Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing: The Bennington Writing Seminars

Application deadline for the June residency: March 1

Application deadline for the January residency: September 1

The Bennington Writing Seminars—Bennington's low-residency Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Program in Writing and Literature—puts as much emphasis upon reading as upon writing. The low-residency format and pedagogy allow emerging writers to study and hone their craft under the tutelage of practitioner writer/teachers, while maintaining continuity with their community, jobs, friends, and families.

The two-year program involves intense 10-day residency periods at Bennington's campus during January and June of each year. Between residencies, students spend the six-month terms in individual study with a faculty member, sending packets of new writing through the mail and receiving regular critiques. Students work with a new faculty member each term, so that by the time they graduate, they have benefited from the guidance and perspective of four different writers.

The program is rigorous: Students are required to devote at least 25 hours each week to their writing and reading. In concert with their teachers, students form their own reading lists and course of study, writing nonfiction responses to the books they are reading in addition to the original work they are creating in their chosen genre (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry). To receive the MFA, each student creates a portfolio of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, or, in some cases, a mixed-genre portfolio.

While students must apply in a single genre, there are structural opportunities in the Seminars to write across genres. Many of our teachers write in more than one form, and students have the option of studying in another genre during their third semester.

Associate faculty and writers-in-residence participate in each residency period, conducting lectures, readings, and discussions—teaching literature from a writer's point of view and conferring informally with students. A publishing module, designed to educate our students about the realities of publishing, features editors, agents, and other professionals in the publishing worlds.

Click here for an application.

For more information about this program, please contact the Writing Seminars Office at 802-440-4452 or writing@bennington.edu.