Saint Mary's College of California :: Creative Writing Programs :: NewPages Guide
Saint Mary’s College of California
Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing
P.O. Box 4686
Moraga, CA 94575-4686
Website: www.stmarys-ca.edu/mfa
Program director: Brenda Hillman
Program contact: Sara Mumolo
Phone: (925) 631-8556
Email: Sm13@stmarys-ca.edu
Degrees offered: MFA
Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction
Type of program: Residency
Length of program: 2 years
Enrollment: 7-8 per genre
Application deadlines: January 31
Scholarships available: yes
Visiting faculty: one per genre for a total of three per year.
Assistantships: yes
Publishing/editing courses: no
Literary magazine: yes, Mary
Reading series (yes/no): yes
Recent visiting writers: David Lau, Josh Braff, Peter Trachtenburgh, Kathryn Ma, Elizabeth Stark, Jane Vandenburgh, Rusty Morrison, Rebecca Wolff
Program description: Founded in 1995, the MFA Program in Creative Writing is a two-year course of study leading to the M.F.A. degree in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The Program provides the time and formal training necessary for serious students to improve their writing, and it embodies the finest qualities of Saint Mary’s College: an interest in the student as a person, an emphasis on shared inquiry and critical thinking, and a respect for new and various ways of knowing. We offer small classes, an outstanding permanent faculty, numerous visiting writers and editors, and close faculty-student contact.
Key features of our program:
- We attend to the individual writer’s relationship to language, giving personal attention to each student so that she may find her vision in the two-year program
- We see the development of the writing project of each student as a powerful part of the development of the whole person
- We encourage aesthetic diversity, and have a deep connection to the diverse and historic Bay Area literary culture.
- We emphasize the craft of writing and reading in using pluralistic, imaginative and practical approaches to aesthetic development
We model community both in the classroom and in the arts community, attending to the powerful role of developing artists in a culture that is thirsty for the knowledge only arts can bring.

