Program Overview
The Graduate Program in Writing Program at the University of Georgia (offering both an MFA and a PhD) is one of the most rigorous and aesthetically diverse in the country. The faculty—split roughly between ‘fiction,’ as well as ‘creative non-fiction’ (Judith Ortiz Cofer and Reginald McKnight), and ‘poetry’ (Ed Pavlic and Andrew Zawacki)—are writers and critics whose work deliberately crosses generic boundaries. Consequently, workshops and seminars available to graduate students tend to combine elements of poetry, short fiction, prose poetry, the novel, creative non-fiction, literary theory and poetics, literary journalism, visual art, comics, music from jazz to rock, digital and web-based media, and film. Students are encouraged to study with each member of the faculty, in an effort to interrogate, as intensely as possible, eclectic and ongoing experiments in form, craft, theme, style, tone, semantics, venue, and ideology. For doctoral students, the comprehensive exams, generally taken in the third year, represent a more extended and profound immersion in literary interpretation and history.