The NYU Creative Writing Program has distinguished itself for over thirty 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, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Freeman, Ishion Hutchinson, Hari Kunzru, Katie Kitamura, Nick Laird, Robin Coste Lewis, Meghan O'Rourke, Matthew Rohrer, Zadie Smith, and Darin Strauss—while writing and studying in one of the world's most inspiring literary capitals.
Recent visiting writers and editors include Charles Bock, Dan Chiasson, Lydia Davis, Mark Doty, Geoff Dyer, Mariana Enríquez, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nick Flynn, Aleksandar Hemon, Edward Hirsch, Ann Hood, Marie Howe, Leslie Jamison, Etgar Keret, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, David Lipsky, Valeria Luiselli, David Mitchell, Nadifa Mohamed, Paul Muldoon, Claudia Rankine, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Taiye Selasi, Kamila Shamsie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Charles Simic, Tracy K. Smith, Hannah Tinti, Craig Morgan Teicher, Matthew Thomas, and Ocean Vuong, 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.
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.
FACULTY MEMBERS INCLUDE:
Catherine Barnett is the author of three collections, Human Hours (winner of the 2018 Believer Book Award in Poetry, a New York Times “Best Poetry of 2018” selection, and a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Award), The Game of Boxes (James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets), and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Beatrice Hawley Award). Her other honors include a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Nathan Englander is the author of the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, the novel The Ministry of Special Cases, and the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (Knopf, Spring 2012). His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post, as well as The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous editions of The Best American Short Stories. Translated into more than a dozen 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. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Jonathan Safran Foer (Fiction) 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 a book of nonfiction, Eating Animals. 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.
John Freeman, writer and literary critic, was the editor of the literary magazine Granta, until 2013 as well as the former president of the National Book Critics Circle. He is an executive editor at the Literary Hub. His writing has appeared in almost 200 English-language publications around the world, including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox (Scribner, 2009), and, most recently, How to Read a Novelist (FSG, 2013). He is the founding editor of Freeman's, a new biannual literary journal.
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is the current Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellow residing at the American Academy in Rome, Italy.
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. It was named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications and will be translated into 16 languages. Her two previous novels, Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, were both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Kitamura has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, and Triple Canopy.
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, and Gods Without Men, as well as a short story collection, Noise, and a novella, Memory Palace. His novel White Tears will be published in Spring 2017. He was a 2008 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2016 Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He lives in New York City.
Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975 and
educated at Cookstown High School and Cambridge University. He is the author of the novels Modern Gods, Utterly Monkey, Glover's Mistake, and three books of poems, Go Giants, To a Fault, and On Purpose. The recipient of many prizes for his poetry and fiction, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Award, the Betty Trask Prize, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Prize, he has lived in London, Warsaw, and Rome. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Robin Coste Lewis is the author of the book of poems Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. She has had various work published in numerous publications, including The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Transition, and VIDA. She obtained her MFA from NYU's Creative Writing Program.
Meghan O'Rourke is the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye (Riverhead, 2011), as well as the poetry collections Sun In Days (2017), Once (2011) and Halflife (2007), which was a finalist for both the Patterson Poetry Prize and Britain's Forward First Book Prize. She was awarded a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Radcliffe Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Front Page Award for her cultural criticism, among other prizes. She is the poetry editor of T Magazine and formerly an editor at The New Yorker, Slate, and The Paris Review. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, and more. A graduate of Yale University, she teaches at Princeton and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Matthew Rohrer is the author of A Hummock in the Malookas, Satellite, A Green Light, Rise Up, A Plate of Chicken, and Destroyer and Preserver. With Joshua Beckman he wrote Nice Hat. Thanks. and recorded the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem They All Seemed Asleep in 2008. 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). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. Her first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers' First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won The Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Award (Eurasia Section) and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Swing Time, was published in 2016. She is the editor of an anthology of short stories entitled The Book Of Other People. Her collection of essays Changing My Mind was published in November 2009, and she was formerly the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine. Zadie Smith is a graduate of Cambridge University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Darin Strauss is the author of the international bestseller Chang and Eng, and the New York Times Notable Book The Real McCoy, one of the New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember of 2002," the novel More Than it Hurts You and most recently a memoir Half a Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into fourteen languages, and he teaches writing at New York University, for which he won a 2005 "Outstanding Dozen" teaching award. Also a screenwriter, Darin sold the rights to Chang and Eng to Disney, and is currently adapting the novel for the screen with the actor Gary Oldman. Another screenplay on which he collaborated is in pre-production at Paramount Studios. Darin was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction writing.
Deborah Landau is the author of four collections of poetry: Soft Targets (winner of the 2019 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, among others. 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, and 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 professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Program Dates (Upcoming Residencies): July 12-21, 2020 Housing: Students must arrange their own accommodations in Paris during the residency periods. TUITION & FEES Tuition for the program will be approximately $30,000 per year, not including registration fees. Tuition fees are subject to a yearly increase. Although the exact amounts for next year have yet to be announced, tuition for the current 18-19 academic year can be calculated as follows:
Tuition per unit, per term: $1,856.00 |
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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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The MFA Writers Workshop in Paris will begin accepting applications for the January 2021 residency period in the coming months. Students may apply for either the MFA in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, or Poetry. All applicants must submit online using the GSAS Application Form only by September 1, 2020. 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, housing, costs, and the application process, please contact the NYU Creative Writing Program at 212-998-8816 or creative.writing@nyu.edu.