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Adelphi University

New York, United States

Low-residency program

The MFA in Creative Writing at Adelphi is a low-residency program with 5-day residencies held each year in August and January in New York City. We offer concentrations in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We also welcome mixed-genre work.

The program's distinctive curriculum offers students the opportunity to focus on one or more genres. Our Professional Development Practicum is a unique hands-on experience in which students meet with writers, agents, editors, and arts administrators to learn firsthand about the professional life of a writer. Students also learn the practical procedures of submitting a manuscript and applying for grants and jobs.

Our year-long Thesis Colloquium and Independent Study sequence offers intense one-on-one mentoring.

Students are encouraged to take advantage of Adelphi's connections to New York City's lively arts scenes and our relationships with organizations such as PEN, AWP and Cave Canem.

All students who apply by the funding deadline will be considered for partial scholarships.

Contact Information

1 South Avenue
MFA Program, Dept of English
Garden City
New York, United States
11530-0701
Phone: (516) 877-4027
Email: rsteinke@adelphi.edu
Fax: 516-877-4038
http://www.adelphi.edu/mfacw



DEGREE PROGRAMS

Undergraduate Program Director

Katherine Hill
Professor and Director of Creative Writing
Department of English
Harvey Hall 212
Garden City
New York, United States
11530-0701
Email: khill@adelphi.edu

Adelphi's program in English encourages students to discover the pleasures and values of the written word in their own writing and that of acknowledged artists. The program gives students as comprehensive an acquaintance as possible with the work of important writers and interesting writers. The program also provides a close look at the ways in which good writing gains its power. The creative writing major track produces the cultural reference and skill in using language artfully that are requisite in any profession--administration, advertising, journalism, law, librarianship, writing, teaching to name a few--in which language is the paramount tool. In addition, the creative writing track prepares students for advanced work in poetry, fiction and dramatic writing.

Type of Program: Studio/Research
Largest Class Size: 15
Smallest Class Size: 6
Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting
Tuition 22000
Duration of Study: 4 years
Unit of Measure: Credits
Foreign Language: 12 or level IV competency
Criticism and Theory: 3
Composition Rhetoric: 3
Workshop: 12
Literature: 24
Total Units for Degree: 120
Application Deadline Fall: 01/01/2013
Application Deadline Spring: 10/01/2012

Graduate Program Director

René Steinke
Professor and Director of Creative Writing
Department of English
Harvey Hall 218
Garden City
New York, United States
11530-0701
Email: rsteinke@adelphi.edu
URL: https://www.adelphi.edu/program/graduate/creative-writing/

The MFA in Creative Writing at Adelphi is a low-residency program with 5-day residencies held each year in New York City. We offer students the opportunity to specialize in three major genres: poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

The program's distinctive curriculum offers students the opportunity to focus in one or more genres. Our Professional Development Practicum is a unique hands-on experience in which students meet with writers, agents, editors, and arts administrators to learn firsthand about the professional life of a writer. They also learn the practical procedures of submitting a manuscript and applying for grants and jobs.

Our year-long Thesis Colloquium and Independent Study sequence offers intense one-on-one mentoring.

Students are encouraged to take advantage of Adelphi's connections to New York City's lively arts scenes and our relationships with organizations such as PEN, AWP and Cave Canem.

Type of Program: Low-Residency Program
Largest Class Size: 15
Smallest Class Size: 5
Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction
Tuition 17062.00
Duration of Study: 2 years
Unit of Measure: Credits
Workshop: 18
Literature: 9
Other: 4
Thesis: 8
Total Units for Degree: 39
Application Deadline Fall: 06/01/2024
Application Deadline Spring: 10/31/2024
Application Requirements: Transcripts, Writing Sample, Application Form, Other




FACULTY

Igor Webb

Igor Webb was born in Slovakia and grew up in the Inwood neighborhood of New York City. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), and The Hong Kong Review, among others. Among his publications are Rereading the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and the memoir Against Capitulation (London: Quartet Books, 1984). His story “Reza Says,” originally published in The Hudson Review, was selected as a Distinguished Story for Best American Short Stories, 2012. Christopher Smart’s Cat, a cross- or multi-genre work—part memoir, part literary talk, part fiction—was published in 2018 by Dos Madres Press. Buster Brown’s America , a collection of nonfiction, including the series “This Old Writer: A Journal of a Plague Year,” appeared in the “Odd Volumes” series of The Fortnightly Review in Spring 2022. Igor Webb has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Leverhulme Fellow, and a winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He received bis B.A. from Tufts University (1963), and his Ph.D. from Stanford (1971). He is Professor of English at Adelphi University.

igorwebb.net


Katherine Hill

Katherine Hill is the author of two novels, The Violet Hour (Scribner 2013) and A Short Move, (Ig Publishing 2020), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

With Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, and Juno Jill Richards, she is also co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Columbia University Press 2020), which won the PROSE Award in Literature from the Association of American Publishers and an Honorable Mention in the MLA Prize for Collaborative, Bibliographical, or Archival Scholarship.

Her fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including AGNI, The Believer, Bookforum, Colorado Review, The Common, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, The Literary Review, n+1, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, Philadelphia Inquirer, Post45, Post Road, San Francisco Chronicle, and Tin House.

Katherine is Associate Professor of English at Adelphi University, where she teaches creative writing and literature to undergraduate and MFA students. Her writing has been awarded fellowships from the New York Public Library, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Born in Washington D.C., she now lives in Brooklyn.

https://www.katherine-hill.com/


René Steinke

René Steinke’s novel, Friendswood (Riverhead), was named one of National Public Radio’s "Great Reads.” Friendswood was shortlisted for the St. Francis College Literary Prize for mid-career authors, and it was an Amazon Book of the Month. Her previous novel, Holy Skirts, an imaginative retelling of the life of the artist and provocateur, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a Finalist for the National Book Award. Her first novel is The Fires. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, O Magazine, Redbook, Houstonia, Salon, Bookforum, and in anthologies. She is the former Editor of The Literary Review. She is the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Adelphi University.

renesteinke.net


Maya Marshall

Maya Marshall is a poet, essayist, and scholar. She is the author of the debut full-length poetry collection All the Blood Involved in Love (2022) and the chapbook Secondhand (2016). She is a cofounder of underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision.

Marshall, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Adelphi University, has taught at Emory University and Northwestern University. She holds fellowships from MacDowell, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center and elsewhere. Her writing has been published in Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She works as an editor for Haymarket Books.

Marshall was raised in Texas and Georgia, earned her MFA from the University of South Carolina, and made a home in Chicago for nearly twenty years. She lives in Broolyn, New York.

https://www.mayamarshallpoetry.com/about


Jan-Henry Gray

Jan-Henry Gray is the author of Documents (BOA Editions Ltd.), chosen by D.A. Powell as the winner of the Poulin Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Selected Emails (speCt! Books.) His writing can also be found in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Margins, and other journals. Jan was born in the Philippines, grew up in California, and worked as a chef in San Francisco for more than 12 years. He lived undocumented in the US for more than 32 years. A graduate of San Francisco State University and Columbia College Chicago’s MFA program, he received the inaugural Undocupoets Fellowship and awards from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. A Kundiman fellow, he currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Adelphi University where he is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Creative Writing MFA Program.

https://www.janhenrygray.com/


Jacqueline Jones LaMon (Professor Emerita)

Jacqueline Jones LaMon is the author of the poetry collections, What Water Knows (Northwestern University Press, June 2021), Last Seen, a Felix Pollak Poetry Prize selection, and Gravity, U.S.A., recipient of the Quercus Review Press Poetry Series Book Award; and the novel, In the Arms of One Who Loves Me. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and UCLA School of Law, Ms. LaMon earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry, from Indiana University Bloomington.

Ms. LaMon’s work has appeared in a wide variety of publications such as POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Narrative Magazine, Ninth Letter, Mythium, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Noted twice by the NAACP in the category of Outstanding Literary Work, Poetry, Ms. LaMon is the recipient of fellowships from the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, The Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, the Yaddo Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many others. She spent her childhood in Brooklyn, New York, and served as board member and past president of Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. A member of the National Council for Graywolf Press, Professor Emerita LaMon taught for over a decade in the multi-genre M.F.A. program at Adelphi University, where she most recently held the position of Vice President of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging prior to her university retirement in July 2023.

https://www.jacquelinejoneslamon.com/


Judith Baumel (Professor Emerita)

Judith Baumel is Professor Emerita of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She has served as President of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, director of The Poetry Society of America and a Fulbright Scholar in Italy. Her poetry, translations and essays have been published in Poetry, The Yale Review, AGNI, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, The Common, The New Republic, The Paris Review, among others.

Baumel’s work is represented in a number of anthologies including Telling and Remembering: A Century of Jewish American Poetry; Gondola Signore Gondola: Poems on Venice; Poems of New York (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets) and The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making. She has received awards from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Bronx Recognizes Its Own, Laurence Goldstein Award in Poetry from MQR, and fellowships Hadassah Brandeis Institute, Yaddo, Saltonstall, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Millay, among others.

Judith Baumel was born in the Bronx, the day after Don Larsen’s perfect game. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, Radcliffe College, Harvard University and The Johns Hopkins University. She lives in the Bronx with her husband, Philip Alcabes.

https://www.judithbaumel.com/


Martha Cooley (Professor Emerita)

Martha Cooley is the author of two novels–The Archivist (Little Brown, 1998), a New York Times bestseller also published in a dozen foreign markets, and Thirty-Three Swoons (Little Brown, 2005), as well as a memoir-in-essays, Guesswork: A Reckoning With Loss (Catapult, 2017).

With Antonio Romani, she co-translated Antonio Tabucci’s Time Ages in a Hurry (Archipelago Books, 2015). Her co-translations have appeared in such venues as Guernica, Tin House, Massachusetts Review, and Atlanta Review.

She is the winner of an O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction (2017) and was cited for a Notable essay in Best American Essays (2013). Her short fiction, essays, and co-translations have appeared in A Public Space, AGNI, The Common, LARB, the Writer’s Chronicle, and PEN America, among other journals. She was for 15 years a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars in Bennington, Vermont.

http://academics.adelphi.edu/artsci/creativewriting/cooley.php





COMMUNITY

Victor Lavalle

Calvin Baker

Myla Goldberg

Major Jackson

Maureen McLane

Fiona Maazel

Donna Freitas

Patricia Spears Jones

Jeffery Renard Allen

Mike Albo

Kevin Arkadie

Elizabeth Bennett

Calvin Baker

Sally Ball

Catherine Bowman

Jericho Brown

Martha Collins

Jorge Ignacio Corti

Stephen Cramer

Greg Delanty

Delana Dameron

Bathseba Doran

Stuart Dischell

Sharon Dolin

B. H. Fairchild

Amy Fox

Peter Gaitens

Aracelis Girmay

Ross Gay

David Greenspan

Duriel Harris

Jamey Hecht

Edward Hirsch

Brigid Hughes

Mary-Beth Hughes

Linda Susan Jackson

Jacqueline Johnson

Tayari Jones

A. Van Jordan

Tracy K. Smith

Sheila Kohler

Wayne Koestenbaum

Mark Jarman

Susan Merrell

Askold Melnyzcuk

D. Nurkse

Nuala O’Faolain

Ishle Park

Gregory Pardlo

Molly Peacock

Patrick Phillips

Joseph O. Legaspi

Sarah Ruden

Julie Sheehan

Christopher Shin

Edwin Sanchez

Patricia Smith

Martha Southgate

Terese Svoboda

George Szirtes

Richard Tillinghast

Natasha Trethewey

Mark Wunderlich

Monica Youn