Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFA)

Five Residencies (20 credits):

Each January and July, faculty and students gather for eleven days of intensive—and exhilarating—lectures, mini-courses, workshops, seminars, and readings devoted exclusively to writing for children and young adults.

Our unique, comprehensive program is not defined by specific required courses. Rather, it examines the following subjects in depth over the period of five residencies:

• Elements of the craft
• The writing process
• Forms of writing (e.g., picture book; early reader; middle-grade or young-adult fiction-fantasy, mystery, science fiction, historical; nonfiction; poetry; graphic novels; comics) 
• The history of children’s and YA literature (including classic and seminal texts)
• Critical thinking and writing
• Diversity: what does it mean to write for a diverse audience?
• The business of publishing (e.g., finding and working with an agent, the editorial process, etc.)
• The writer’s life (e.g., keeping the work going, making a living as a writer, promoting one’s work, etc.)

Children and young adult literature will be explored through a required reading list and lectures and mini-courses during the residencies by faculty and experts in the field. Guest presenters such as agents, editors, and publishers bring the business-of-books to real life.

Faculty, visiting writers, and graduating students deliver lectures and run intensive mini-courses that examine a broad range of issues for writers in the field. Workshops made up of six-ten students and run by two faculty advisors meet most mornings of the residency. Readings allow students and faculty alike to share their latest creative work with attentive and enthusiastic audiences. All residency events are held on the Hamline University campus. Summer living quarters will be on the Hamline campus as well, while winter living quarters will be at a nearby hotel with shuttle-bus service provided for students and faculty to travel easily from their lodgings to campus and back.  Following each residency, the student works closely with a faculty advisor who provides mentoring and detailed manuscript critique by way of monthly correspondence. Students focus on establishing an effective writing process and achieving mastery of the craft in their chosen genre. 

• WRIT 8350 - Groundings: Plot
• WRIT 8352 - Groundings: Character
• WRIT 8354 - Groundings: Point of View
• WRIT 8356 - Groundings: Setting
• WRIT 8358 - Groundings: Theme/Vision

Four Semesters (32 credits):

In the first two semesters, students are required to submit—in addition to their creative writing—monthly critical responses to assigned works in the field. The assigned reading is designed to provide students with pertinent lessons in craft while developing their ability to read as writers and learning to deconstruct a text from the inside out.  While the primary focus of the program is on the craft and process of writing, students are also expanding their critical thinking and writing abilities. This culminates in their third semester, when students must submit—in addition to their creative writing—an extended critical essay of fifteen to twenty pages on an aspect of craft or of children’s/young adult literature. Students present a short lecture based on their critical essasy during their fourth residency. In the fourth semester, students write and revise a cretaive thesis, a substantive manuscript of original work (e.g., a collection of picture books, poems, a middle-grade or young-adult work of fiction or nonfiction).

• WRIT 8351 - Creative & Critical Writing: Level 1
• WRIT 8353 - Creative & Critical Writing: Level 2
• WRIT 8355 - Creative & Critical Writing: Level 3, Critical Thesis
• WRIT 8357 - Creative & Critical Writing: Level 4, Creative Thesis