The UCR-Palm Desert Low Residency Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts is a unique program with a truly commercial focus. It is a professional writing program designed and taught by professional writers for aspiring professional writers, open to the commercial genres—thrillers, science fiction, Hollywood film, and series television—and at the same time open to the wildest kind of experimental, arty, fringy writing. The low-residency model brings students to campus for ten intensive days spent in workshops, lectures, panel discussions and creative advisement, twice a year in fall and spring. Continuing outside residency teaching is accomplished via the latest in technology. Each term encompasses weeks of targeted study, including the ten day residency, where the writers work directly with their professor on their own creative work in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, playwriting, screenplay, teleplay, or mixed genres. Creative and critical work is submitted and responded to on a regular schedule.
Our two-year program is designed for the working student, but it is no less rigorous than our traditional program. Students are required to devote at least 25 hours per week to their writing, reading and critical work, culminating in a creative thesis in their chosen genre. Students are also required to present a critical lecture and creative reading during their graduating term.
Students must state their genre focus when they apply, however, as we are a cross-disciplinary program, each student will be expected to test themselves in a secondary genre during their tenure. Most of our faculty write in more than one genre, thus possess a practical and professional ability to foster your work.
Each term core faculty will be joined by experts in publishing and the film and television industries to discuss life beyond the program.