The NYU Creative Writing Program has distinguished itself for over forty years as a leading national center for the study of writing and literature, inviting promising new writers to work closely with a faculty of today's finest writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Low-Residency MFA Writers Workshop in Paris
That tradition continues with the low-residency MFA Writers Workshop in Paris, which offers students the opportunity to develop their craft under the guidance of internationally-acclaimed faculty—including Catherine Barnett, Ken Chen, Alex Dimitrov, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, Uzodinma Iweala, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Katie Kitamura, Hari Kunzru, Raven Leilani, Leigh Newman, Meghan O'Rourke, Matthew Rohrer, Nicole Sealey, Parul Sehgal, Darin Strauss, and Brandon Taylor—while writing and studying in one of the world's most inspiring literary capitals.
Recent visiting writers and editors include Kaveh Akbar, Jericho Brown, Anne Carson, Sandra Cisneros, Rachel Cusk, Edwidge Danticat, Lydia Davis, Hernan Diaz, Geoff Dyer, Mariana Enríquez, Melissa Febos, John Freeman, Terrance Hayes, Mira Jacob, Leslie Jamison, Donika Kelly, Etgar Keret, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Kushner, Nick Laird, Édouard Louis, Valeria Luiselli, David Mitchell, Nadifa Mohamed, Maggie Nelson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Joyce Carol Oates, ZZ Packer, Claudia Rankine, Taiye Selasi, Kamila Shamsie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Leila Slimani, Tracy K. Smith, Zadie Smith, Ocean Vuong, and Kevin Young, among many others.
The MFA Writers Workshop in Paris constitutes an intimate creative apprenticeship that extends beyond traditional classroom walls.
Over two years, students and faculty convene regularly in Paris for five intensive ten-day residency periods held biannually in January and July (click here for a sample residency calendar). While in residency in Paris, students participate in a vibrant community engaged in all aspects of the literary arts, including workshops, craft talks, lectures, individual conferences and manuscript consultations, as well as a diverse series of readings, special events and professional development panels. The city of Paris itself—with its literary history and rich cultural attractions—provides an ideal opportunity for students to learn the art and craft of writing, immerse themselves in the creative process, and live the writer’s life.
During the intervals between residencies, students pursue focused courses of study, completing reading and writing assignments under the close supervision of individual faculty members. These ongoing dialogues with faculty are tailored to specific student interests and needs; students are mentored by a different professor each term and work closely with four different writers during the two-year program.
Unlike the traditional MFA, the low-residency program offers both freedom and rigor, balancing the intense and stimulating community of each residency and the sustained solitary work completed in the intervals between. Students are expected to complete substantial writing and reading assignments each term, regularly submitting packets of work in exchange for detailed feedback and critique. Graduating students leave the program with four new literary mentors and a portfolio of letters written by acclaimed writers in response to their work.
Detailed program structure, curriculum, and requirements can be found here.
In order to receive the MFA, students must attend five residencies, successfully complete 32 credits of coursework, and submit a special project of at least 70 pages of fiction or creative nonfiction, or 25 pages of poetry. This project consists of a substantial piece of writing—a novel, a collection of short stories, a memoir or essay collection, or a group of poems—submitted before the final residency. The project requires the approval of the student's faculty advisor and the program director.
The online application for the January 2024 residency is now available. Students may apply for either the MFA in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, or Poetry. All applicants must submit online using the GSAS Application Form (for the “Spring 2024” term) by September 01, 2023. *NOTE: The application deadline for January 2024 has been exceptionally extended through September 11, 2023. No applications will be accepted after that date.*
** No portion of the application should be mailed directly. The GRE is not a requirement for the program. For more information, including details on academics, costs, and the application process, please contact the NYU Creative Writing Program at 212-998-8816 or creative.writing@nyu.edu.
Faculty Members Include:
Catherine Barnett is the author of three poetry collections, Human Hours (2018 Believer Book Award in Poetry), The Game of Boxes (James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets) and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced. A Guggenheim fellow, she received a 2022 Arts and Letters Award in Literature, which honors exceptional accomplishment. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Harper’s, among many other places. She lives in New York City, where she also works as an independent editor.
Ken Chen was a 2019-2020 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, where he worked on his book Death Star. The hybrid nonfiction book follows his journey to the underworld to rescue his father and his encounters there with those destroyed by colonialism. He was the 2009 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his book Juvenilia, which was selected by the poet Louise Glück. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf writers Conference, he has published nonfiction in Best American Essays, N+1, The New Republic, Frieze, The New Inquiry, Poetry, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Chen served as the Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop from 2008 to 2019 and co-founded Culturestrike, a national arts organization dedicated to migrant justice.
Nathan Englander's most recent novel is kaddish.com. He is also the author of the Dinner at the Center of the Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, as well as the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases (all published by Knopf/Vintage). He was the 2012 recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for What We Talk About. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Vogue, and Esquire, among other places. His work has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous editions of The Best American Short Stories, including 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Translated into twenty-two languages, Englander was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He’s been a fellow at the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and at The American Academy of Berlin. In 2012 Englander's translation of the New American Haggadah (edited by Jonathan Safran Foer) was published by Little Brown. He also co-translated Etgar Keret's Suddenly A Knock at the Door and Fly Already, published by FSG. His play The Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at the Public Theater in 2012, and his new play, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of a 2019 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, and the 2020 Blanche and Irving Laurie Theatre Visions Fund Prize, was commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater and was supposed to be running at The Old Globe in San Diego right now—sigh. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University and lives with his family in Toronto.
Alex Dimitrov is the author of three books of poems, Love and Other Poems, Together and by Ourselves, and Begging for It. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. In addition to NYU, he has taught writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Barnard College. Previously, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited the popular series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. With Dorothea Lasky he is the co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. He lives in New York.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestselling novel Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. His other novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am. He is also the author of the nonfiction books, Eating Animals, and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest,” and was included in The New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list of writers. He lives in Brooklyn.
Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. He is the CEO of The Africa Center in New York, promoting a new narrative about Africa and its diaspora through a focus on culture, policy and business. Uzodinma is the Co-Founder of Ventures Africa Magazine, a publication that covers business, policy, culture and innovation spaces in Africa. He is a member of the Presidents Youth Advisory Group (PYAG) for Jobs for Youth Africa (JfYA) at the African Development Bank (AfDB). He is also on the Board of the NewNow, a subsidiary of the Virgin Group’s charitable arm, Virgin Unite. He has written three books: Beasts of No Nation (2005), a novel also adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People (2012), a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about Washington, D.C.
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of six novels, seven plays, and a collection of plays, essays, and short stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and his plays have been performed by more than hundred international companies. He received the Village Voice Obie Award for his first play Invasion! and in 2015 he was awarded the August Prize, Sweden's highest literary honor for the novel Everything I Don't Remember. In 2017 he became the first Swedish writer to have a short story published in The New Yorker and in 2020 his latest novel The Family Clause was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Prix Médicis Étranger, France’s highest honor for translated books. Khemiri is currently based in New York, as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. One of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, it was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It was also one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. Her third novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of Gone To The Forest and The Longshot, both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award.
Her work has been translated into 21 languages and is being adapted for film and television. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan, Santa Maddalena, and Jan Michalski foundations, Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
Hari Kunzru is a Clinical Professor in the Creative Writing Program. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. He is the author of five novels, most recently White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, One Book New York, the Prix du Livre Inter étranger, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Red Pill will be published in September 2020 by Knopf. He is also the author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men and a short story collection, Noise. His novella Memory Palace was presented as an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, Bookforum, October and Frieze. He has written screenplays, radio drama, and experimental work using field recordings and voice-to-text software. He has taught at Hunter College and Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is a past deputy president of English PEN, a judge for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and has been a frequent presenter, interviewer and guest on television and radio.
Raven Leilani’s debut novel Luster (2020) was awarded the Kirkus Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize, NBCC John Leonard Prize, VCU Cabell First Novel Prize, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, among others. Her work has been published in Granta, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. She was also selected as a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. In 2022 she served as the John Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi and teaches creative writing at NYU.
Leigh Newman's memoir about Alaska, Still Points North (Dial, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard prize. Her short stories have appeared in the Paris Review, Harper’s, One Story, Tin House, and McSweeney’s. She is the winner of the Paris Reviews’s 2020 Terry Southern Prize for “humor, wit, and sprezzatura” and her story “Howl Palace” was selected for 2019 Best American Short Stories, as well as won the 2020 Pushcart prize and the Paris Review’s ASME-winning award for fiction. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, Vogue, O The Oprah Magazine, and other magazines. She has taught creative writing at Pratt, Sarah Lawrence, and New York University and has received fellowships from Yaddo, Breadloaf, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the former books editor of Oprah.com, the co-founder of Black Balloon/Catapult Publishing, and is now the senior editor-at-large at Catapult. Soon to come: the story collection Nobody Gets out Alive (2022) and an untitled novel (2023) from Scribner.
Meghan O'Rourke is the author most recently of the New York Times Bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, which was a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in nonfiction. Her previous books include The Long Goodbye, a memoir of mourning her mother, and the poetry collections Halflife, Once, and Sun in Days, which was named one of the best poetry books of 2018 by The New York Times. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes and was a finalist for the Forward First Book Prize and more. She currently serves as the editor of The Yale Review.
Matthew Rohrer is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. With Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann he wrote the secret book Gentle Reader! It is not for sale. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem They All Seemed Asleep in 2008. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994.
His poems have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many journals. He's received the Hopwood Award for poetry and a Pushcart prize, and was selected as a National Poetry Series winner, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Recently he has participated in residencies/ performances at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle).
Matthew Rohrer was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in Oklahoma, and attended universities in Ann Arbor, Dublin, and Iowa City. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.
Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is the author of Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017), which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Sealey’s chapbook, The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. In 2019, Sealey was named a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She has received fellowships and awards from the American Academy in Rome, the Forward Foundation, CantoMundo, Cave Canem Foundation, the National Endowment and New York Foundation for the Arts, an Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She was the Executive Director at Cave Canem Foundation from 2017–2019. Sealey lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Parul Sehgal is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She was previously a columnist and senior editor at The New York Times Book Review and a book critic for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Literary Review, among other publications, and she was awarded the Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism.
Darin Strauss is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than it Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir, Half a Life, the comic-book series, Olivia Twist, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story (Random House, 2020). A recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Library Association Award, and numerous other prizes, Strauss has written screenplays for Disney, Gary Oldman, and Julie Taymor. His work has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries, and he is a Clinical Professor at the NYU Creative Writing Program.
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a national bestseller, was awarded The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Deborah Landau (Director) is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Skeletons. Her other books include Soft Targets (winner of the Believer Book Award), The Uses of the Body and The Last Usable Hour, all Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her other awards include a Jacob K Javits Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A Spanish edition was published by Valparaiso Edicíones in 2017. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, The Nation, and three volumes of The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She is a tenured full Professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Program Dates (Upcoming Residencies): January 7-16, 2024; June 2-11, 2024 (Please note that summer residencies are typically held in July. Summer 2024 dates are exceptional.) Housing: Students must arrange their own accommodations in Paris during the residency periods. TUITION & FEES Tuition for the program will be approximately $34,500 per year, not including registration fees. Tuition fees are subject to a yearly increase. Tuition for the 2023-2024 academic year can be calculated as follows: Tuition per unit, per term: $2,157.00 |
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Registration fees (based on 16 units of tuition per year) are calculated based on the number of credits taken per term. Please click here for a chart detailing the cost of tuition and fees per unit.
Although departmental funding is not available, students may consult a list of external scholarships and grant opportunities here. |
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