MFA Program
See writers who attended this program
Poetry: Diana Khoi Nguyen, Joy Priest
Fiction: Angie Cruz, William Lychack, Irina Reyn
Nonfiction: Jeanne Marie Laskas, Michael Meyer
Digital Narrative: Erin Anderson
Past visiting writers include poets Jenny Johnson and Rickey Laurentiis and fiction writers Mary Gaitskill and Allison Amend.
The program offers full funding, which includes an annual stipend, full tuition benefits, and other benefits such as health coverage. Teaching, editing, and digital narrative opportunities are also available.
The program also administers two graduate writing awards: the Turow-Kinder Prize for Fiction and the Academy of American Poets/Graduate Poetry Award.
The program works with University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, co-founded by Dawn Lundy Martin and Terrance Hayes, whose mission is to highlight, promote, and share the work of African American and African diasporic poets and to pollinate cross-disciplinary conversation and collaboration. Since its inception in 2016, the center has sponsored readings, performances, and workshops by Claudia Rankine, Carl Phillips, Carrie Mae Weems, Layla Ali, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Fred Moten, and LaToya Ruby Frazier. CAAPP funds one graduate student assistant every three years.
The Writing Program also hosts the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series. Other features include internships with the National Book Foundation; courses in digital literature and literary medical journalism; travel grants to attend conferences and present papers.
Jan Beatty, Brian Broome, Katie Booth, Jeffrey Condran, Terrance Hayes, Emily Maloney, Jane McCafferty, Sarah Menkedick, Jeff Oaks, Sal Pane, Shannon Reed, Rebecca Skloot, John Temple, Judith Vollmer, Stacey Waite, Kellie Wells