BFA in Creative Writing

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WATERSHED LIT: Center for Literary Engagement and Publishing Practice

Welcome to the Mason Creative Writing community!

You have entered a rare space: one of only about 30 undergraduate BFA in Creative Writing programs in the country and the only one with a multi-faceted literary arts center. The BFA Program combined with Watershed Lit provides you with a unique opportunity to examine the craft of literary art and explore all the ways you can develop skills in demand in the job marketplace. No other program boasts its own significant book festival, an independent press, a daily online poetry anthology, a center for international writers, a project focused on the teaching of writing, and two highly regarded literary journals. Meanwhile, you are learning from and workshopping with working-artists and industry professionals.  

Fall for the Book, a nationally prominent multi-day literary festival that annually brings more than 150 authors from a variety of genres to campus and the town of Fairfax for enlightening and entertaining conversation. 

Poetry Daily, a daily online journal that engages readers, poets, and publishers to foster the exploration and appreciation of poetry and its practice by providing access to new poetry every day.

Stillhouse Press, a literary book publishing imprint that also serves as a "teaching press" managed by students who gain invaluable experience in acquisitions, editing, marketing, author relations, and project management. 

Cheuse Center for International Writers—named for acclaimed writer, critic, and long-time Mason professor Alan Cheuse—champions dialogue about and study of world-wide literature and hosts writers from around the globe. 

phoebe, which prides itself on supporting up-and-coming writers, whose style, form, voice, and subject matter demonstrate a vigorous appeal to readers' senses, intellect, and emotions.

So To Speak, an intersectional feminist literary journal that advocates for, and amplifies the perspectives and experiences of, marginalized women and nonbinary people.

Watershed Lit also includes the Northern Virginia Writing Project.