December 12, 2025

Bennington College is proud to announce the launch of its new Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Creative Writing, offered through the College’s Conservatory for Creative Writing. The program offers an inclusive and welcoming student-centered conservatory experience with the rigorous scholarship, work experience, individualized mentorship, and the type of creative community one would typically find at the graduate level. It builds upon Bennington’s extraordinary legacy of excellence in writing and literature and allows students to hone their craft in a vibrant artistic and intellectual environment.

“We’re offering emerging writers a chance to read, write, and be read in a community that values creative exploration, rigorous craft, and personal mentorship,” said program co-director Michael Dumanis. “Our hope is that the BFA will foster the next generation of bold, distinctive voices,” added co-director Jenny Boully. 

While designed specifically for transfer students—rising sophomores and juniors—the program offers pathways for other prospective students, including first-year students, those continuing after an associate’s degree, and those who have taken a break from college. Students entering as sophomores will begin with general curriculum coursework before transitioning into the BFA; juniors transfer directly into the core Creative Writing program.

The BFA in Creative Writing offers an immersive, student-centered curriculum. Participants engage in genre-specific creative writing workshops and craft seminars in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, alongside literature courses and electives drawn from a range of academic and artistic disciplines. Throughout the program, students receive individualized pre-professional mentorship from a faculty of nationally recognized poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction authors, along with the opportunity to interact with distinguished visiting writers.

A signature feature of the program is its integration of experiential learning. Students complete two winter Field Work Terms–six-week internships off campus–and two Summer Reading Terms, tailored to their genre and creative growth. Additional opportunities include working on the national literary journal Bennington Review and other publications, as well as  participating in campus literary events, including Literature Evenings and the Poetry at Bennington series. The program culminates in a senior thesis developed in close collaboration with a faculty mentor. 

Bennington College’s alumni include twelve Pulitzer Prize winners, three U.S. poets laureate, four MacArthur Geniuses, and countless New York Times bestsellers and National Book Award recipients. Recent Bennington College graduates have gone on to attend PhD and MFA programs in literature and creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, NYU, UVA, Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Washington University-Saint Louis, the University of Michigan,  the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin, and Brown University. 

Graduates have had poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and book reviews published by American Poetry Review, A Public Space, The Atlantic Wire, Christian Science Monitor, Denver Quarterly, The Guardian, Guernica, Image, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, New England Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Recent alumni have published books with such presses as Copper Canyon, Graywolf Press, Grove Atlantic, Milkweed Editions, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster.

Applications for transfer students are now open. Prospective students are encouraged to apply by April 7 (priority deadline) or April 30 (regular deadline). Inquiries may be directed to bfawriting@bennington.edu.