MFA – Creative Writing

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Since the late 1960s, California State University, Long Beach has promoted the value and significance of creative writing as part of its educational mission. Building on a thriving undergraduate program, CSULB welcomed its first class of MFA students in Creative Writing in 1995. Over 200 students have since earned their MFA degrees and a respectable number have gone on to publish in a wide range of national outlets as well as to teach at various postsecondary levels.

The Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing is a terminal degree currently recognized as sufficient to qualify students for college and university teaching jobs and for positions in the publishing industry. The MFA program at CSULB is a two-year, full-time program in which students complete 48 units of coursework with professors in the Department of English. Students are expected to submit an approved thesis of creative writing midway through the spring semester of their second years.

We hope this site will help guide interested applicants and newly admitted students through the process of becoming part of a distinct community of writers in Southern California.