MFA in Creative Writing
Take Your First Step Toward Your MFA.
College of Arts and Sciences
English and Creative Writing Department
Write to be Read.
Join other writers for intensive residencies and connect with your peers and teachers online through the rest of the year. Learn how our low residency MFA program can advance your writing career.
Low Residency. Highly Personalized.
Writing demands both solitude—time alone to think and write—and a community of colleagues to sustain that work, too. The low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte is expressly designed to meet both of those demands.
Bringing writers together for intensive residencies and connecting students and teachers online through the rest of the year.
The MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte has launched the Southern Review of Books, a new online literary publication and event series dedicated to books and authors in the American South and beyond. Learn more here.
Designed to benefit committed writers who want to hone their craft without uprooting their lives, the Queens MFA program brings together experienced and emerging writers for intensive residencies and connects students and teachers online through the rest of the year as they work on their writing in the privacy and comfort of their own homes. With courses of study in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and writing for stage and screen, the MFA program offers a community of writers in-residence and online who share the immersive experience over four semesters of intense study and writing.
In keeping with Queens' long-standing commitment to excellence in teaching, the MFA program also provides a highly personalized course of study, with a student-teacher ratio that never exceeds four-to-one.
We are committed to sustaining a community of writers beyond graduation, with extensive alumni network and annual alumni conferences.
Interested? Let us tell you more.
Attend an online information session
How the Program Works
Residency Component
In-person residencies include craft seminars and workshops. We offer two residency options:
- On-Campus Residencies: Each semester begins with a seven-day on-campus residency in Charlotte, NC.
- International Residencies: Each academic year begins with an annual 15-day residency abroad, rotating annually among Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago. These residencies also include a cultural curriculum specific to each city.
Distance Learning
Following the completion of the residency, you'll continue your work for the semester through distance learning. You’ll exchange work with your instructors and peers, and read and write on the craft of writing.
Completing Your Degree
Prior to the graduating residency, you will complete a Master's thesis and teaching of a seminar to fellow-students.
Admissions and Tuition
Learn about admissions and tuition information for this program.
Our Faculty
Our faculty include a Pulitzer Prize winner, two Pulitzer Prize finalists, a National Book Award finalist, multiple National Book Critic Circle Award winners and Guggenheim Fellows. And all are acclaimed authors and dedicated teachers. But don't take our word for it. We invite you to browse the bios of individual faculty members here.
Literary Journal
Qu is a literary journal, published by the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. The Qu editorial staff is comprised of current students.
Support Beyond Graduation
Because the faculty and staff of the MFA program are also working writers, we understand that matriculation in an MFA program is only one phase in a writer's life, and a brief one at that. We also know that if an MFA program is about educating you on how to create your best art, there are sometimes a different set of skills required to share that art with a larger audience, sustain a productive writing life and stay in touch with a community of writers.
On-going Support and Community Building
We maintain a Facebook group for students and alumni, where we post contests and calls for submission that come through the program office. Students and alumni (and some faculty, too) post questions, milestones, and writerly news and resources. We also post a student and faculty newsletter on our website, updated every few months. The Queens MFA is a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and we attend the AWP Conference every year, where we host an informal gathering of students, alumni and faculty.
Annual Professional Development Weekend
This program features craft seminars, publishing panels, and the opportunity for students and alumni to share their work. Every other year, we invite high-profile agents and senior editors from publishing houses and magazines. Past Professional Development Weekends have included editors from Henry Holt, Penguin, Farrar Straus & Giroux, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Antioch Review and Tin House. Agencies represented have included International Creative Management, the Denise Shannon Agency, the Anne Edelstein Agency, the Steinberg Agency, the Gernert Company and McCormick and Williams.
Book Development Program
The Book Development Program is designed for writers with a draft of book-length manuscript already completed. This special program pairs a writer with an editor from a major publishing house. Past editors have come from Henry Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Red Hen, Viking, Penguin and Riverhead.
Connect with Us
We'd love to hear from you and partner with you in your professional and personal development.
Gisele Firmino
MFA Program Coordinator
mfa@queens.edu | 704-337-2499