Top Ten Reasons to Earn an MFA in Creative Writing or an MA in English Studies from Western Washington University
1. We are a small program, where you will receive individual attention for your particular passions and goals.
2. We offer thorough preparation for your future, whatever your destination: future graduate study; a teaching job; personal enrichment; or a career in professional writing and editing.
3. We offer paid Graduate Assistantship positions, where graduate students receive intensive training within our renowned First-Year Composition program or gain experience by serving as assistants to professors in literature classes.
4. We are proud of our award-winning graduate faculty members who are dedicated to teaching, scholarship, and creative work. Our faculty have received the highest teaching awards offered by the University. They have also received NEA and NEH awards, Pushcart Prizes, Fulbright scholarships, as well published a wide range of creative and critical work.
5. We foster close working relationships between faculty and graduate students, with seminars limited to twelve graduate students, as well as small, customized advisory committees for exams and theses. Every year we offer a diverse range of seminar topics in national and global literatures, creative writing, composition and rhetoric, cultural studies, film studies, linguistics, literary theory, and pedagogy.
6. Many of our students have gone on to receive critical acclaim in their work, including a Lambda Literary Award winner and a best-selling novelist. Many students have gone on to further graduate study with full fellowships at prestigious research and teaching universities, while many others have received tenure-track teaching appointments at community colleges around the region and the nation. Still other graduates are successfully employed as technical writers for major companies, and others have chosen to teach in the public schools.
7. We foster close working relationships with your peers. We are a cohort program, so you will develop genuine community as you move through the two-year program together.
8. We offer opportunities to work on the award-winning literary journal Bellingham Review: from a paid Managing Editor position, to volunteer genre editors and readers.
9. You will live in one of the most beautiful places on earth—with Mt. Baker to the east, the San Juan Islands to the west, British Columbia to the north, and Seattle to the south.
10. You will enjoy living in the “city of subdued excitement,” a small town on Bellingham Bay that has excellent film, theater, music, restaurants, lakes, and hiking trails. For less subdued excitement, Seattle and Vancouver are within easy driving distance!
For even more reasons, visit the WWU English Dept. website:
http://kerouac.english.wwu.edu/~newenglish/GRAD/index.shtml
Or contact Dr. Brenda Miller, Brenda.Miller@wwu.edu, 360-650-3242
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