Program Overview

Creative Writing Master's

Program Overview

The UNT English graduate program is designed for students who wish to build a professional career as creative writers, educators, or academics. With distinguished scholars in every major period of American and British literature and nationally renowned writers in every genre, the English Department supports a broad range of graduate research and creative work.

Program Details

• Program Type: Master of Arts (M.A.)
• Format: On Campus
• Estimated Time to Complete: 2-3 years
• Credit Hours: 33

Why Earn a Creative Writing Master's?

The M.A. program in Creative Writing offers training in the writing of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Each master's student in Creative Writing divides coursework evenly between workshop and literature classes, leading to the writing of an original thesis submitted in fulfillment of the degree plan.

Marketable Skills

• Construct persuasive, evidence-based arguments
• Communicate findings clearly and concisely
• Understand historical and cultural perspectives
• Evaluate critically sources and narratives
• Prepare oral and written presentations

Program Highlights

• Stories, essays, and poems by the faculty also appear in publications such as The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New York Times, and Best American Poetry.
• Each year the department sponsors a Visiting Writer Series that brings distinguished writers to campus to give readings and meet with students in Q&A sessions.
• While at UNT, our students have published work in nationally and internationally recognized journals and magazines, including The New Yorker and SEL: Studies in English Literature.

What Can You Do With a Creative Writing Master's?

Students pursue the degree in order to become better writers, able to create prose and poetry that draw on a full range of the craft. On a more practical level, MFA students become better writers, which prepares them for a variety of careers: an array of jobs in technical and digital fields, marketing, public relations, journalism, arts administration, and editing.

Sample Courses

• Form and Theory: Prose (3 hrs)
  • Rhetorical criticism of prose fiction to show how short stories and novels achieve effect.
• Creative Writing: Creative Nonfiction (3 hrs)
  • Workshop devoted to the writing, reading, and analysis of creative nonfiction. Emphasis shifts each semester and may encompass the personal essay, memoir, nature writing, travel writing, and the nonfiction short story.
• Studies in Shakespeare (3 hrs)
  • Intensive study of selected plays and a consideration of some of the literary problems connected with Shakespeare’s life and work.
• Creative Writing: Poetry (3 hrs)
  • Study of the principles of poetic composition in traditional forms as well as free verse. Format includes lecture and workshop.
• Creative Writing: Prose Fiction (3 hrs)
  • Study of the principles of prose fiction as exemplified in published and unpublished works. Emphasis on writing for specific subgenres and methods of preparation and submission of work. Workshop format is employed.
• Form and Theory: Poetry (3 hrs)
  • Rhetorical criticism of poetry to show how poems achieve identification with the audience; emphasis on student mastery of critical analysis.