Creative Writing Programs :: NewPages Guide

Chatham University

MFA in Creative Writing

Woodland Rd.

Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Website: www.chatham.edu/mfa

Program director: Sheryl St. Germain

Program contact: Sheryl St. Germain

Phone: 412-365-1190

Email: sstgermain@chatham.edu

Degrees offered: BFA, MFA

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Children’s Writing, Screenwriting

Type of program: Residency and Low-Residency

Length of program: 2 years

Enrollment: 70 full residency, 10 low residency

Total credits required: 39

Application deadlines: Rolling deadlines

Scholarships available: yes

Core faculty: Sheryl St. Germain, Randall Silvis, Heather McNaugher, Peter Oresick, Kathy Ayres, Sally Alexander, Karen Williams, Michael Simms

Assistantships: yes

Publishing/editing courses: yes

Literary magazine: Yes, Fourth River

Reading series: yes

Recent visiting writers: Robert Hass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Janisse Ray, Ander Monson, Terry Tempest Williams

Chatham University's ground breaking MFA focusing on nature, environment and travel writing is the premier graduate program for nurturing creative writers interested in the environmental imagination and place-based writing.

Our program is inspired by the work of Chatham alumna, Rachel Carson, a creative writer whose work demonstrates both lyricism and social conscience.

The heart of our program--nature, environmental and travel writing--honors Carson's legacy, but expands the interpretation of environment to include any place-based writing and all genres-poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction-shaped by human relationship with place.

In addition to plentiful creative writing workshops and craft courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, screenwriting and children's writing, our unique MFA program includes instruction in nature and environmental writing, travel writing, and field seminars focused on the literature of wild, urban, and rural landscapes. Each year creative writing field seminars offer students the opportunity to travel to the United States and other parts of the world with faculty and generate creative work about the experience. Past and current field seminars include trips to Costa Rica, New Zealand, Greece, India, New Orleans and western Pennsylvania.