MA in Writing | Fiction at Hopkins

Expand your creative writing skills in the short story or novel

• Learn fiction writing from a craft-based perspective
• Study how novels work, write your own
• Explore screenwriting, playwriting, experimental fiction, other topics
• Cross-study in nonfiction, poetry, or teaching writing
• Submit your fiction for print or online publication

Prestige, Quality, Value: Our graduate writing program in Washington and Baltimore reflects the international reputation for innovation, academic quality, and professional value at Johns Hopkins University, a pioneer in creative writing.  The MA in Writing Program offers part-time classes on weekday evenings and Saturdays, plus summer conferences in Italy and Maine. More than half of our students attend at the subway-convenient Washington, DC Center at Dupont Circle. For more information about the Writing Program, click here.

In the program’s Fiction Concentration, you’ll study the techniques of fiction writing while creating and revising your own work.  Our experienced faculty of practicing writers and editors will help you analyze past and contemporary literature to learn how to read as a writer – a skill that allows you to grow throughout your fiction career. In workshops, instructors and peers offer honest, constructive comments to push your writing toward publication. And in our capstone course, you’ll finish a thesis portfolio of your best work, earn a byline in a program journal, and prepare for the writing life.  The result: Our fiction students and alumni have published dozens of novels and scores of short stories, won local, regional, and national awards, and become literary editors, writing teachers, or television writers.

Read below for more information about our graduate writing program in fiction – its courses, teachers, and what it might help you achieve. Or contact fiction advisor Mark Farrington by emailing mfarrin1@jhu.edu or calling 202.452.0782. To apply, click the link to your right.

What Our Fiction Students and Graduates Have Achieved 

Awards won by our fiction alumni include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (twice),  F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest (twice), Pushcart Prize, John Simmons Short Fiction Award, and  James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Students and graduates also have published scores of individual short stories in anthologies and in print and online literary journals, including: The Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Story Quarterly, Arts & Letters, Gargoyle, Potomac Review, Baltimore Review, Barrelhouse, The Sun, Mississippi Review, The Connecticut Review, and dozens of others. Meanwhile, our fiction alumni have founded or work on the editorial staffs of many online or print literary journals, including Potomac Review, Baltimore Review, Moon Milk Review, Barrelhouse, and Lines & Stars. Graduates of our program regularly win adjunct teaching jobs in composition and writing at a range of universities, including University of Maryland, American University, Ohio University, Florida State, George Washington University, Georgetown University, and others. Select alumni earn MFA and Ph.D. degrees and hold full-time teaching positions at universities and colleges across the country.

Recent Publications and Honors for our Graduates 

• Ellen Bryson’s novel, The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, (Henry Holt & Co.) was named an Indie Next List Notable for July 2010. The Summer 2011 paperback has already been nominated for Quality Paperbacks Book Club’s New Voices award.
• Josh Rolnick won The John Simmons Short Fiction Award from the University of Iowa Press. His collection of short stories, Pulp and Paper, was published in 2011.
• Susi Wyss’s first book, The Civilized World (A Novel in Stories), was published in March 2011 by Henry Holt & Co.
• Pasasola Press published Rae Bryant’s story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals,  in 2011. Rae is editor-in-chief of Moon Milk Review.
• Simon & Shuster made Alma Katsu’s first novel, The Taker, a lead fiction title for Summer 2011 and has signed Alma for her next two books.
• Brooke Kenny’s first novel, Echoes of Her, was published by All Things That Matter Press in 2011.
• Herta Feely, who won the $10,000 James Jones First Novel Fellowship for her manuscript, The Trials of Serra Blue, edited a recent anthology of fiction and nonfiction entitled confessions: fact or fiction?
• Mary Amato has published her tenth children’s book in 2010. Mary has won a dozen awards for her writing, including two from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
• Roger Wolfson has written and coordinated scripts for various TV shows, including “The Closer,” “Saving Grace,” and “Law and Order:  SVU.”  Roger now blogs and writes movie scripts.
• Susan McCallum-Smith’s collection of short stories, Slipping the Moorings, was published by Entasis Press in 2008. Susan also has won a Pushcart Prize for her fiction.
• Willie Davis won the 2007 Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize and the 2007 Katherine Ann Porter Prize.
• Alexa Beattie won the Sean O'Faolain Short Story Prize awarded by Ireland's Munster Literature Centre.

And more. . .

• Rebekah Yeagher's short fiction won the 2007 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest.
• Dave Housley  published his short story collection, Ryan Seacrest Is Famous. (IM-PE-TUS Press).
• Michelle Brafman's short fiction won the 2006 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest and the Lilith magazine fiction prize.
• Josh Rolnick won the Arts & Letters Prize in fiction and a Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize.
• Chè Parker published his second novel with Strebor Books, The Precious Life.

The Two Graduate Writing Programs at Johns Hopkins

The MA in Writing Program in Washington and Baltimore is Hopkins’ part-time, broader-admission alternative to The Writing Seminars, the exclusive, nationally ranked, and internationally known full-time graduate writing program available only in Baltimore. For more about the Seminars, which awards the Master of Fine Arts in fiction and poetry, link to www.jhu.edu/writsem. The two graduate writing programs have separate application processes and curricula.

Who Will Teach You in Fiction

• Mark Farrington: (M.F.A., George Mason University) Assistant director and faculty fiction advisor. Recipient of several teaching awards. Short fiction in The New Virginia Review, The Louisville Review, Potomac Review, other journals and anthologies; articles on writing and the teaching of writing in journals and anthologies; was editor-in-chief of Phoebe,  won the Dan Rudy Fiction Prize and an Individual Artists’ Award from the Virginia Council on the Arts.

About the Writing Program, Farrington says, “One characteristic I most admire is that our students do not compete against each other. They are genuinely happy to learn of other students’ successes, and they are gratified and, I think, a little relieved, to be told when they enter their first workshop that our primary goal is for all of us to help each other become better writers. Maybe you can’t teach talent, but you can teach technique and craft, you can help students increase understanding of their own fiction and the nature and traditions of fiction overall, and you can provide an environment where students feel both nurtured and challenged, through responses that strive always to be constructive and honest.”

• William Black has taught fiction, poetry, and literature at Hopkins, Ohio University, Western Washington University, University of Alabama, and Misericordia University. Short fiction published in Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Agni, Crab Orchard Review, and Artful Dodge, among others. Writing Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center,  Scholar in Residence at the Pennsylvania State Archives; co-director of Pages& Places Book Festival in Scranton, PA .
• Tristan Davies, Senior Lecturer in The Writing Seminars at Hopkins, is a primary fiction instructor for the MA in Writing Program. His story collection, Cake, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2003. Stories in Glimmer Train, Boulevard, The Mississippi Review, The Columbia Review, Snowflake, and Sundog. Recipient of the 2001 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award; visiting artist at the America Academy in Rome.
• Margaret Meyers is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her essay, "A Bend in Which River" was included in Best American Essays of 1998. Other articles and fiction in Shenandoah, Sewanee Magazine, and Philosophy Today.  Swimming in the Congo, a story collection inspired by her experiences as a missionary's child, was named a Book of the Year by the New York Public Library.
• Richard Peabody is the founder and co-editor of Gargoyle magazine and editor or co-editor of nineteen anthologies, including Mondo Barbie, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, Alice Redux and Grace and Gravity. Author of novella Sugar Mountain, two story collections, and six poetry collections, including Last of the Red Hot Magnetos and I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl (Paycock Press), plus an e-book.
• Leslie Pietrzyk authored Year and a Day (William Morrow, 2004), selected for  Borders Bookstores' "Original Voices" series, Book of the Month Club; and Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon Books, 1998). Short fiction in Iowa Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, elsewhere.  Awards include Shenandoah's Jean Charpiot Goodheart Prize;  visiting writer at Wichita State University, Converse College;  fellowships at Bread Loaf and Sewanee summer conferences.
• Tim Wendel (MA in Writing Program alumnus) novelist, journalist whose books include novel Castro's Curveball (Ballantine) and The New Face of Baseball (Rayo/HarperCollins), named Top History Book for 2004 in the Latino Literary Awards. Latest novel is Red Rain (Writer's Lair Books.); latest nonfiction book is High Heat, about the fastest pitchers in baseball. Articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Washingtonian and GQ;  op-ed columns in USA Today. Received Knight-Wallace Fellowship and Tennessee Williams scholarship to Sewanee Writing Conference; Pen/Faulkner visiting writer to the Washington, DC Public Schools.
• Eleanor Williams (MA in Writing Program alumna) wrote the novel, This Never Happened (Random House, 1998), published as Crazy Think in the U.K. (Michael Joseph, 1998, 1997). Fellow and scholar at the Wesleyan University Writers Conference, Hambridge Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Georgia State College and University Creative Writing Workshops, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and West Virginia University Writers' Workshop. Ph.D. from Ohio University; also taught at Hood College, Ohio University, University of North Dakota. 

STUDY ABROAD AT OUR SUMMER CONFERENCE
Our summertime Hopkins Conference on Craft allows students to earn a graduate course credit in a concentrated period of about 10 days. The 2011 conference was again held in Florence, Italy – site of our 2006, 2007, and 2010 events. The 2009 conference was held in Bar Harbor, Maine, where we hope to hold our 2012 event. The conference features writing workshops with nationally prominent writers from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere -- National Book Award winner Alice McDermott, fiction writers Jill McCorkle and Jean McGarry, poets Mary Jo Salter, Dave Smith, and Charles Martin; editor/biographers Robert Wilson and Brenda Wineapple, and others. For more about the conference, email craftconference@jhu.edu or link to http://writing.jhu.edu/craftconference.

Choose Your Forms, Subjects, and Style
 The fiction writing curriculum allows students to pursue their own writing interests.  Our students write short stories, novels, novellas, or novels-in-stories, in traditional narrative or experimental forms. In addition to classes in fiction, students may explore screenwriting and playwriting, choose electives such as Sentence Power and Teaching Writing, or take a course or two in poetry or creative nonfiction. Our faculty, who handle diverse styles and forms in their own writing and editing, are open to all approaches, including literary genre fiction and young adult literature. In addition to regular fiction workshops, our fiction courses include:  

Fiction Techniques: Students examine the technical elements of fiction, including point of view, plot, character development, dialogue, and the form of short stories and the novel. The course also introduces students to techniques of reading as a writer and the workshop process.

Writing the Novel Workshop:  This specialized workshop is designed for students who are writing a novel. Students submit 75-100 pages of a novel-in-progress for review, and discuss aspects of novel writing in general.

Experimental Fiction Workshop:  This specialized workshop introduces students to innovative forms and experimental approaches.  Assignments challenge students to explore styles that differ from their previous work; extensive reading assignments come from the latest collections.

Novel Form, Style, & Structure:  This craft elective focuses on a writer's analysis of novels, expanding the study of fiction into techniques relating to the longer form. Topics include structure, character arcs, style, consistency of voice, backstory, and plot management.

Voice in Modern Fiction: Students examine aspects of voice in contemporary novels and short stories, considering how style, point of view, tone, structure, and culture all contribute to an author's or narrator's individual voice. Students use exercises to strengthen their own voices.

The Short Story: Past & Present: This reading elective begins with a review of the history and development of short fiction, moving to contemporary forms, trends, and practitioners. Featured authors may include Chekhov, Carver, Paley, Barthelme, Munro, and Dixon.

Advanced Revision Techniques in Fiction: Students use their own writing to hone specialized revision skills such as deep characterization, lyrical writing, expanding scenes, movement through time, and developing a sense of place.

Fiction for Young Readers: This course covers fiction for children through young adults. Besides craft elements such as character, plot, voice, and humor, the course addresses professional issues such as markets, agents, and reader age groups.

Drama & Playwriting: This craft elective involves intensive writing and reading to introduce students to basic elements of drama studies and playwriting. Students write part or all of a short play for class critique and may be asked to attend one or more local productions.

Film & Screenwriting: Students are introduced to the basics of film studies and screenwriting by reading scripts, examining films from a writer's perspective, and writing one or more short screenplays. Topics include dialogue, characterization, plot, and visual storytelling.

Plus: Contemporary American Writers, Heritage of Fiction I & II, Shakespeare: Art & Audience, 20^th Century World Literature, The Evolution of Fictional Forms.

Cross-Concentration: Identity in Contemporary Writing, The Teaching of Writing, Principles of Editing (in development), Essence of Place, Sentence Power.

Internships, Independent Study: Available to select advanced students.

Be Enriched by a Broad Writing Experience

Nonfiction courses of possible interest to fiction writers include Literary Travel Writing, Writing the Review, Memoir & Personal Essay, and Nonfiction Techniques. Students interested in poetry may take Poetry Techniques, Development of Poetry & Poetics, or Readings in Poetry. Fiction students also may take advantage of our program’s one-day seminars in publishing or grammar, or join the regional writing conferences we co-sponsor with outside organizations.  The Writing Program culminates in a thesis course in which students revise a portfolio of publishable writing, contribute to a literary journal project, and join a festive student reading attended by friends, family, and colleagues.

View the full course descriptions for the Writing Program.

Flexible Part-Time Study at Two Convenient Locations
The MA in Writing Program was founded in 1992 to offer sophisticated writing courses and degrees to part-time students who can’t interrupt their careers or other obligations for full-time graduate study. Our nurturing, challenging courses are offered after work on weekday evenings or on Saturday mornings. Our accredited program focuses on student writing goals through an innovative curriculum and excellent teaching by experienced, professional writers and editors. The full degree and individual courses are available at the main Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus in Baltimore or at the Hopkins Washington Center, where most of our students attend. The Washington Center is conveniently located at 1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW, near the Dupont Circle Metro Station on the Red Line. Students may take classes at either or both locations. Courses are offered in fall, spring, and summer terms, with students allowed to take terms off as they need.  Most students earn their nine-course master’s degree in two to four years, with accelerated and extended programs available.  

How to Apply / Financial Aid
Admission to the MA in Writing Program is based on a competitive review of writing samples, a Statement of Purpose, and other materials. You can apply and, if accepted, start your studies year-round. Applicants are of all ages and backgrounds. The writing samples, published or unpublished, should equal 20 to 40 typed, double-spaced pages but can be several different samples totaling that length. For details about samples and other application materials, visit the admissions section of the Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs website. You don’t have to complete an application to learn more. Our admissions review differs for a single, specific course of interest compared to the full degree. Hopkins offers Financial Aid through student loans, plus limited, competitively awarded scholarships available to students who have completed at least one course.

For More Information about our Fiction Concentration, contact Mark Farrington, Assistant Director and Faculty Advisor in Fiction, by emailing mfarrin1@jhu.edu class="MsoHyperlink"  or calling 202.452.0782. You also can email writingprogram@jhu.edu or write:

    MA in Writing Program
    Fiction Writing
    The Johns Hopkins University
    1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 104
    Washington, DC 20036

To learn more about the MA in Writing Program itself or on other concentrations within the program, click on the links below:

STUDY ABROAD AT OUR SUMMER CONFERENCE
Our program offers a special Hopkins Conference on Craft in which students can earn a graduate course credit in a concentrated period of about 12 days. The 2011 conference will be held again in Florence, Italy – site of our 2006, 2007, and 2010 events. The 2009 conference was held in Bar Harbor, Maine. The conference features writing workshops with nationally prominent writers from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere such as Jill McCorkle, author of eight books of fiction, returns for her second trip to Florence. Her latest novel is Going Away Shoes. Charles Martin, whose seventh book of poetry is coming this spring, is also an award-winning translator of Latin poetry. Brenda Wineapple, whose book about poet Emily Dickinson’s letters with Thomas Wentworth Higginson won national awards, also has written biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Janet Flanner, and Gertrude Stein and her brother. For more about the conference, see http://writing.jhu.edu/craftconference or email craftconference@jhu.edu.