MFA Program
See writers who attended this program
Poetry: Diana Khoi Nguyen, Joy Priest, Gary Jackson
Fiction: Angie Cruz, William Lychack, Irina Reyn
Nonfiction: Jeanne Marie Laskas, Michael Meyer, Maggie Jones
Digital Narrative: Erin Anderson
AY 26-27 writer-in-residence: Clare Beams
Past visiting writers include poets Toi Derricotte and Rickey Laurentiis, as well as fiction writers Mary Gaitskill and Allison Amend.
The program offers full funding, which includes an annual stipend, full tuition benefits, and other benefits such as health coverage. Teaching, editing, and digital narrative opportunities are also available.
The program also administers two graduate writing awards: the Turow-Kinder Prize for Fiction and the Academy of American Poets/Graduate Poetry Award.
The program works with University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, co-founded by Dawn Lundy Martin and Terrance Hayes, whose mission is to highlight, promote, and share the work of African American and African diasporic poets and to pollinate cross-disciplinary conversation and collaboration. Since its inception in 2016, the center has sponsored readings, performances, and workshops by Claudia Rankine, Carl Phillips, Carrie Mae Weems, Layla Ali, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Fred Moten, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
The Writing Program also hosts the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series where writers such as Jake Skeets, Isabella Hammad, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras present craft courses and meet one-on-one with students. Other features include travel grants to attend conferences and archives, courses in digital literature, as well as the Life After The MFA course where students meet agents, editors, and other industry figures.
Lorraine Avila, Jan Beatty, Brian Broome, Katie Booth, Jeffrey Condran, Kleaver Cruz, Terrance Hayes, Emily Maloney, Jane McCafferty, Jared Lemus, Sarah Menkedick, Sal Pane, Shannon Reed, Brandon Som, Rebecca Skloot, Judith Vollmer, Angela Velez