Summer Fellowships

The department offers several modest summer fellowships to persons who have held teaching assistantships during the preceding academic year. The awards are made by The College of Arts & Sciences, on the advice of the Creative Writing Committee which invites applications during the spring semester. These are for 3rd-Year Graduating MFA’s ONLY who are on a TA’ship in their 3rd year. They are recommended for awards (currently $725.00). It is not possible to provide financial support for all students, and it is usually April before arrangements can begin to be made.

Awards

Annual prizes for outstanding work by graduate students include, for poetry: The Joyce Carol Oates Award in Poetry: $500.00 for best group of poems by a graduate student and The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry: $300.00 for the best poem by a graduate student; for fiction: The Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction: $500.00 for best longer story by a graduate student. All are awarded in competitions each spring and are judged by professional writers outside the department.

New York Trip

Thanks to the generosity of our funder Alan Mirken, third year students are awarded an all expense paid trip to New York City to visit publishers, literary agents and literary magazines. A sample visit might include trips to Knopf, the New Yorker, New York Tyrant, International Creative Management, and Writers House Literary Agency.