MFA Program
See writers who attended this program
Poetry: Debra Kang Dean, Kathleen Driskell, Lynnell Edwards, Erin Keane, Douglas Manuel, Greg Pape, Maggie Smith, Jeanie Thompson, Keith S. Wilson
Fiction: Wiley Cash, K. L. Cook, Kirby Gann, Rachel M. Harper, Roy Hoffman, Silas House, Angela Jackson-Brown, Robin Lippincott, Lee Martin, Nancy McCabe, Eleanor Morse, Elaine Neil Orr, John Pipkin, Karen Salyer, Neela Vaswani
Nonfiction: Dianne Aprile, Roy Hoffman, Jason Kyle Howard, Robin Lippincott, Lee Martin, Nancy McCabe, Elaine Neil Orr, Felicia Rose Chavez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Neela Vaswani, Rebecca Walker
Writing for Children & Young Adults: Beth Bauman, Ellen Hagan, Leah Henderson, Lesléa Newman
Screenwriting: Larry Brenner, Helena Kriel, Bruce Marshall Romans, Sam Zalutsky
Playwriting: Gabriel Jason Dean, Kira Obolensky, Charlie Schulman
Translation: Jeremy Paden
The program offers partial funding through graduate assistantships, scholarships, and editorial and reading positions with our literary journal.
In addition to fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, the program offers writing for children and young adults, screenwriting, and playwriting.
Students can choose a faster, higher-intensity pace or a slower, less intensive pace, depending on the time they have available. Students can complete two semesters a year, spending about 25 hours a week on writing and reading during independent study. Or they can opt to complete one semester a year, devoting about 12 hours a week to independent study.
The program hosts three residencies each year. The spring (May) and fall (November) residencies take place at the Spalding University campus in Louisville, Kentucky. The summer (June/July) residency takes place in a different international location each year. The 2022 summer residency took place in Paris, France.
Spalding’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing also offers a 15-credit graduate certificate and a 35-credit MA in Writing (MAW), both with tracks in Creative Writing and Professional Writing & Editing. Student can matriculate from the certificate or MAW into the MFA, earning two degrees for about the cost of one.
Spalding does not charge a registration fee, residency fee, or graduation fee.
The application deadline is February 1 for the spring and summer semesters and August 1 for the fall semester.
Larry Brenner, K.B. Carle, Whitney Collins, Annie Frazier, Jacquelin Gorman, Leah Henderson, Silas House, Angela Jackson-Brown, Erin Keane, Jennine DOC Krueger, Nancy Chen Long, Jessica Love (a.k.a. Jessica Patrick), Andrea Nasfell, Scott O’Connor, Catherine Rush, Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (S.A. Bodeen), Frank X Walker, Skye Wallin, Charles Dodd White, Crystal Wilkinson, Lindsay Zibach