Curriculum

The program provides students with a framework and sustained blocks of time to work extensively on their own writing. Guided by our faculty of professional writers and authors, students focus on their manuscripts, both in the workshop and in individual conferences with their chosen instructor. The emphasis is on the creative acts of self-editing and revision. Workshops meet once a week in a 2.5-hour session. Structure and content are adapted to the area of concentration: Arts Writing, Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Traditional and contemporary literature is investigated from the specialized perspective of the active writer. Course offerings represent all the MFA concentrations, but vary each semester according to the interests of the faculty. All literature seminars concentrate on crucial aspects of craft as well as issues of literary history and theory. Seminars meet once a week in a two and a half hour session.

Graduate writing students at The New School participate in an ongoing colloquium of visiting writers, critics, writing teachers, editors, publishers, and literary agents. It reflects the wide range of cultural activity at The New School and the belief that students benefit from exposure to many voices and genres.

Examples of regular events embraced by the Writer's Life Colloquium are the public readings co-sponsored with Cave Canem Foundation, The Story Prize, National Book Foundation (presenters of the National Book Awards), National Book Critics Circle, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), PEN America, Academy of American Poets, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Poetry Society of America, and Publishing Triangle, as well as public readings and discussions devoted to each of the MFA concentrations. The Writer's Life Colloquium also involves special seminars, teaching lectures, publishers' symposia, and visiting writer residencies arranged exclusively for graduate writing students.

In your last semester as an MFA student, you will work closely with your thesis advisor - a writing instructor of your choosing - to produce a substantial Creative Thesis manuscript in your area of concentration. You will also write a “Critical” Project.

The New School offers undergraduate creative writing in an undergraduate major, an honors program in Writing & Democracy, and summer courses and intensives. The BA in Creative Writing is a major available to students of the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students. The Writing & Democracy Honors Program is the first academic program to treat writing, equality, and justice as a single subject and to implement its philosophy in its internal structure. The program may be added to any major university-wide. In Summer Intensives, undergraduate students earn up to six credits in three weeks of dedicated reading and writing with The New School’s prestigious faculty. Creative writing classes are offered to the entire undergraduate community at The New School.