Writers who wonder what a graduate degree could do for their creative works have a chance to find out on Monday, October 5.
Stony Brook University’s MFA in Creative Writing program will hold an open house at 5 pm at Chancellors Hall on the Stony Brook Southampton campus. The event is free, and organizers recommend an RSVP.
The open house is built for conversation. Prospective graduate students can meet faculty and current MFA students, and members of the literary community are invited to join them. Program Director Julie Sheehan is expected to explain the degree progress and walk visitors through the application process. Questions about the curriculum and portfolio requirements are welcome, and staff can describe fellowships and graduate teaching opportunities for those who want to teach while they study.
“Students can expect to find a community of people who take their writing seriously, and that changes what they are able to finish,” Sheehan said.
Readings will fill part of the night. LB Thompson, a member of the MFA faculty, will read from their work, and so will alumna Caitlin Mullen, author of “Please See Us” and “Heather.” Hearing a current teacher and a graduate share their pages gives visitors a sense of the writing the program produces and the paths its students take after they finish.
The degree requires 46 credits, which takes about three years as a full-time student. Students take workshops in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and playwriting, along with courses on publishing and on teaching. Those courses extend a writer’s education beyond the page to the work of placing a manuscript with a publisher and guiding others in the craft.
In order to graduate, each student needs to receive at least four credits on either the Southampton campus or Stony Brook’s main campus. This can be easily fulfilled by attending the Southampton Writers Conference for two summers or by taking a Saturday course during the semester.
“The Southampton campus gives writers time and space to work,” Sheehan said. For students who seek a faster pace, she added that an open house at their Manhattan location, where the MFA program also holds classes, will be on Wednesday, October 7.
Stony Brook Southampton sits on eastern Long Island, a region that has drawn writers and artists for generations. Students who study here work in a place where inspiration is easy to find and where the landscape gives writers room to think. Workshops have become part of a larger creative life, and are shaped by the people in the room and — for this unique program — by the shoreline, farm fields and village streets nearby.
Anyone considering an MFA will find the open house a low-stakes way to see the campus, hear about the work and ask direct questions of the people who teach and study here.
The MFA in Creative Writing program is located in Chancellors Hall at the Stony Brook Southampton campus at 39 Tuckahoe Road in Southampton. The Manhattan center is located at 535 Eighth Avenue, 5th Floor, at 37th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District.
To learn more or to register for the open houses, visit the MFA Program website or call (631) 632-5007.
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