College of Arts, Education, and Humanities
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
DeSales University’s MFA in Creative Writing offers optional residencies in both the U.S. and Europe, along with personalized mentorship and comprehensive manuscript development. This program is designed to prepare you for successful careers in writing, editing, and publishing and provide valuable connections and opportunities in the writing world.
Program Details
- Official Degree Name
- Master of Fine Arts
- Format
-
Online
Low-Residency/Hybrid
- Credit Hours
- 40-41
- Program Start
- Fall or Spring
- Application Deadline
- Apply Anytime
- Average Time to Degree
- 2.5 Years
Why Choose an MFA at DeSales University?
In the DeSales MFA program, you’ll benefit from an online format that offers personalized mentorship and insights from supportive faculty and renowned visiting writers. Throughout the program, you’ll work on a book-length project and engage in extensive reading tailored to your chosen genre.
Program Highlights
Multiple Pathways to Success
- With the DeSales MFA program, you have flexible options, including both a single master’s degree option for applicants with a bachelor’s degree and a dual degree pathway for current undergraduate students at DeSales. If you’re an eligible undergraduate, you can apply for our unique dual degree program and earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degree within five years.
Editing and Publishing Opportunities
- In our MFA in Creative Writing program, you’ll benefit from personalized mentorship and gain insights from experienced visiting writers toward the goal of publishing your work. This support will help you refine your craft and navigate the publishing field more effectively.
An Investment in Art and the Life of the Mind
- As a leading University in the Lehigh Valley, we take care to optimize our programs to best meet the needs of our prospective students. Our program teaches students the discipline necessary to be artists, “the habit of art” as Flannery O’Connor called it. It is a calling for those who wish to answer the age-old question posed by essayist Michel de Montaigne: “Que sais-je?” or “what do I know?” We answer it in our work by paying better attention to the world, each other, and ourselves and capturing that attention on the page. Such a discipline can lead to diverse careers in writing, teaching, publishing and many other fields. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, you will be large and contain multitudes!
What Will You Study?
All MFA students must complete four intensive residencies (two on campus and two abroad) and four workshop semesters with writing mentors.
Through the DeSales MFA in Creative Writing, you'll develop advanced skills in creative writing with an emphasis on the importance of writing about place as well as writing in the spirit. The program features immersive residencies in both the U.S. and Europe, offering you unique opportunities to learn from acclaimed writers, teachers, and publishing professionals.
Courses you may take include:
- MFA Residency in Ireland, Scotland, or Canada
- Workshop in Prose or Poetry
- Thesis Semester
MFA Faculty Members
Learn from Visiting Writers
In addition to our full- and part-time faculty members in the MFA program, we routinely accomodate visiting writers at our residencies.
Recent visitors include Chris Bohjalian, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Emma Donoghue, Leontia Flynn, Jane Friedman, Dave Housley, Kathleen Jamie, Elise Juska, Claire Keegan, Dean Koontz, Marjorie Maddox, James Robertson, Donal Ryan, Padraig Ò Tùama, Lee Upton, Artress Bethany White, Paula Yoo
Admission Requirements
- A completed bachelor’s degree from an accredited American university.
- Official transcripts and transcript evaluation.
- Personal statement that addresses three questions. 1. What writers or writing experiences have led you to this degree? 2. Why do you want to enroll in this MFA program? 3. What kind of book-length project do you think you want to write while in the program?
- Either a 20-page writing sample of prose (short story/stories/novel, chapter/essays/memoir) or a 10-page sample of poetry.
- Undergraduate students who wish to undertake the dual degree program will need to be in good academic standing and consult their academic advisor.
Program FAQs
We accept admissions on a rolling basis, so enrollment for the DeSales MFA program is always open.
The application deadline for a Fall semester start is May 1 of the same year.
The application deadline for a Spring semester start is November 30 of the previous year.
Yes, the MFA program is available online. There are four available in-person eight-day residencies, two in the Lehigh Valley and two in Celtic Europe or Canada.
Yes, most students are able to work full-time while taking MFA courses.
An MFA is a fine art degree and so the first answer lies in the title: you can be an artists and write. Many degree holders pursue jobs in various writing and writing-related fields such as editing, publishing, marketing, and public relations. It is also considered a terminal degree in the field, meaning that you can teach at the university-level with the degree.
Current undergraduates can apply for our unique dual degree program and earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degree within five years, with your first MFA year included FREE with paid undergraduate tuition.
Contact MFA Director, Dr. Patrick Crerand during your junior year in order to start classes by your senior year to take advantage of this great program opportunity.
In the winter, residencies occur during the first week of January. In the summer, residencies usually occur in the last week of July. Residencies last for 8-9 days.
The residencies are an opportunity for students to connect with professionals from the publishing industry. We often invite editors, publicists, and publishers to the residencies, and several publications have resulted from those connections. Just recently, we spoke with noted publishing market guru Jane Friedman, as well as editors from New Ohio Review, Bullshit Lit, Etruscan Press, Rust Belt Publishing, and various other venues.
Other recent Visiting Writers include: Matt Bell, Chris Bohjalian, Emma Donoghue, Jane Friedman, Kathleen Jamie, Elise Juska, Claire Keegan, Dean Koontz, Marjorie Maddox, Marilyn Nelson, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Lia Purpura, James Robertson, Lee Upton, and Paula Yoo.
No matter your genre, we have faculty and visiting writers who can help you achieve your goal of seeing your name on the cover of a book. We teach the three main genres: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry, but many students work in more than one genre.
- Fiction: Write a novel, novella, or a short story collection. In the past, we have had students write in a variety of subgenres from literary to fantasy to horror to historical romance.
- Creative Nonfiction: one of the most popular genres in publishing, creative nonfiction students have written collections of essays, memoir, and personal essays, exploring the full range of forms the genre has to offer.
- Poetry: Students have written collections of poetry from free verse to formal to hybrid poetry-creative nonfiction projects as well.
Starting Fall 2025, our MFA program has implemented a reimagined curriculum with greater opportunity to explore the art of writing and to learn the craft necessary to succeed as a writer, editor, teacher, or publishing professional.
Most importantly, we understand that genre is a choice and not a permanent lane to stay in, so we offer courses that focus on all three genres so that students emerge well versed to write in a variety of modes.
Students will also have the opportunity to help edit various publishing projects as part of the Literary Editing & Publishing course.
A full list of courses is available in the Graduate Academic Catalog.
One of the most important parts of the program is the thesis semester, which gives students time to hone and edit their manuscript and get it ready for publication. Ideally the thesis will be a finished work that you can send out to an agent. For prose, it can be a collection of short stories, a full-length novel, a memoir, a collection of essays. It will be around 150-300 pages. For poetry, the goal is a publishable collection of poems that totals around 50-70 pages.
In addition, each student must pass the oral defense, turn in an annotated bibliography of sources that have influenced their work, and compose a publication essay, analyzing where their thesis will fit into the current marketplace.
Our current MFA mentors are faculty at DeSales who work with the students during the on-line semester in mentor workshops to maintain continuity throughout your program. Students are welcome to work in multiple genres and with multiple mentors. Current mentors include the following faculty:
- Patrick Crerand, director and fiction mentor
- Juilene Osborne McKnight, fiction mentor
- Stephen Myers, poetry and creative nonfiction mentor
Since our program began in 2019, our alumni have published novels, short stories, essays, and poems in magazines like Cimarron Review, Pithead Chapel, Presence: A Magazine of Catholic Poetry, Neshaminy Review, and other venues.Here are a few of our recent graduates in the spotlight:
- Katherine Ramsland (class of 2021) has published many novels and is probably our most well-known alumna both for her academic forensic work on serial killers and for her crime fiction.
- Teresa Messineo (class of 2022) is the author of several novels, including Fire By Night (Harper Collins), which was a best-seller. She teaches at Drexel University’s MFA.
- Elizabeth Felten (class of 2025): Kidnapped has just been released on Gemma Press for high-low readers, her specialty area of writing.
The MFA degree is generally earned in 2.5 years, with a total of 40 credit hours. Some students may complete the degree with 41 credit hours if they take Literary Editing & Publishing twice.
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