Graduate Creative Writing :: Degrees

Welcome to the creative writing program at the University of South Florida. Our program offers small classes, engaging fellow students, dedicated faculty, and a supportive atmosphere.

The Department of English, the USF Lecture Series, the USF Humanities Institute, and the Florida Literary Arts Coalition bring in many guest speakers for readings, master classes, and day-long workshops. Recent guest speakers include the following:

• Billy Collins, Norman Mailer, Margaret Atwood, and Joyce Carol Oates
• Salman Rushdie, Frank McCourt, Louise Gluck, and John Updike
• Augusten Burroughs, David Leavitt, Connie May Fowler, and Donald Morrill
• Rick Campbell, Ad Hudler, Susan Hubbard, Reginald Shepherd, and Kimberly Johnson
• Kim Addonizio, Mark Jarman, Enid Shomer, and Meredith Walters

The English Graduate Student Association hosts student-run symposia and the Spotlight on Writers series (run by graduate creative-writing students) holds regular poetry and fiction readings during the academic year. Our on-line journal, Saw Palm (www.sawpalm.org) gives graduate students a chance to gain valuable editorial experience.

Our students have published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies, and have won prestigious prizes such as the AWP Intro Award and O. Henry Award in Short Fiction. Graduate Karen Brown won the AWP Award in Short Fiction for her story collection Pins and Needles and former MA student Ric Jahna won the Ohio State University fiction prize for True Kin.

Our Faculty

Rita Ciresi [On Sabbatical 2009-2010] (MFA, The Pennsylvania State University) is the author of the short-story collections Mother Rocket and Sometimes I Dream in Italian, and the novels Pink Slip, Blue Italian, and Remind Me Again Why I Married You. Her awards include the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel. She has won support for her work from the Ragdale Foundation, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, the American Academy in Rome, and the state art councils of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida. From 2003-2005 she wrote a weekly newspaper column, "America Today," for the Rome daily newspaper Europa. Visit her website at www.ritaciresi.com.

John Henry Fleming (PhD, University of Louisiana-Lafayette) (PhD, University of Louisiana-Lafayette) is the author of The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman, a novel, and Fearsome Creatures of Florida, an illustrated literary bestiary. He has published more than 25 short stories in magazines including McSweeney’s, The North American Review, Mississippi Review, Santa Monica Review, Georgetown Review, and Fourteen Hills, and he was a contributor to The Future Dictionary of America. He’s the founder and advisory editor of Saw Palm: florida literature and art. He’s also the reigning intramurals disc golf champion. Visit his website at www.fearsomecreatures.com.

Hunt Hawkins, (PhD, Stanford University), English Department Chair, specializes in 20th-century British literature, post-colonial literature, and poetry writing. His collection of poems, The Domestic Life, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His poems have appeared in Georgia Review, Harvard Magazine, Poetry, and many other magazines. He is president of the Joseph Conrad Society and edits Joseph Conrad Today.

Jay Hopler (MFA, University of Iowa) is the author of Green Squall, which was chosen by Louise Glück as the winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Green Squall also received the 2007 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, a 2006 Florida Book Award [Silver Medal in the Poetry Category], a 2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award [Bronze Medal in the Poetry Category] and a 2007 National “Best Books” Award from USA Book News. The Killing Spirit: An Anthology of Murder-for-Hire, his first book, was published in the United States and Europe by The Overlook Press and Canongate Books in 1996. His next book, The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, will be published by Yale University Press in 2010. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies including The American Poetry Review, Bayou, Boulevard, Cavalier, Colorado Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Confrontation, Eclipse, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, Mid-American Review, The New Delta Review, New Voices: 1989—1998 (Academy of American Poets), The New Yorker, Pequod, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Poetry International, POOL, Puerto Del Sol, Seattle Review, Smartish Pace, Sonora Review, Under the Rock Umbrella: Modern American Poets from 1951—1976 (Mercer University Press), The Wallace Stevens Journal, Whiskey Island Magazine and Xantippe. In 2009, Jay received a Marfa Residency Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation and a Whiting Writers' Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.

Ira Sukrungruang (MFA, The Ohio State University) is co-editor of the anthologies What Are You Looking At? and Scoot Over, Skinny. His award-winning creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have been published in dozens of magazines, including Brevity, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, and North American Review. He has received the New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Fellowship and an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award, as well as support from the Blue Mountain Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. He is the creative nonfiction editor of Sweet: A Literary Confection (sweetlit.com) and is the author of the memoir, Talk Thai: The Adventures Buddhist Boy.

The MFA Degree in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a graduate-level program offering concentrations in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The program emphasizes the craft of writing and concentrates on the student's original work. The MFA requires 45 hours of coursework and typically will take three years for the student to complete. Our goal is to help MFA students to produce publishable theses and secure teaching or editing positions upon graduation. To complete the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, students must satisfy the following requirements:

• Earn 45 credit hours with an overall grade point average of 3.0 or better in the required courses. The distribution of the requirements will be 18 hours in writing workshops and craft seminars, 3 hours in pedagogy, 3 hours in bibliographic studies, 12 hours in literature courses, and 9 hours in thesis studies (taken in the final year of the program).
• Complete a book-length manuscript in fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry that will meet departmental and university requirements for the thesis. The thesis shall consist of 48-64 pages of poems or at least 100 pages of fiction or creative nonfiction.

Course of Study for the MFA in Creative Writing

• 6 courses (18 hours) chosen from:
  • CRW 6130 Fiction Writing (3)--may be taken up to three times for a maximum of 9 credits.
  • CRW 6331 Poetry Writing (3)--may be taken up to three times for a maximum of 9 credits.
  • CRW 6236 Nonfiction Writing (3)--may be taken up to three times for a maximum of 9 credits
  • CRW 6164 The Craft of Fiction (3)--required for students admitted on the fiction track, optional for students admitted on the poetry track.
  • CRW 6352 The Craft of Poetry (3)--required for students admitted on the poetry track; optional for students admitted on the fiction track
  • CRW 6934 Special Topics in Creative Writing (3) This new course might concentrate on screenwriting, translation, editing, creative writing pedagogy (with a community service component), or study of a particular genre or technique.
• 1 course (3 hours) in pedagogy:
• LAE 6392 Practice in Teaching Composition (3)
• 1 course (3 hours) in bibliographic studies:
• ENG 6009 Bibliography for English Studies (3). This course must be taken in the student's first or second semester of graduate studies.
• 4 courses (12 hours) in any combination of graduate-level (6000 and above) literature courses offered by the English Department. These courses are coded AML 6---, ENL 6---, and LIT 6---. Sample courses include:
  • AML 6017 Studies in American Literature to 1860 (3)
  • AML 6018 Studies in American Literature 1860-1920 (3)
  • AML 6027 Studies in Modern American Literature (3)
  • AML 6608 Studies in African-American Literature (3)
  • ENL 6206 Studies in Old English (3)
  • ENL 6126 Studies in Middle English (3)
  • ENL 6226 Studies in Sixteenth-Century British Literature (3)
  • ENL 6228 Studies in Seventeenth-Century British Literature (3)
  • ENL 6236 Studies in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature (3)
  • ENL 6246 Studies of the English Romantic Period (3)
  • ENL 6256 Studies in Victorian Literature (3)
  • ENL 6276 Studies in Modern British Literature (3)
  • LIT 6096 Studies in Contemporary Literature (3)
  • LIT 6105 Studies in Continental Literature (3)
  • LIT 6934 Selected Topics in English Studies (3)
• 3 courses (9 hours) in thesis work:
  • ENG 6971 Thesis: Master's (3-6 hours per semester). Taken in the student's final year of study. The student must be registered in at least 3 hours of ENG 6971 during the semester prior to graduation.