Creative Writing (MFA)

Careers & Connections

Our students are offered opportunities to teach writing through the Writing Studies Program, edit literary journals including Ploughshares and Redivider, work as interns at Boston publishing houses and magazines, and teach creative writing to high school students from the greater Boston community through emersonWRITES. Students participate in Emerson’s Graduate Reading Series and the inter-MFA program Breakwater Reading Series to showcase their own work. A close relationship with the MA in Publishing and Writing program allows students to improve their professional skills (copyediting, book design, digital publishing, etc.) and develop lasting connections with the publishing and editorial world. Emerson offers everything aspiring writers need to hone their talents and refine their craft in a world-class city brimming with professional and artistic opportunities.

Your Graduate Program Director

Jabari Asim is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. His poetry, drama, and prose have been widely published in various periodicals and anthologies. He was an editor for eleven years at the Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture, and social issues. For ten years, he was the editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the NAACP's flagship journal of politics, culture, and ideas. In 2009, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts.

Asim's nonfiction books include The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why; What Obama Means: ...For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future; and Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life. His books for children include Whose Toes Are Those? and Fifty Cents and a Dream. His works of fiction include A Taste of Honey and Only The Strong, a novel.

Faculty

As one of the longest running creative writing MFA programs in the country, Emerson’s Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing has attracted an industry-active faculty that offers students a diverse range of perspectives and expertise.

• Emerson’s creative writing faculty are all actively writing and publishing in their respective genres. Recent faculty accolades include:
• Pulitzer Prize in Biography and Memoir
• Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
• Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts
• Fiction Honors from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association
• Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction

MFA students can count on the mentoring of our faculty members during and after the program. A distinguishing feature of Emerson’s program is the peer-to-peer relationships that students build with the faculty; you will be treated as an equal and a future colleague from your first day on campus.