MFA Program In Creative Writing – City College of New York

The City College of New York MFA in Creative Writing

A home for writers in Harlem

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Events | Readings

JAMES BALDWIN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

Events

Joyce Carol Oates in Conversation with Mark J. Mirsky

Events

Chai & Chat Reading Series with Kima Jones

Our MFA program is dedicated to diversity, excellence and inclusion. We help emerging writers find their voice, polish their craft, and enter the contemporary publishing landscape.

Writing Faculty

The distinguished faculty of the MFA in Creative Writing program has included Gwendolyn Brooks, Donald Barthelme, Joseph Heller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Marilyn Hacker, and Michelle Wallace, to name a few.

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For Students

Stay informed about program requirements, deadlines, application process, course listing, and graduation.

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CCNY MFA

In The Press

‘The Blue-Collar Harvard’

Fledgling authors from underrepresented backgrounds and nontraditional students are turning to graduate creative writing programs at the City University of New York to tell their stories.

by Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed, June 22, 2021

The class for the creative writing master of fine arts program at City College of New York this past spring was its largest yet — enrollment jumped from 120 students in the fall to 140 this spring. There were 105 students enrolled in fall 2019.

What makes the CCNY MFA in Creative Writing Different from other programs?

“Diversity. We’re located in Harlem. Our unofficial tagline is “Ten times the diversity for one tenth the price,” because we’re also comparatively affordable”…

MFA Program Profile: Emily Raboteau on CCNY
Publisher’s Weekly, May 2015

We have students of all backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, and age. No one group is the majority, and therefore none of the work is treated like minority literature. There are radical implications for the kinds of work our students are putting out into the world for it to be nurtured, respected, celebrated, and intelligently critiqued in the classroom.

IndoorVoices Podcast interviews the Director:

Episode 65: Michelle Valladares on CCNY’s creative writing MFA

By Kathleen Collins, October 18, 2021

In Spring 2021, the Creative Writing MFA at City College saw an unprecedented enrollment spike. It’s not exactly clear why it occurred, but Director Michelle Valladares has some ideas about that. She has lots of ideas, in fact, about unique and exciting ways to grow the program even more while still maintaining a manageable cohort size…

Testimonials

What Alumni Are Saying

CCNY and its terrific writing program provided me with a beacon of hope – for where else could working class immigrant kids go for such first rate guidance and encouragement?

Oscar Hijuelos

Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

Doing my MFA at CCNY is probably the best decision I’ve made in the last twenty years. I had been a writer for some time, but never thought I could do the fiction and essay writing I really wanted to do. CCNY’s firstrate teachers, supportive environment, and my own hard work, showed me I could.

Rodger Fell

Severely shaken by a series of big-life ordeals, including a cancer diagnosis, I decided to give myself the gift of an MFA for 50th birthday – because, you know, ‘if not now, when?’ I entered the program quite unsure of my talents, my relevance, and, indeed, my life going forward. I left CCNY a poet. Enough said.

Michele Karas

The program has been a solid landing place to grow my poetic craft. I am inspired by my peer poets and writers and have expanded my process and my connection to craft. I have entered writers’ circles — that occur off campus with CCNY Alums which had led to more contact with poets/writing groups. I feel poetry all around me.

Allia Abdullah-Matta