MFA in Creative Writing: Nonfiction

Expand your writing opportunities with an MFA in creative nonfiction

Experienced, published faculty will guide you on your writing journey in this program. You can explore memoirs, personal essays, short narrative work and lyric essays. A mentor will guide you to find the voice and structure that best suits your story.

You can take your writing skills to the next level and explore your creativity within a supportive literary community.

Nonfiction MFA curriculum

Carlow’s MFA in creative nonfiction program includes four 11-day residencies in Pittsburgh and Dublin, Ireland, that feature workshops, master classes and mentor conferences. Practicum work will be on a writing and reading plan designed with your mentor; you will submit work for critique, review and collaborative feedback. 

By the end of the program, you will create a book-length work of publishable creative nonfiction. Seminars, lectures and readings in all genres are also available.

Quick Facts

• Elevate your learning with small class sizes and a strong literary community
• Cultivate connections with peers and faculty
• Adapt your learning experience to your schedule
• Learn to critique creative nonfiction

Admission requirements and application process

An undergraduate GPA of 3.0 or higher is preferred; however, provisional admission is also possible if you do not meet all of the admission criteria but exhibit a strong possibility of academic success.

Writer found a home among her Carlow peers and mentors

Creative writing graduate student Georgia Hertz ’23 loved the community she found at Carlow. “Writing – like any artform – can be a lonely path to tread, but it doesn’t have to be done in isolation. Never have I felt such warmth and compassion from a group of writers as I have from my peers and mentors at Carlow University, both in Pittsburgh and in Dublin. We all delight in our growth as writers and we celebrate each other’s successes with love, as if they were our own.”