creative writing queens college

MFA in Creative Writing

Founded in 2007, the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation offers degrees in poetry, prose, playwriting and literary translation. Ours is one of two programs in the nation to offer literary translation as a track within a creative writing program and one of very few to offer playwriting. The only MFA program in the borough of Queens, our program is gaining a fantastic national reputation. A large part of this is due to our outstanding students. Queens College MFA students and alumnae are writing, publishing, reading and performing their work all over New York City and beyond.

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What You’ll Study

Take your passion to the next level. Hone your craft without uprooting your life. A Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, like master’s degrees in other creative arts, is a studio arts degree that focuses on practice and craft and provides an immersion in the discipline of writing. We bring together graduate students for intensive residencies with their award-winning instructors and fellow writers.

Then, we connect students and teachers online through the rest of the year as they work on their writing from wherever they live. Here are a few aspects of the MFA program that set us apart. 

• Experience teaching from instructors who are both acclaimed writers and experienced mentors.   Over 50 of America’s top literary talents, with well-established teaching experience. 
• Receive focused attention with our 4:1 student-to-faculty ratio.  It’s true, we hire an instructor for every four students we enroll. You’ll also have the chance for 1:1 tutorials directly with our expert faculty.
• Gain support beyond graduation. Annual professional development events for writers and continuing staff support. 
• Immersive travel experiences. Every year in July we travel with a group of students and instructors to one of three South American cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Plus, we’ve taken groups on visits here in the United States as well, including a recent trip to meet with top literary agents and editors at the New Yorker – at the publication’s invitation.

Program Overview

Duration: 2 years, with options to accelerate or lengthen

Credit Hours: 52

Modalities: Low Residency, Asynchronous with 2 weeks in-person per year

Concentrations: Fiction, including Young Adult; Nonfiction; Poetry; Writing for Stage & Screen

Distance Learning

In the distance learning segments on either side of the residencies, students make monthly submissions of their creative writing and read and write in preparation for live seminars on elements of craft.

How Can You Use This Degree?

In the last five years… 

• our alumni have published over 100 books
• 70% of alumni have been published in magazines or journals
• 64% of alumni have gone on to teach
• 48% of alumni have gone on to hold MFA-relevant professional positions

Notable Works by Recent Alumni

• Maria, Maria (W.W. Norton 2022), by Marytza Rubio ’16. Long-listed for the 2022 National Book Award. 
• Perpetual West (Algonquin 2022), by Mesha Maren ’14. Made the 2022 “most anticipated books” lists of at least 6 publications including Oprah Daily, LitHub, and The Millions. Her debut novel, Sugar Run , was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She joined the Creative Writing faculty at Duke in 2019. 
• Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat (Red Hen Press 2021) by Khalisa Rae ’16, featured in Publisher’s Weekly, Book Riot, and The Root. 

Program Contact

Samantha Willingham

Program Coordinator, MFA

[email protected] 704-971-5963

Meet Your Professors

Our program has more than 30 highly acclaimed writers as instructors, including Ada Limón, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

In 2022, Ada Limón joined the select list of 24 distinguished poets who have been named the Poet Laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress. Limón has taught in the Queens MFA program since 2014.

Stay Active Outside of the Classroom

• Southern Review of Books Sponsored by the Queens MFA program, this online literary review and event series is staffed predominantly by Queens MFA alumni. 
• Qu: A Literary Magazine A national print and online publication staffed entirely by MFA students. 
• Annual Professional Development Weekend for Writers An event that offers MFA students and alumni an opportunity to reconnect with their fellow writers in social events and seminars on the craft and the business of creative writing.  We also offer the opportunity to participate in small workshops and individual conferences with influential agents, editors, and professional writers. 
• Presence at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference An informal gathering of Queens MFA students, alumni, and faculty attending the AWP conference, attended by more than 10,000 writers every year. 

Message from the Director

At Queens, you will find dedicated professionals committed to helping you take your work to the next level. This is a program designed to help you to pursue your passion, write what you most want to write, and bring your work to its highest artistic achievement.

A benefit of the Queens workshop model is you have more writers looking at your work during your time with us, you have more opportunity to advance your own critical skills, and you have every chance to build a writing community for yourself that extends well beyond your degree.

But Queens is not only a workshop program; it’s also full of individual, personalized mentoring. Students choose between the workshop model or a one-to-one tutorial model each and every term. All students, regardless of their choice, will have time to discuss with their instructor (a different one each semester) their literary development and aspirations. Join us on campus or travel with us internationally. Or both! Get real editorial experience working on our literary magazine and contributing to the Southern Review of Books. 

Beyond graduation, we bring editors and agents from New York and California to meet with our alumni in five-person groups. Our staff will help you access jobs in teaching and writing, should that be something you’re interested in exploring.

Consider what makes Queens so distinctive: our low student-to-faculty ratio, our pioneering model that utilizes mentoring and workshop approaches, our alumni curriculum, and more than fifty wonderful and illustrious instructors who teach in our program.

We look forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Fred Leebron MFA Program Director

Want More Information?

Creative Writing

Kingston Writer’s Fest 2023

Professor Angela Facundo poses with J.D. Derbyshire 

Scotiabank Giller Prize Event 2024

Collections of graduate student writing

Alumni Publications

Read about our Creative Writing alumni and their publications in our featured alumni section.

Poetry Reading

Creative Writing professor and esteemed creative writer, Armand Garnett Ruffo, giving a reading of his poetry

Lake Effect 10

Collections of undergraduate student writing

A Brief History of Creative Writing at Queen’s

Professor Carolyn Smart has nurtured young writing talent at Queen’s for over 20 years, while championing the creative arts throughout the Kingston community and beyond. During this time, she has mentored over 1,000 aspiring authors—many of whom have gone on to acclaimed writing careers—led countless writing workshops, and generated numerous opportunities for students to publish and present their writing on well-recognized platforms.

Professor Smart initiated and has edited each edition of the Lake Effect anthology as the capstone of our Creative Writing curriculum. Students in CWRI 496 participate in an intensive seminar on writing for publication, culminating in a class-produced anthology and public reading. Lake Effect 10 , published in 2021, marks the 20 th anniversary of the Lake Effect project.

The Writer in Residence program would not be possible without Professor Smart’s drive, along with the support of successive Heads of the Department. The Writer in Residence program welcomes a renowned writer to the Queen’s community each year to participate in a range of literary events and offer advice and mentorship to Creative Writing students.

In 2009, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Queen’s hosted Kingston novelist and poet Helen Humphreys as Writer in Residence. In 2021, the Department of English is proud to welcome Professor Humphreys as an instructor for CWRI 295.

Read more about Carolyn Smart’s powerful legacy at Queen’s in the Queen’s University Alumni Review .

Creative Writing at Queen’s Now and in the Future

The Creative Writing program continues to expand and has been woven into the heart of the English Department’s identity and mission. Esteemed Anishinaabe poet, screenwriter, critic, and creative non-fiction writer Armand Garnet Ruffo joined the program in 2013.

Today we offer a scaffolded Creative Writing curriculum that builds student skill in a variety of genres and mediums. We also offer hybrid Creative Writing courses with both critical and creative components. Furthermore, in-class learning opportunities are supplemented by special events like the:

• The Annual Page Lecture Event which brings a renowned Canadian writer to campus to reflect on literary craft,
• The Scotiabank Giller Prize Event ,
• one-on-one mentorship with a visiting Writer in Residence ,
• an annual series of readings with writers from across Canada.

Learn more about our Creative Writing events .

Additionaly, Creative Writing courses count toward all English Plans , but students do not have to be registered in an English Plan to take these courses. Because most of our creative writing courses take an intensive workshop approach, they are limited-enrolment courses. Admission to some courses is by permission of the department, based on an assessment of a portfolio of samples of creative work.

Exciting developments to the Creative Writing program include:

• Professor Juliane Okot Bitek author of 100 Days joins the department to teach and supervise in Creative Writing and Black Studies
• Writer in Residence Omar El Akkad wins the 2021 Giller Prize for his novel What Strange Paradise  
• The development of a unique learning opportunity for graduating undergraduate students, culminating in an annual student-run Scotiabank Giller Prize Event .
• The Annual Readers’ Series, which brings writers to campus throughout the year
• Expansions to the Writer in Residence program, including the Welcome Reading Event
• The 10 th publication of Lake Effect anthologies
• The publication of The Lamp journal’s 10 th volume

Featured Alumni

Iain Reid’s novel was:

• An international bestseller
• Adapted into a Netflix original film in 2020.
• Selected by National Public Radio as one of the best books of 2021
• A finalist in the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award and appeared on the 2017 Ottawa Independent Writers Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors longlist

Did you know…

Iain Reid studied history and philosophy at Queen’s, but after taking a writing course with Queen’s English Professor Carolyn Smart, he decided to postpone grad school and move to Toronto for a year to give writing a shot.

Read more about Reid’s writing career in the Queen’s Alumni Review.

Liselle Sambury

Sambury works in the the marketing industry as a video content creator and has also signed a two-book deal for a science fiction series.

Sambury’s novel was the:

• Amazon Editor’s Pick Best Young Adult Books of June
• Kobo June 2021 Best of The Month (Young Adult)
• Indigo’s Most Anticipated Young Adult Books of 2021
• Indigo Teen Staff Pick of the Month for July

Carolyn Smart’s Advanced Creative Writing class was the first time Liselle Sambury, ArtSci ’13, had her work published.

Read more about Sambury’s Creative Writing journey and two-book series deal in the Queen’s Journal.  

Omar El Akkad

Omar El Akkad, former Creative Writing student with the Department of English at Queen’s University, is an acclaimed author and a journalist. We were proud to host Omar as our 2022  Writer in Residence .

“On a whim, Akkad applied to the Advanced Creative Writing course, ran by Professor Carolyn Smart. When Akkad logged into his student portal and discovered he had been admitted it was ‘the happiest day of my life.’”

Read the entire story on the Queen’s Alumni Review .

For me personally, and a lot of others in the class, it was the first time we had ever been published in a book.

Omar El Akkad’s first novel, American War , was:

• An International Bestseller
• Winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and the Oregon Book Award
• Selected as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications
• Chosen by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world

Omar El Akkad's second novel, What Strange Paradise , won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Omar El Akkad published in the first ever Lake Effect anthology.

Read more about Akkad’s journey through Queen’s Creative Writing.

Anna Maxymiw

Maxymiw is an award-winning writer, with works published in The Globe and Mail , Hazlitt Magazine , Maclean’s , and The Washington Post .

Anna Maxymiw’s book was:

• Winner of the Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for Nonfiction

Carolyn was and is still the patron saint of undergrad writers.

Anna Maxymiw was a student in Carolyn Smart’s creative writing course at Queen’s University.

Read Anna Maxymiw’s full quote and other student testimonies.

Andrew Westoll

Andrew Westoll is an award-winning author and professor based in Toronto.

Andrew Westoll’s book was:

• A National Bestseller
• 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
• Finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
• A Globe and Mail “Book of the Year”
• An Amazon.ca “Book of the Year”

Westoll got his start in writing with the help of Carolyn Smart, a creative writing professor at Queen’s.

Andrew Westoll did not do a degree in English, and started his career as a writer through the Creative Writing courses at Queen’s.

Read more about Westoll’s writing journey with his award-winning book in the Queen’s Journal.

• Faculty and Instructors
• Writer in Residence
• Publications

Department of English, Queen's University

Watson Hall 49 Bader Lane Kingston ON K7L 3N6 Canada

Undergraduate

Queen's University is situated on traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory .

Louis Armstrong House Museum Fellowship Reading – 5/25

• Post author By John Rice (he/Them)
• Post date May 8, 2024

05/25/2024 – 1:00 pm The Louis Armstrong House Museum 34-56 107th Street Queens, NY 11368

Each year, the Queens College MFA Program partners with the Louis Armstrong House Museum to create a residency for two of our students. During this time, each writer conducts research on any aspect of the materials in the archives that relate to or revolve around Louis Armstrong’s larger-than-life story and magnificent musical career, with the intention of developing their own creative work. This reading , in Louis’ own garden, is the culmination of their work.

This year fellows Nina DalleyHood and Danielle Gutkovich will read from the creative works they developed in conjunction with their time in the archives. Afterward, a small reception will take place, featuring tours of Louis Armstrong’s actual house.

The Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) sustains and promotes the cultural, historical, and humanitarian legacy of Louis Armstrong by preserving and interpreting Armstrong’s house and grounds, collecting and sharing archival materials that document Armstrong’s life and legacy, developing programs for the public that educate and inspire, and engaging with contemporary artists to create performances and new works.

https://www.facebook.com/events/724256969909242

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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