Date: Sep 30, 2010

Hofstra University Department of English Announces Fall 2011 Launch of An M.F.A. in Creative Writing

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … Hofstra University’s Department of English is offering an M.F.A. degree  in Creative Writing starting in the fall 2011. This new graduate program will offer a challenging and exciting program of study integrating literary scholarship and focused instruction in writing. Students may concentrate in dramatic writing, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, exploring the art and craft of writing while grounding themselves in the rich literary traditions that offer exemplary models of these forms. The course of study concludes with a yearlong creative project.

The M.F.A. is considered a terminal degree – appropriate for those who want to pursue specific writing disciplines and/or careers in publishing, teaching, and editing, among others.

Admission requirements include:

•    Successful completion of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited university with an overall G.P.A. of at least 3.0.
•    Twelve (12) semester hours of advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in literature with a grade of B or better. Motivated students who have concentrated in other disciplines will also be considered on the strength of their application.
•    A creative writing portfolio of no more than 30 pages of original work to be evaluated by creative writing faculty.
•    A personal statement describing the student’s rationale for applying, as well as the student’s interests and literary influences.
•    At least two and no more than three letters of recommendation.

Core faculty in the program includes:

Erik Brogger, a founding member of The Playwrights’ Center, a national organization devoted to developing new dramatic work. His plays, which have been produced off-Broadway and in major regional theaters throughout the country, include A Normal Life, Strangers’ Ground, and The Paranormal Review. His recent plays include Dreaming in the Crescent City and River Road; the former was presented as a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Phillis Levin, the author of four books of poetry – Temples and Fields, The Afterimage, Mercury, and May Day – and the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (2001).  Professor Levin’s honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, an Ingram Merrill grant, a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, The Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Phillip Lopate, a central figure in the recent revival of the personal essay and the author of Portrait of My Body, Against Joie de Vivre, Bachelorhood, The Rug Merchant, Being with Children, Totally Tenderly Tragically, Two Marriages: Novellas, and Notes on Sontag. He is also the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, Writing New York: A Literary Anthology, and American Movie Critics: From the Silents Until Now. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Julia Markus, who received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award for her first novel, Uncle, which was followed by three well-received novels, American Rose, Friends Along the Way, and A Change of Luck, as well as her critically acclaimed biographies, Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning and Across An Untried Sea: Discovering Lives Hidden in the Shadow of Convention and Time. She has won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Her most recent book is J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian.

Martha McPhee, the author of the novels Bright Angel Time, Gorgeous Lies, L’America, and, most recently, Dear Money (2010). She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2002 she was nominated for a National Book Award.

Additional undergraduate and graduate faculty includes (fiction and nonfiction) Zachary Lazar, Bill McGee, and Paul Zimmerman; (poetry) Deborah Bernhardt, Robert Plath, and Connie Roberts; and (playwriting) Richard Pioreck and Paul Zimmerman.

For more information about the M.F.A. in Creative Writing, please contact Professor Erik A. Brogger by phone (516) 463-5397 or e-mail: Erik.A.Brogger@hofstra.edu.

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Related Link: More on the M.F.A. in Creative Writing