Whether your writing practice is singular or cross-disciplinary, our program pushes you through experimentation, critique, and personalized attention from faculty. The intimately social Humanities and Sciences Graduate Center encompasses the program’s supportive and collaborative culture.
Humanities and Sciences Graduate Center
Media Gallery
Time and space to write
About MFA Writing
▪️ Time and space to write
Available for MFA in Writing and MFA in Comics students, the on-campus Humanities and Sciences Graduate Center—and its adjacent garden—are private, idyllic places to write, participate in writing workshops, and attend intimate guest lectures and seminars with celebrated writers. Humanities and Sciences Graduate Center and De Haro Garden block is a half away from the Main Building, so all of the college’s resources are readily available to you.
Expand into new mediums
As you stretch your creative writing within an art and design school, we encourage you to collaborate across disciplines. You’ll work alongside writers, designers, and visual artists. We encourage you to collaborate across disciplines and experiment with voice and form—making broadsides on Risograph printers, podcasts in audio suites, literary art objects in the letterpress studio, and more. The FlatLab, for example, is the spot to print zines, artist books, and poetry collections, whether produced on Risograph, Xerox, and or Epson inkjet printers.
Media Center
Check out audio equipment, video cameras, lighting kits, DSLRs, projectors, and lenses from the Media Center, which offers 1-week equipment checkout services to all current students, faculty, and staff. Other services include room AV support and extended checkouts for campus exhibitions.
▪️ About MFA Writing
With an emphasis on individualized instruction, you’ll establish and maintain a serious writing practice whether your medium is poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, or experimental writing. Our teaching style encourages you to workshop your personal narratives and engage with contemporary issues—thinking and writing about climate change or the writer’s role in culture. Bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims (MFA Writing 2016) transformed her thesis project into a transformative memoir about being a Black and biracial child in America.
Find your voice in a storied program
Our MFA Writing program recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary, and we embrace the rich literary history of the Bay Area, from the Beat poetry movement and the Language poets, to the annual Litquake literary festival and the Slam/Spoken Word scene. Our faculty are New York Times-bestselling authors and have published award-winning collections across fiction, hybrid essay, poetry, literary criticism, creative nonfiction, and memoir genres.
