UNCG MFA Program

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UNCG MFA Program

Downtown_Greensboro_from_UNCG_-_panoramio Greensboro Skyline Over UNCG
Formation	1965
Founded at	Greensboro, NC
Type	Master's in Fine Arts Program
Key people	Terry L. Kennedy and Jessie Van Rheenen
Parent organization	UNCG College of Arts and Sciences
Staff	Seven resident faculty members
Website	mfagreensboro.org

The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at The University of North Carolina - Greensboro, or the UNCG MFA program, is one of the oldest writing programs in the country..... Established in 1965, it is a two-year full-time residency that offers degrees in the genres of poetry and fiction.

History

In 1963, the North Carolina State Legislature voted to turn the Woman's College into the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which became a reality in 1965. The brand-new university began offering several graduate programs, one of them being a Master's in Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing. UNCG's MFA program became the third-oldest in the country after the formation of the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1936 and Stanford University's program in 1946.

The foundation of the UNCG MFA program can be attributed to three faculty members of the time: novelist and former North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell, novelist Peter Taylor, and poet Robert Watson. Their goal was to create a respectful, non-competitive workshop environment for a community of writers. They also created the Visiting Writers Series in which established authors came to campus to read from their work and meet with students. Visiting writers have included Saul Bellow, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Robert Penn Warren, and Eudora Welty. In the early years of UNCG's MFA program, the faculty was comprised of a number of notable writers such as Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, John Crowe Ransom, Hiram Haydn, Peter Taylor, and Randall Jarrell. Historically, cohort sizes have remained small in order for students to work one-on-one with faculty members and have more focused workshops.

In 1966, the first graduating class of the program launched the literary journal The Greensboro Review to showcase their work.

The English Department faced financial issues in the 1970s. Although the popularity of MFA programs were increasing and students were moving across the country to write at UNCG, a doubling of out-of-state tuition in 1972 hindered enrollment. In 1979, the faculty voted to dissolve the MFA program unless it were given more funding. The university's new Chancellor William Moran—who had studied English at Princeton—felt the significance of the issue at hand and diverted the money to rescue the program.

In 1985, the department established a writing center, which still provides writing support for students of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Today the creative writing program at UNC Greensboro is ranked as the fifteenth-top MFA program out of several hundred programs in the country.

Curriculum and Courses

A degree in creative writing from UNCG requires thirty-six to forty-eight hours of course work, a thesis (which may be a novel, collection of short stories, or volume of poetry), and a thesis reading. MFA candidates participate in several workshops and faculty-led tutorials. Students also take both Structure of Poetry and Structure of Verse, as well as at least two other courses in a related academic field.

The program also offers both courses and internships for the fields of teaching and editing

Faculty

The program is currently run by Director Terry L. Kennedy and Assistant Director Jessie Van Rheenen. The resident faculty members are poets Stuart Dischell and Emilia Phillips, and fiction writers Xhenet Aliu, Holly Goddard Jones, and Derek Palacio.

The Greensboro Review

The MFA program at UNCG has been publishing biannual issues of The Greensboro Review since its inception in 1966. It began when MFA students wanted to publish their own writing, but soon after the journal started to publish the works of many writers beyond the program including Ezra Pound and Joyce Carol Oates. The Review publishes both established writers as well as a number of emerging voices. Publications from the journal are consistently anthologized in collections such as the Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and others

The Greensboro Review is faculty- and student-run. Terry L. Kennedy serves as the Editor and Jessie Van Rheenen serves as the Associate Editor. MFA students have the opportunity to serve in various editorial positions

Notable Alumni

Over the years many UNCG MFA alumni have gone on to teach, work as editors, direct writing programs, and produce a long list of publications. These alumni include Dan Albergotti, Steve Almond, Julianna Baggott, Lynne Barrett, Kathryn Byer, Kelly Cherry, Kathleen Driskell, Camille Dungy, Ansel Elkins, Claudia Emerson, Kerri French, Rowan Jacobsen, Jennifer Habel, James Tate Hill, Sarah Lindsay, Kelly Link, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Robert Morgan, Keith Lee Morris, Stephanie Rogers, Tim Sandlin, George Singleton, Carole Weatherford, Jillian Weise, and Melissa Wiley

References

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