Chatham University Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Chatham University has two MFA programs in Creative Writing. One is a full-residency program, and one is a low-residency program. The information on this page applies only to the full-residency program. For information about our low residency MFA, and to apply, please visit the CCPS website.

Chatham University's ground breaking MFA focusing on nature, environment and travel writing is the premier graduate program for nurturing creative writers interested in the environmental imagination and place-based writing.

Our program is inspired by the work of Chatham alumna, Rachel Carson, a creative writer whose work demonstrates both lyricism and social conscience.

The heart of our program--nature, environmental and travel writing--honors Carson's legacy, but expands the interpretation of environment to include any place-based writing and all genres-poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction-shaped by human relationship with place.

In addition to plentiful creative writing workshops and craft courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, screenwriting and children's writing, our unique MFA program includes instruction in nature and environmental writing, travel writing, and field seminars focused on the literature of wild, urban, and rural landscapes. Each year creative writing field seminars offer students the opportunity to travel to the United States and other parts of the world with faculty and generate creative work about the experience. Past and current field seminars include trips to Costa Rica, New Zealand, Greece, India, New Orleans and western Pennsylvania.

Want to write a memoir about the summer you spent out west, or the time you spent growing up in a place of strong personality? How about a series of poems or essays shaped by the coasts of Maine or Oregon or the urban South, or a collection of travel essays about a place you visited that really got under your skin? Or a novel whose characters are as shaped by landscape as those of William Faulkner or Annie Proulx? Chatham is the place for you.

Students are given lots of time to write at Chatham: they take twelve hours of literary craft courses (workshops that focus on style, form and literary traditions) and nine hours of advanced writing workshops in addition to one field seminar, which is a traveling writing workshop. We offer regular seminars on topics such as Wilderness and Literature, Ecofeminism, Nature and Culture, Women and Nature, and The Environmental Imagination.

Students also have the opportunity to work on Fourth River, Chatham's literary journal, and to participate in an internship for an environmental or literary arts organization. The Rachel Carson Institute and the energetic literary and arts scene in Pittsburgh offer opportunities for students to collaborate with other groups and present their work in public venues should they wish.

Located on a beautiful arboretum that offers rich opportunities for reflection and meditation, and minutes from the urban heart of a city that transformed itself years ago from a polluted steel town into a vibrant, thriving major city, Chatham is a fantastic place to write. Filled with beautiful parks, nestled between three rivers, and surrounded by natural and cultural areas as varied as the Appalachian Trail, the Allegheny National Forest, the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch countryside, and a bit of the coast of Lake Erie, Pittsburgh offers many opportunities for writers.

Contest deadline extended to March 20, 2012