Welcome to the Creative Writing Website

The Program

The MFA in Creative Writing at Wichita State University is one of the oldest programs in the nation.  Currently in its fourth decade, the creative writing program provides serious, aspiring writers an intensive and challenging apprenticeship in the writing of fiction, poetry and nonfiction, enriched by the study of literature. Throughout the student’s graduate career, distinguished visiting writers and permanent writing faculty offer tutorials,  master class seminars and workshops in a program that is highly individualized and designed to maximize each student’s writing potential. The 48-semester-hour MFA concludes with a comprehensive exam based on an individualized reading list and the submission of a book-length manuscript of publishable quality.

Financial Support

A majority of MFA candidates are offered teaching assistantships which provide a stipend and full tuition waiver in exchange for teaching two classes.  In addition, two creative writing fellowships are awarded annually to second and third year students.   Additional fellowships, scholarships and prizes are awarded each year. For those interested in assistantships, applications for the fall semester should be submitted by February 15, and for the spring semester by November 1.

Our Graduates

In the last decade our graduates have been honored with Guggenheim Fellowships, NEA Fellowships, a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize, Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook Award for a first collection of short fiction, the Mid-List Press First Book Prize in poetry, the Goodheart Prize, the Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award, the Winnow Press Fiction Prize, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, the Andrew Lytle Prize, and the Rosenthal Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition, alumni have had work featured in Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the O. Henry Prize Anthology, and American Poetry: The Next Generation.

Current students and recent graduates have published work in a wide range of literary venues from Atlantic Monthly, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, New Letters, Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Virginia Quarterly Review and Georgia Review, and they have published books with Coffee House Press, Dufour Editions, Picador USA, Southern Methodist University Press, Tin House Press and others.

Visiting Faculty and Writers

Each year the MFA Program and English Department host a series of visiting writers who join workshops, offer special one-time seminars on areas of expertise such as literary editing, and give readings on campus and in the wider community through collaborations with organizations like the Wichita Art Museum.

In addition, our two Visiting Distinguished Writers-in-Residence each spend a month on campus, where they join the intellectual life of the program, meet students individually for weekly tutorials, and conduct informal seminars.

This year we are pleased to announce that novelist Stephen Amidon will join us from September 14 through October 9. Since 1990 he has published six novels and a book of short stories, most recently Security (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). His teaching includes visits to the University of Montana, Smith College and Washington University. For four years he was the literary editor of Esquire magazine.

We will welcome poet Joy Katz to campus from March 22 through April 16. She has published two books of poems, The Garden Room (Tupelo Press, 2006) and Fabulae (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002). In the summer of 2008 she began writing a regular column on the Best American Poetry blog, and she is the Senior Editor for Pleides Press and Editor-at Large for Pleides magazine.
 

Past Visiting Writers Include:

Lee Abbott, Renee Ashley, Russell Banks, Marvin Bell, Michael Blumenthal, Sharon Bryan, Scott Cairns, Peter Cameron, Ann Copeland, George Cuomo, Richard Currey, Phil Dacey, Robert Dana, Madeline DeFrees, Rick Demarinis, Stephen Dunn, Richard Elman, Carol Frost, Deborah Greger, Ron Hansen, Michael Harper, William Hathaway, Shelby Hearon, Laura Kalpakian, Elizabeth Libbey, Jack Matthews, Jay Meek, Lisel Mueller, Richard Murphy, Jack Myers, Antonya Nelson, Kent Nelson, Achy Obejas, Ed Ochester, Robert Olmstead, Eric Pankey, Bette Pesetsky, Leslie Pietrzyk, Stanley Plumley, Kevin Prufer, Bin Ramke, Nancy Roberts, Mary Elsie Robertson, William Pitt Root, Abraham Rothberg, Hugh Seidman, Bob Shacochis, Terese Svoboda, Mark Smith, Henry Taylor, Michael Waters, Paul West, James Wilcox, C.K. Williams, Hilma Wolitzer, Richard Yates, and Paul Zimmer.