Location:

New York City, United States

Program Type:

Full Degree

Degree Level:

Master

Specialty:

Creative Writing

Program Overview

Program Description:

Located in the heart of New York City, Hunter offers highly selective, two-year MFA programs in fiction, memoir and poetry. Fiction students are taught by two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey and by Colum McCann. Poetry students are taught by Tom Sleigh, Donna Masini and Jan Heller Levi. And memoir students are taught by Louise DeSalvo, Eva Hoffman, Kathryn Harrison. In addition to our regular faculty, Hunter’s Distinguished Writers Series brings other world-class writers to teach and give readings. Recent visitors have included Ian McEwan and Marie Howe. All students take a workshop and a craft class every semester, plus two literature classes in their first year, then regular one-on-one supervisions with a member of faculty, throughout their second year. Each of the three genres -- fiction, memoir and poetry -- accepts six new students per year. Tuition is just $5,000 per year for NY-state residents and $9,000 for out-of-state residents, and Hunter offers a range of fellowships, internships and teaching opportunities. The Hertog Fellowship in fiction and memoir pays five students per semester to work as researchers for distinguished writers, who, in recent years, have included Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen and E.L. Doctorow. Meanwhile, Hunter selects two or three poetry students each semester to receive a Friedman Scholarship, which pays students $5,000 to work as an assistant to an established poet. In recent years, these poets have included Philip Levine, Marie Howe and Jean Valentine. In the world of publishing, The Threepenny Review and Greywolf Press each take one Hunter MFA student per year as a paid intern. Students may also apply to teach the undergraduate course Introduction to Creative Writing, in their second year; successful applicants (usually about five per year) are appointed as adjunct lecturers, are paid according to faculty scale and are given an office in the English Department.

Additional Program Information

Accreditation:

Hunter College, part of the City University of New York

Financial Aid:

No