Program Overview
Find answers to your questions about our program here:
- The Low-Residency Format
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The low-residency model works the way working writers do: the creative engagement happens in the course of life itself.
Your time at Antioch University will be spent alternately in two rhythms: (a) five 10-day residencies where you will attend classes and form a community of working writers, and (b) four 5 month-long project periods where you will read and write, exploring issues of tradition and craft. During your two years at Antioch University, you will work with 4 different project period mentors, plus a variety of residency workshop leaders. Your work will be subject to extensive narrative critiques. You will also complete some special projects in translation, field study, and independent research.
10-Day Residencies
An extensive community-building engagement with language, literature, and social issuesSeminars and Lectures—Small and large classes on craft taught by graduating students, faculty, and visiting faculty
Genre Workshops—10 hours of intensive peer and faculty review of student work
One-on-One Meetings—Plan out your individual study with your faculty mentor for the term
Community—Meet with students and faculty in your class and genre
Readings—Experience new work by faculty and students5-month Project Periods
An apprenticeship of words and craft, a time of exploration and risk in your ongoing life as a writerCorrespondence with Mentor During your time at Antioch, you will select to work with 4-5 different faculty mentors
Reading and Writing You'll turn in new and revised creative work, and read to explore issues of craft
Special ProjectsIn Antioch University's low-residency model, our program is ungraded. Students work in a different professional one-to-one mentorship each term, receiving detailed critiques and a final narrative evaluation that help hone their craft.
- About the Genres
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In addition to our programs in Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Non-Fiction, students can explore how all three literary genres fit together.
- The Antioch University Los Angeles Difference
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Our low-residency MFA program fosters literary community, and the developed writer’s voice, written craft and crafting a balanced life of letters. Our rich program and online community take students beyond the limitations of other low-residency programs.
- Student Success Stories
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The unique and diverse student body at Antioch University is our most valuable resource. Our students and alumni, who come from across the country and around the world, have published books with major presses, won numerous literary awards, started thriving literary magazines and e-zines, and founded independent presses.
The values of Antioch University, a university dedicated to mindful engagement with the world, are reflected in Field Study experiences that stretch the student as a writer and as a person. Antioch students are helping to shape the literary environment in unique and innovative ways.
- Tebot Bach Press was founded by alum Mifanwy Kaiser with a mission to strengthen community, to promote literacy, and to broaden the audience for poetry by Community Outreach Programs and Publishing and to demonstrate the power of poetry to transform one's life experiences through readings, workshops, and publications.
- Robert Fox teaches young women who are incarcerated in the Los Angeles juvenile detention center as a part of InsideOut, one of the many organizations a student can work with in the MFA field study program.
- John Guthrie, a widely published poet and fiction writer, is the editor of The Chickasaw Plum, an online magazine of politics and the arts.
- Alums Wendy C. Ortiz and Andrea Quaid are the founders of Rhapsodomancy, a reading series in Hollywood, California that regularly features renowned writers such as Chris Abani, Eileen Myles, and Robin Becker, as well as emerging writers living and writing in the Los Angeles area.
- About Our Faculty
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Our nationally-recognized faculty value a rich diversity of voice and craft. No one style predominates, and our writers often work in more than one genre. Teaching is important to all faculty at Antioch University—as a form of service as well as a passionate craft. Our professional one-to-one mentoring invites students to engage with working writers at an intense and personalized level.
