About the Program

Fairfield University's low residency MFA in Creative Writing is a two-year program leading to a Master of Fine Arts with concentrations in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The program supports your dream of becoming a writer by offering you an opportunity to study and develop your craft under the guidance of a skilled and caring faculty mentor, while at the same time allowing you to maintain the continuity of the rest of your life - your community, career, and family.

The two-year program involves four exciting and rigorous 10-day residency periods at inspirational Enders Island, off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut, as well as a fifth graduation residency where the student gives a lecture and a public reading. Between residencies, you will spend the five-month terms studying and working closely with a single faculty mentor, sending packets of your writing through postal or electronic mail, and receiving detailed and helpful critiques, advice, and encouragement. Each semester, you will be paired with a different faculty member, which, over the course of your two years in the program, gives you various perspectives on and help with your writing.

The program is rigorous, requiring students to devote a minimum of 25 hours each week to your writing and directed reading. However, it is also flexible to your needs and interests. Under the helpful advice of faculty mentors, you will establish your own educational direction, develop your own reading lists, and select courses, seminars, and genres based on your own areas of interest and talent. In your last semester, you'll work closely with one faculty member to develop a thesis of publishable quality.

Fairfield's MFA provides a truly distinguished and enriching educational experience, one that helps the writer to find his or her own individual voice. We invite you to learn more about the program's features, requirements, residency, faculty, and director. Have more questions? Read our FAQs or contact us. We hope the information provided will inspire your "writer within" to register for our first residency at Enders Island in December.