MFA Programs that are Chill with Speculative Fiction
John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath 1851–3, Tate
My hope is that this list eventually becomes unwieldy and unnecessary as more and more MFA programs come to accept students based on the quality and craft of their writing alone, no matter how speculative or “genre” it may be.
Update: I appeared on episode 365 of WIRED’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast to talk about the reception of speculative fiction at MFA programs, along with Chandler Klang Smith (Columbia MFA grad, creative writing teacher at Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, and Sarah Lawrence College, and author of The Sky is Yours) and John Kessel, (co-founder and director of the North Carolina State University MFA and author of The Moon and the Other).
FULL-RESIDENCY PROGRAMS
Center for Science and the Imagination and Future Tense magazine
Faculty includes (or has included): Matt Bell
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and modest stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): Brian Evenson
Type of speculative fiction writing samples that I’ve heard of being accepted: Afrofuturism
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): James Blaylock
Type of speculative fiction writing samples that I’ve heard of being accepted: Mystery
Funding: Moderately-funded (some MFA students receive tuition waivers, graduate fellowships, and teaching assistantships)
Faculty includes (or has included): Victor LaValle
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Victor LaValle, Karen Russell, Chandler Klang Smith, Karen Thompson Walker
Funding: Poorly-funded (relatively minimal scholarships given at the most, considering the cost of attending)
Module in genre fiction includes crime, horror, fantasy and science fiction
Faculty includes (or has included): Laura Lam, Daniel Shand
Funding: Poorly-funded (minimal scholarships given at the most)
Faculty includes (or has included): Art Taylor
Well/moderately funded (most MFA students receive teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that come with tuition waivers and provide a modest stipend to live on, plus additional scholarships through the English department)
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Doug Dorst, Joe Haldeman, Carmen Maria Machado, Mel Kassel
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on, most with graduate/teaching assistantships)
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Funding: Poorly-funded (relatively minimal scholarships given at the most, considering the cost of attending)
Faculty includes (or has included): Joyce Carol Oates, Hannah Tinti
Funding: Moderately-funded (everyone gets 50% scholarship, some receive fellowships that give tuition remission and generous stipend)
North Carolina State University
Faculty includes (or has included): John Kessel
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Helena Bell, Kij Johnson, Julie Steinbacher, Alyssa Wong
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and modest stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): Lee Martin, Nick White
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Christopher Coake
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Has a Speculative Fiction track (separate from Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction)
Faculty includes (or has included): Lara Elena Donnelly, Maria Dahvana Headley, Sarah McCarry, Lincoln Michel, David Ryan, Chandler Klang Smith, Kate Zambreno
Funding: Poorly-funded (minimal scholarships given at the most)
Faculty includes (or has included): George Saunders
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Christopher Boucher
Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): Doug Dorst, Karen Russell, Téa Obreht
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Caleb Ajinomoh, Stacy Swann (literary mystery), Samantha Jayne Allen (literary mystery)
Funding: Well/moderately funded (most MFA students receive teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that cover tuition and provide a modest stipend to live on, plus additional scholarships through the English department)
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Andy Duncan, Tommy Zurhellen
Students I know of who got in or were waitlisted with speculative fiction writing samples: 4
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and modest stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): Kate Bernheimer
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and modest stipends to live on)
University of California, Irvine
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, Alice Sebold
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
University of California, Riverside
Faculty includes (or has included): Nalo Hopkinson
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and stipends ranging from modest to generous stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): James Gunn, Kij Johnson, Chris McKitterick
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Nino Cipri
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
University of Massachussetts, Amherst
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Elizabeth Byrne, Melissa Caruso, Su-Yee Lin
Funding: Well/moderately funded (most MFA students receive teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that cover tuition and provide a modest stipend to live on, plus additional scholarships through the English department)
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Kristen Roupenian
Students I know of who got in or were waitlisted with speculative fiction writing samples: 1
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Faculty includes (or has included): Tom Franklin
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and stipends that range from modest to generous to live on)
Website directly states that they welcome genre fiction writers:
“Welcomes writers who aspire to high levels of literary quality, including fiction writers working with traditional genres (i.e., young adult, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, etc.).” Also: “We on the faculty value good, literary fiction regardless of subject matter. In other words, we don’t care if a student is writing psychological-realist fiction set at a dinner table in contemporary Sacramento, or a space opera set on board a giant colony ship bound for uncharted space, or a YA novel set in revolutionary France. What we care about is whether these stories are told with a full command of all the tools of fiction writing, and whether those stories are trying in some way to innovate, even within the boundaries of a genre. We on the faculty write a wide range of material, and read even more widely; we’re prepared to help a student work on just about any type of fiction, provided the student wants help, and is prepared to push their work into places it hasn’t yet been. We like to describe our ideal fiction workshop this way: imagine Alice Munro, Octavia Butler, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ted Chiang, Tobias Wolff, and Madeleine L’Engle as aspiring, unpublished writers, sitting at the same table, trading ideas and exchanging manuscripts.”
Faculty includes (or has included): Christopher Coake
Moderately funded (some MFA students receive teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that cover tuition and provide a modest stipend to live on, plus additional scholarships through the English department)
Faculty includes (or has included): M.O. Walsh (literary mystery)
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Bill Loehfelm, Lish McBride
Moderately funded (some MFA students receive teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that cover tuition and provide a modest stipend to live on)
Erika Meitner confirmed that Virginia Tech is interested in speculative fiction
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL)
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Alice Sola Kim, Noah Bogdonoff
Funding: Fully-funded (all MFA students receive tuition waivers and generous stipends to live on)
LOW-RESIDENCY PROGRAMS
Funding: Poorly-funded (minimal scholarships given at the most)
Faculty includes (or has included): Michael A. Arnzen, Anne Harris, Nicole Peeler
Funding: Poorly-funded (minimal scholarships given at the most)
Faculty includes (or has included): Tobias Buckell, Theodora Goss, Elizabeth Hand, James Patrick Kelly
Notable speculative fiction alumni: Rachel Halpern
Funding: Poorly-funded (minimal scholarships given at the most)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
MFA Draft Facebook Groups (’19, ’20, ‘21)
The Insider’s Guide to Graduate Degrees in Creative Writing by Seth Abramson
The MFA Years: Fully Funded Programs list
The MFA Years: Partially or Mostly Funded Programs list
CONTRIBUTE
If you or someone you know has previously been accepted or waitlisted at an MFA program with speculative fiction (as in they applied with at least one story that was speculative fiction—it doesn’t count if they submitted only realistic fiction and then pelted their cohort with aliens and wizards), please email grossman.stephaniem@gmail.com. In your note, please include the name of the program, the type(s) of stories that were sent (anything from magical realism, domestic fabulism, slipstream, to high fantasy, hard science fiction, mystery, and horror). You can also include your name/the name of the person you know (but only if you or the other person is ok with that being shared).
[Last updated July 2021]
