THE CREATIVE WRITING PROCESS AT CCNY

The Graduate English Program has a current student complement of over 200. The Department offers an MFA in Creative Writing, a program, once an MA, in its 35th year; and an MA in Literature. The Creative Writing Program is highly ranked nationally and the output of Faculty and alums includes work in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals as well as published books of poetry, short fiction, plays, novels and memoir.

The core of the MFA program consists of writing workshops on fiction, poetry, memoir and drama as well as critical practice courses in narrative, short story, prosody, translation and children’s literature. Unlike many writing programs, a rigorous grounding in literature is an integral part of City’s MFA. For example, the Fall 2007 semester includes literature classes on British Modernism, African-American Narratives, Chaucer, Death in the Renaissance and Dramatic Structure.

Distinguished program alums include Salar Abdoh, Oscar Hijuelos, Carolyn Ferrell, Ben Marcus, Ted Mooney, Walter Mosley, Ernesto Quinones and Michelle Wallace. Past writers in residence and visiting writers include Anthony Burgess, Joseph Heller, Edna O’Brien, Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich and Susan Sontag.

Some sixty MFA students teach undergraduate classes each semester providing opportunities for further developing their skills, while instructing others in composition and creative writing. Other MFA and MA students work on the award winning literary journals, Fiction and Global City Review, the student journal, Promethean and on a recent plethora of independent student instigated online and print publications such as 138, [sic], Smyles and Fish, onepagestories and The Pamphleteers.

CCNY History