About

About the Program

Randolph College > Academics > Graduate > MFA Creative Writing > About

A New Kind of MFA Program

The Randolph College MFA program is a two-year, intensive degree in creative writing: poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

Founded in 2018 by Kaveh Akbar, Mira Jacob, Aviya Kushner, Wayétu Moore, Layli Long Soldier, Erika L. Sánchez, Phillip B. Williams, Gary Dop, Chris Gaumer, and Laura-Gray Street, our program quickly established an intentional community of rigorous compassion and creative exploration.

In the first two years, our community continued to grow through the influence of additional returning faculty: Diana Khoi Nguyen, Paige Lewis, Anjali Sachdeva, Rigoberto González, Ilya Kaminsky, Eloisa Amezcua, and Julia Phillips.

Together with our exceptional students, we’re sustaining a space where literary artists can thrive.

Our Values

The Randolph MFA strives to:

  • create an anti-racist, inclusive MFA experience and literary community.
  • build a safer environment for writers from systematically disenfranchised communities to create freely and without fear of judgment or reprisal.
  • affirm intersectionality and respect the profound ways each person’s identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinions enrich our community.
  • take seriously our art and its sources, influences, and inspirations, recognizing that language has history, density, and integrity.
  • value individual artistry and community engagement, including experimentation across literary genres, artistic mediums, and social practice.
  • nurture intellectual and artistic rigor through collaboration, celebration, and abundance over competition, envy, and scarcity.
  • encourage the holistic well-being of writers, acknowledging that art and life are informed by physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health.

The Residencies

During the two years, students complete four semesters of one-on-one mentorship and attend five 10-day Residency Sessions, one beginning each semester, as well as a final graduation residency at the end of the fourth semester.

Working with Faculty

Our Award-Winning Writing Faculty attend the residency sessions to mentor students, deliver insightful lectures, lead collaborative workshops, facilitate discussions, and present their writing.

The Semesters

After the residency session, each student works with one faculty mentor for 20 weeks, completing original new writing, revising works in progress, and writing critical analysis essays.

Faculty mentors communicate regularly with students, providing feedback and direction. This is an exciting, personal approach to developing craft, style, and vision.

The Degree

The thesis project for the MFA is a book-length work of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

The MFA is a degree program offered by the English Department of Randolph College. For full curriculum details, examine the MFA Curriculum.

If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ or Contact Us–we’re happy to help!

The Experience

We are committed to helping our students build a meaningful life and career as literary citizens.

This begins with understanding each student’s goals and by providing access, education, advice, support, and opportunities–as one example of this: see REVOLUTE, our international literary magazine.