The Low-Residency MFA at UC Riverside, based out of our Palm Desert Center, is one of the premier writing programs in the world. Bridging the divide between busy lives and escaping to write, our program offers a flexibility that fits into your schedule without sacrificing experience, opportunity, or community. Our alumni include national and international best-selling authors, Emmy Award winners, PEN USA finalist playwrights, acclaimed journalists and memoirists, award-winning poets, top television and film producers, and even a member of Congress.

Get Away to Write

When we set out to build a low-residency MFA from the ground up, we knew two things: our students would graduate having learned how to sell what they’d written, and they would never have to spend residencies in college dorm rooms. 

Here at the hottest MFA, we do residencies right. Join us for five 10-day residencies at the beautiful Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort near sunny Palm Springs, California, sitting poolside with editors and chatting in the olive grove with agents.

You’ll not only meet one-on-one with some of the best writers, agents, editors, producers, and showrunners in the business, but you’ll also have your work read by them at your final residency. Past guests include editors from every major New York publishing house; Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning writers, producers, and showrunners; plus studio executives from Amazon, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, and some of the top indie voices in the business.

Learn at Your Pace

As a low-residency MFA, we know the importance of finding a program that fits your busy life. Whether you do your best work at midnight or in the brief moments between work and errands and kids and hobbies, our asynchronous instruction model means you can learn and write in your own time and truly enjoy your education.

When you’re not enjoying the luxuries of residency at a resort, you’re learning from the comfort of your own home. In seven quarters over two years, you will complete a full creative project while working one-on-one online with our acclaimed writing faculty and participating in online discussions with your classmates. You can choose from program tracks in fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, poetry, and writing for both television and the big screen. Select a secondary genre as a minor, or try something new every term!

Build Your Community

Our students come from all walks of life, have published books, stories, essays, and poems. They’ve produced films and plays and television shows. They are also actors, doctors, lawyers, pool cleaners, teachers, dogwalkers, painters, file clerks, professors, real estate agents…and…well, and every other job you might imagine. In short, they are a lot like you!

UCR is regularly ranked as one of the most diverse universities in the nation, both for undergraduate and graduate study. Historically, the student body of the low-residency MFA has been composed of about 30 percent BIPOC, with an average age of about 39. The university is dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion and is committed to the urgent, sustained, and comprehensive work of creating a campus climate of mutual respect and communal vision.

While we do not accept international students at this time, our students do come from all over the world — the benefit of the low-residency MFA is that you can receive a University of California education no matter where you live — and that means we have students who’ve lived in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America…and of course, all over the United States. A great number of our students have also been current and ex-military.