MFA in Creative Writing

The two-year, 36-unit MFA in Creative Writing Program at Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles, is an artist-training program for students who want to write professionally in the genres of novel, short story, playwriting, poetry, screenplay and non-fiction. We are ideal for working adults. Our format of meeting every other weekend, six times per semester, lets you fit into your life a graduate degree while keeping your other commitments. 

Graduate creative writing program in the Heart of Los Angeles

What gives our program its special character? We develop writers in multiple genres, believing that you can excel in more than one. We are interested in the whole writer, an expert who isn't narrow. Our integration of the humanities into our course of study reflects a commitment to intellectual rigor and liberal arts as the cornerstone of human understanding. We pay close attention to your needs as a developing artist. In short, our MFA in Creative Writing program gives you your money's worth.

Program outcomes

The faculty in our program put a premium on helping our students into their professional careers, through continued mentoring. This means not only teaching the techniques that make you the best writer you can be, but also preparing you for career success in:

• the publication market
• national and international literary prizes
• book-length publications
• journalism
• marketing, media and communications
• screenwriting

Whatever your career path, our job is to help you write stories, novels, plays, poems or screenplays, at the highest level, and get them into print or staged before an appreciative public. In that, we are practical minded and the curriculum is set up to get you there.

Our students are of all ages and from many different educational backgrounds. You do not need to have a degree in literature to apply.

Combining humanistic depth, intellectual rigor, multicultural and bilingual study, technology, a flexible weekend format, cross-training in multiple genres and practical preparation is what makes our MFA in Creative Writing stand apart. Come study with us on the Mount Saint Mary's campus, a gem right in the heart of Los Angeles.

What makes our MFA in creative writing unique?

The MFA in Creative Writing values its cooperative relationship with the MA in Humanities. Our student writers are schooled in cultural, historical and literary traditions that must be an integral part of the intellectual repertoire of the professional writer.  

Our mission is to prepare writers who are:

• Critical thinkers
• Ready to embrace multiculturalism
• Prepared to approach writing holistically
• Eager to explore both modern and contemporary Western and non-Western traditions

The MFA in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University takes an inclusive approach to teaching and mentoring its writers. Freedom of artistic expression and mutual tolerance are at the heart of serving the multiplicity of its international student body. Each writer is encouraged to take aesthetic risks while seeking understanding and showing a willingness to respect discrepant points of view in and out of the classroom.

Values of our MFA

The MFA in Creative Writing teaches the concept of Literary Citizenship, in which the contribution to the Republic of Letters is important. Our program emphasizes these values:

• supporting our fellow writers in spirit and in practice
• supporting the world of independent publishing and reviewing
• bringing a selfless/ethical component to building a community of writers
• working for the overall literacy and betterment of the literary culture at large