, below, of our MA Teaching concentration, a partly funded degree.) Funding issues may impinge on a student’s decision to study full or part time, in that many students take loans that require them to maintain full-time status. All students with loans should contact their lenders directly to understand any implications part-time status might have for them.  Moreover, part-time UVA students are currently not eligible to receive student wages, so may not hold student jobs at the university (though this policy is under review and may change). UVA Student Financial Services can help students understand if part-time status is the right financial choice for them.

In addition to our regular MA, we offer an  MA in English with a Concentration in Teaching Literature and Writing . This two-year program provides specialized training in teaching, and, in the second year, teaching opportunities and financial support (tuition, fees, one-person health insurance coverage, and a salary per course). In cooperation with the Law School, we offer an interdisciplinary  MA in Law and Literature . Our  BA/MA program  enables selected UVa undergraduates to take graduate courses in their fourth year and go on to complete the MA degree the following year. Interested MA students may choose to earn a graduate certificate in American Studies , Africana Studies , Gender Studies , Environmental Humanities , or  Digital Humanities .  The MA in English is a terminal degree; UVa MA students who apply to the PhD program compete with other transfer applicants. 

The PhD program , with its coursework, exams, guided dissertation research, and training in teaching, places graduates in college and university research and teaching positions, in secondary education, and in academic administration, as well as in positions in publishing, consulting, the public sector, private foundations, and journalism—everywhere that research skills, rigorous analysis, and good writing are valued. In addition to their specialized research, interested PhD students may choose to earn a graduate certificate in Premodern Cultures and Communities , American Studies ,  Gender and Sexuality Studies , Africana Studies , Environmental Humanities , or  Digital Humanities . Financial support, including health insurance and tuition remission, is awarded to all PhD students from the first through the sixth year of study. As part of their package, PhD students teach one course per semester in years two through four and in year six of the program.  The fifth year of study is a fully funded year dedicated entirely to writing the dissertation without teaching obligations. Beyond the sixth year, students in good standing may receive tuition remission, fees, and a salary in consideration for teaching. Government loans and work-study funding are also available. Students typically complete the doctoral degree in six to seven years. 

The English Department makes every effort to place its students and has a good record of doing so. Recent recipients of the PhD have found teaching positions at such institutions as Williams College, Illinois, Ohio Wesleyan, Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Virginia Commonwealth University, Bowdoin, Clemson, Iowa, McGill, Nevada, MIT, Dartmouth, Bowling Green, New Mexico State, Penn, North Carolina, Rutgers, Fordham, Tufts, Arizona, Wake Forest, and Berkeley. Find more information about placement and careers in and outside of academia here .

 The University library system is a resource of many dimensions. The  Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library holds a number of remarkable collections of American and British literature. Most noteworthy is the Barrett Library, one of the finest research collections in the world for American literature, including rare books and manuscripts of Cabell, Cather, Crane, Cummings, Eliot, Frost, Harte, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Holmes, Howells, James, Twain, Wharton, and Whitman. Manuscripts in the collection include  The Red Badge of Courage , the 1860  Leaves of Grass , and  The Sun Also Rises . Other collections of note include the William Faulkner Collection, the unique Sadleir-Black Collection of Gothic Novels, the Wagelin Collection of American Poetry, the Taylor Collection of American Fiction, and the Tunstall Collection of Poetry.  Alderman Library, the largest circulating library on Grounds, is an excellent research facility with a standard working collection suitable for advanced studies across the humanities.  The library's online holdings and well-staffed  Scholars' Lab  provide access to a large collection of literary works and advanced computer techniques for working with the texts.  In addition, Clemons Library holds an abundant collection of video material and a well-equipped media center. The Department itself is the home of three prize-winning journals:  New Literary History , an internationally respected journal of theory and interpretation;  Studies in Bibliography , the premier international journal of analytical bibliography and textual study; and  Meridian , a student-edited journal of writing.

Students with physical or learning disabilities which may require reasonable accommodation at the University should contact  Brad Holland, Coordinator of  Services for Students with Disabilities .  Information about the larger University and Charlottesville communities may be found  here .

The information contained on this website is for informational purposes only.  The Undergraduate Record and Graduate Record represent the official repository for academic program requirements. These publications may be found at  http://records.ureg.virginia.edu/index.php .