The Fiction-Writing Program

The MFA Fiction-writing program at Brooklyn College, rated one of the five up-and-coming programs in the nation by Ted Delaney in the special fiction issue (July 2007) of The Atlantic, is a two-year course that maintains an enrollment of twenty-five to thirty students. While every member of the ongoing and visiting faculty works according to his or her methods, we are united in our conviction that newer writers need a balance of encouragement and serious, thoroughly-considered feedback.

The curriculum is designed sequentially. Fiction-writing students take a writing workshop every semester. Beginning in the fall of 2004, the program will offer two traditional workshops and a novel-writing workshop each semester. The novel-writing workshop is meant to address the particular needs of students who are writing novels, and who would prefer to receive input on longer sections than a traditional workshop allows. The novel-writing workshops are open to second-year students and to first-year students in their second semesters.

First-year students take a crafts course in the fall and a reading seminar during their fall and spring semesters. The reading seminars, led by faculty members, discuss classic and contemporary literature from a writer’s point of view. If a traditional literature course is devoted, for instance, to understanding why Faulkner and Garcia Marquez are considered great writers, the reading seminars are more concerned with how writers like Faulkner and Garcia Marquez achieved their effects.

Second-year students take, along with their workshops, a one-on-one revisions tutorial in the fall, and a one-on-one thesis tutorial in the spring. The first is devoted to helping students with work that has already been discussed in their workshops, the second to helping them look over what they’ve done during their time at Brooklyn College, toward the completion of their theses. Both represent the program’s desire to give each student individual attention outside of the workshops.

We who teach in the fiction-writing program do so in part because we want not only to be useful to younger writers but to know them. We care about each student we admit. We are trying, to the best of our abilities, to maintain the MFA program we wish had been available to us.

TALK TO A STUDENT

If you have questions you'd like to ask students in Brooklyn College’s program, please feel free to contact any of the following, all of whom are currently or recently enrolled:

Marie Bertino - calicofey@aol.com
Jeanie Gosline - clarkandpete@yahool.com
Helen Phillips - helen.phillips@gmail.com
Rob Jones - RobJones71@optonline.net
Maggie Hill - maghil@aol.com
Addie Hopes - dancing_whose_dance@yahoo.com
Reese Kwon - reese.kwon@gmail.com
Scott Lindenbaum - scottlindenbaum@gmail.com
Elissa Matsueda - ematsueda@gmail.com
Chloe Plaunt - chloeplaunt@gmail.com
Brett Smith - mbrettsmith@gmail.com
Raina Washington - cinque10@aol.com