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About the MFA Program

CRWR WaterfallThe Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon is a two-year residency in which Master of Fine Arts (MFA) students concentrate in either poetry or fiction. The Program emphasizes the workshop, integrating concentrated time for writing with craft seminars and individualized reading tutorials.

You’ll hear our program is not for the faint of heart. It isn’t—and we’re proud of that. We hope to offer our students the rigorous apprenticeship we undertook with our own teachers.

Established in the 1960s by James B. Hall, the UO’s Creative Writing Program is one of the oldest in the country. Hall originally designed the Program so the writing workshop would be complemented with graduate courses in literature and other artistic disciplines. Under the direction of Ralph Salisbury and John Haislip, the Program featured more individual attention in conference hours and moved away from complementary classes in other fields. Upon his arrival in 1989, then-Director Garrett Hongo redesigned the Program along its current studio lines.

Graduates include PEN-Hemingway Award winner Chang-rae Lee, Yale Younger Poet winner Brigit Pegeen Kelly, National Poetry Prize winner Eugene Gloria, screenwriter Kenny Moore, and Bilingual Review Poetry Prize winner Andrés Montoya. Writers such as Robert Wrigley, Elizabeth McCracken, Reetika Vazirani, David Mura, Li-young Lee, James Houston, and Lynn Freed have served as visiting faculty.


For more information, see faculty interviews with Robin Tung (Affording the MFA):

Creative Writing MFA Student Handbook 2023-2024:

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