Creative Writing

Career opportunities

While many graduates of the BGSU MFA in creative writing are published authors and poets, many more have found productive and rewarding careers in addition to their writing. 

While your MFA in creative writing will furnish you with many translatable skills, we encourage an individualized professional plan to add practical experience to your resume. Competitive internships, electives, further study, writers’ colonies, residencies and publishing opportunities all help boost students real-world experience.  

All students will graduate knowing how they learn best and with the ability to learn new skills. You will also know how to teach, edit and publish through your experience with graduate assistantships and work on the Prarie Margin and, for some, the Mid American Review.  

The MFA program at BGSU also has a large and generous body of alumni spread throughout industry, education, publishing, nonprofits and government.

Curriculum

Every semester features a Graduate Writers Workshop where individually directed projects are submitted and discussed at length with the group. Genres include fiction and poetry.  

To build skills, you will study high-level fictional techniques in the novel and short story including character development, plot, setting, mood, tone and diction.

To complement the core of writing and creative development, you will learn editing skills and desktop publishing through the production of the Mid-American Review. 

Training for those students with graduate assistantships is offered in techniques for teaching creative writing before and concurrent with teaching in a classroom. Classroom skills include observation, visitation, preparation of teaching materials, reading in the pedagogy of creative writing and preparation of a teaching portfolio.

We recognize the value interdisciplinary studies have for artistic development and intellectual enrichment. During your studies, you may choose electives from various fields, such as philosophy, cultural studies, science, history and art.  

Total hour requirements may be reduced for outstanding students who are able to apply credit from previous graduate work. Every accepted student is required to take a minimum of thirty hours in residence with at least one workshop in their area per semester.

MFA Reading Series

The MFA Reading Series brings poets and writers from all over the world to visit, read their work and interact with writers in our programs. The MFA Reading Series schedule is updated regularly and most often happens in the historic Prout Chapel on our Bowling Green, Ohio campus.  

Mid-American Review

Mid-American Review is the literary publication of the Department of English and the creative writing program at BGSU. Started by Robert Early in 1980, MAR has served the literary community by publishing the best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry being written today. MAR is proud of its tradition of publishing both new and established writers. Poets and writers who have been published in MAR include Madison Smartt Bell, Fred Chappell, Bernard Cooper, Stephen Dunn, Stuart Dybek, Albert Goldbarth, William Goyen, T.R. Hummer, Susan Ludvigson, Naomi Shihab Nye, A. Poulin, Jr., Alberto Rios, Richard Russo, William Stafford, Jean Thompson, Chase Twichell, Lee Upton, David Foster Wallace, C.K. Williams and Eleanor Wilner.

Work from MAR has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Pushcart: Best of the Small Presses, Prize Stories: The O'Henry Awards, New Stories from the South and Harper's. Selected MFA students serve as assistant editors for MAR, providing them with valuable editorial and production experience.