Start Writing Fall 2021

Priority application deadline is March 1, 2021.  Final application deadline is June 1, 2021.

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"Anxious Attachments" by core faculty member Beth Alvarado is a 2020 Oregon Book Award Winner.

We are #4 on the Best College Reviews list of Top 20 Master's in Creative Writing Online for 2020.

Our instructors create an individualized program of study for each student mentee.

Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program Philosophy

What’s unique about OSU-Cascades' ecological approach to the craft of writing is its investment in the whole writer. The geographies — social, spiritual, physical, aesthetic, political — each writer negotiates to get to the page are as various as the texts that give each one of us a purchase on this art. Together in the MFA in Creative Writing program we teach ourselves to work — at least some of the time — outside our comfort zones. By cultivating a passion for what’s difficult about this art, as well the courage to celebrate our own and each other's adventures in self-expression, we tend the practical skills and whimsical experiments that grow writers with healthy writing lives.

Application Information

Program Details

This two-year program is divided between intensive ten-day residencies at OSU-Cascades in Bend, and term-length individual mentorships you complete long distance from home. Supported by faculty mentors, you will master the techniques of craft in your genre, develop a sustainable writing praxis, practice what it means to be a literary citizen, and learn about what's really exciting in contemporary literature. You conclude the program with a thesis, a creative piece of publishable quality and literary merit.

Genres

MFA students select a genre, but write and study across genres to deepen their craft and understanding. Students may also write cross- or hybrid-genre theses.

  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Creative Non-Fiction

Questions

Have questions about the application and admission process? Contact MFA program manager Lauren Seiffert at lauren.seiffert@osucascades.edu.

OSU Corvallis Partnership

The MFA in Creative Writing at OSU in Corvallis has a long tradition of excellence. Recognizing the need to bring an outstanding education to students with different life stories, faculty on both campuses partnered to bring a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing to Central Oregon in 2013. Here in the OSU-Cascades low-residency MFA, we continue that tradition of excellence, growing creative writers with exemplary publication records, and a passion for loving this world, through art.