Fiction at Hopkins
Expand your creative writing skills in the short story or novel
Prestige, Quality, Value: Our graduate writing program reflects the international reputation for academic quality, creative innovation, and professional value at Johns Hopkins, a pioneer in writing, the humanities, and higher education.
- Take one or two courses or earn a full graduate degree
- Focus on publishing in print or online literary journals, magazines, books.
- Attend at convenient locations in Washington, D.C. or Baltimore
- Cross-study in screenplay, drama, experimental writing, poetry
- Take part-time evening and weekend classes to fit your busy schedule
- Consider elective courses in voice, structure, revision, teaching, editing
- Our dedicated, experienced teachers are published writers & editors
- Apply year-round, study at your own pace, publish your work
- Study the business of writing, editing, and publishing
Read below for more information about our graduate writing program in fiction writing – its courses, teachers, and what it might help you achieve. Or contact faculty advisor Mark Farrington. Email: mfarrin1@jhu.edu Phone: 202-452-0782.
What Our Students and Graduates Have Achieved
Writing Program students and alumni in fiction have published novels and short story collections, winning local, regional, and national awards that include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest, and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Students and graduates also published scores of individual short stories in anthologies and in print and online literary journals that include: 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 alumni have founded or work on the editorial staffs of many online or print literary journals, including Potomac Review, Baltimore Review, and Barrelhouse. Graduates of our program regularly earn adjunct teaching jobs in composition, writing, and journalism at a range of universities, including University of Maryland, American University, Ohio University, George Washington University, Florida State, Georgetown University, and others. Select alumni have gone on to achieve M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees and hold full-time, tenured teaching positions at universities and community colleges across the country.
A Sampling of Our Students’ and Graduates’ Writing and Honors
- James Mathews won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Short Fiction with his collection, Last Known Position.
- Herta Feely won the $10,000 James Jones First Novel Fellowship for her manuscript, The Trials of Serra Blue.
- Steve Kistulentz, a fiction writer and poet, is a two-time winner of the John Mackay Shaw Academy of American Poets Prize.
- Michelle Brafman's short fiction won the 2006 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest and the Lilith magazine fiction prize.
- Rebekah Yeagher's short fiction won the 2007 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest.
- Josh Rolnick won the Arts & Letters Prize in fiction and a Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize.
- Catherine Kimrey's novel, When we All Get to Heaven, won the Washington Writers Publishing House fiction competition.
- Recent fiction grad Dave Housley's new story collection is Ryan Seacrest Is Famous.
- Fiction student Chè Parker recently published his first novel, The Tragic Flaw (Strebor Books)
- Fiction student Arlene Sanders published Tiger Burning Bright: Stories, her first collection.
- Fiction graduate Pete Pazmino's story, "Fifty American" was a 2008 finalist in the Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest.
- Fiction student Eman Quotah's stories have twice been finalists for Glimmer Train awards and one, "The Man with the Scale in his Head," was selected for Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2006.
- Mark Farrington: Instructor and faculty fiction advisor for the Writing Program. Recipient of the 2003 M.A. in Writing Program’s Outstanding Teaching Award and the 2004 Outstanding Faculty Award from the Advanced Academic Programs. Short fiction published in The New Virginia Review, The Louisville Review, Potomac Review, and other journals, has served as editor-in-chief of Phoebe, and has won an Individual Artists’ Award from the Virginia Council on the Arts and the Dan Rudy Fiction Prize.
- William Black has taught fiction, poetry, and nonfiction courses at Johns Hopkins, Ohio University, Western Washington University, the University of Scranton, and the University of Alabama. Short fiction published in Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Agni, Crab Orchard Review, and Artful Dodge, among others. Served as Writing Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Scholar in Residence at the Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Tristan Davies is a Senior Lecturer in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and teaches fiction as a regular faculty member for the M.A. 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.
- Paul Maliszewski has published articles in Harper's, Smithsonian, Granta, Oxford American, BookForum, McSweeney's, and Wilson Quarterly, among other magazines. Short fiction in The Paris Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Mississippi Review, Story Quarterly, Chicago Review, Mid-American Review, McSweeney's, and the Antioch Review, among others. Awarded two Pushcart Prizes.
- Margaret Meyers is an award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Her essay, "A Bend in Which River" was included in the Best American Essays, 1998. Other articles and fiction in Shenandoah, Sewanee Magazine, and Philosophy Today. Swimming in the Congo, a book 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 ten anthologies including Mondo Barbie, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, Alice Redux and Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women. He is the author of the novella Sugar Mountain (Argonne Hotel Press), two short 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).
- Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of Year and a Day (William Morrow, 2004), which was selected for the Borders Bookstores' "Original Voices" series and the Book of the Month Club; and Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon Books, 1998). Short fiction in Iowa Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, and other journals. Awards won include Shenandoah's Jean Charpiot Goodheart Prize for Fiction.
- Tim Wendel (M.A. in Writing Program alumnus) is an award-winning novelist and journalist. Books include the novel, Castro's Curveball (Ballantine) and The New Face of Baseball (Rayo/HarperCollins), named Top History Book for 2004 in the Latino Literary Awards. His latest novel is Red Rain (Writer's Lair Books.) Published articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Washingtonian and GQ, and columns on the USA Today op-ed page, where he is on the Board of Contributors. Co-wrote one of the 2005 finalists for the "Good Morning America" national memoir contest. Honors include a USA Today Luminary Award and a Knight-Wallace Fellowship. Has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar to the Sewanee Writing Conference and Pen/Faulkner visiting writer to the Washington, D.C. Public Schools.
- Eleanor Williams (M.A. in Writing Program alumnus) is the author of the novel, This Never Happened (Random House, 1998), also published as Crazy Think (Michael Joseph, 1998, 1997). Has worked as a fellow and scholar at the Wesleyan University Writers Conference, the Hambridge Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Georgia State College and University Creative Writing Workshops, and the West Virginia University Writers' Workshop.Recently received her Ph.D. from Ohio University.
Choose Your Topic
The fiction writing curriculum offers the opportunity to explore various forms, or to focus on one form of your choosing. Courses like “The Short Story: Past and Present” provide an understanding of the evolution of the short story and its current status now. “Writing the Novel Workshop” allows students who are writing novels to work together reading and critiquing each others’ novel chapters and sections. Courses like “Novel Form, Style, Structure” look at how novels are put together and how they work their magic. “Voice in Modern Fiction” considers how writers choose to tell their stories. 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, and the form of short stories and the novel. The course also introduces students to the writing process, the techniques of reading as a writer, and the workshop process.
This specialized workshop introduces students to innovative forms by comparing and analyzing two directions for American fiction in recent decades—traditional and experimental. Assignments challenge students to experiment with styles that differ from their previous work; extensive reading assignments come from the latest collections.
Writing The Novel Workshop
This specialized workshop is designed for students who are writing a novel.
This craft elective focuses on a writer's analysis of novels, expanding the study of fiction into techniques and issues relating to the longer form. Topics include structure, character arcs, style, consistency of voice, techniques of backstory, and plot management.
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. In recognizing how authors use these elements, students use exercises to strengthen their own fictional voices.
This fiction reading elective begins with a brief review of the history and development of short fiction, moving to analysis of contemporary forms, trends, and practitioners. Featured authors may include Chekhov, Carver, Paley, Barthelme, Munro, and Dixon .
This fiction craft elective involves intensive writing and reading to introduce students to basic elements of drama studies and playwriting. Playwriting, with its heritage of portraying events through conflict, remains one of our most active literary forms. 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
Film is a central artistic medium of our age. In this intensive writing course, 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, subtext, and visual storytelling.
Admission to the M.A. 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; only some have expertise in science. 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 and walk through the admissions wizard to learn more about admissions requirements. You don’t have to pay or complete an application to learn more. The admissions review differs for a single, specific course compared to the full degree. Just let us know your interests, even if they change over time. Hopkins offers Financial Aid in student loans, plus limited, competitively awarded scholarships beginning in 2008.
Flexible Part-Time Study at Convenient Locations
The M.A. in Writing Program was founded in 1992 to provide professional and artistic courses for part-time students who didn’t want to interrupt their careers or personal life for full-time graduate study. Our creative writing courses are offered on weekday evenings, after work, or on Saturday mornings. The full degree and individual courses are available in Washington or at the main Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus in Baltimore. About twice as many students enroll at the Washington, D.C. Center, 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 enrolling or taking a break as their schedule requires. Most degree candidates earn their masters in two to four years, although a fast-track program is available and students can extend their studies by taking leaves of absence for professional or personal reasons. The M.A. in Writing Program 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 programs have separate application processes.
For More Information
Contact Mark Farrington, Faculty Advisor in Fiction Writing.
M.A. in Writing ProgramFiction WritingThe Johns Hopkins University1717 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Suite 104
Washington, D.C. 20036
To learn more about the M.A. in Writing Program itself or on other concentrations within the program, click on the links below:
| Science-Medical Writing | (nature, technology, science, medicine, space, climate, bioscience, outdoors, ecology, energy) |
| Nonfiction | (essay, feature, memoir, comment, journalism, creative nonfiction |
| Poetry | (formal or free verse, short verse, collections, special forms, poetics) |
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 2010 conference will be held again in Florence, Italy – site of our 2006 and 2007 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 National Book Award novelist Alice McDermott, acclaimed poets Mary Jo Salter or Dave Smith, fiction writers Jean McGarry and Brad Leithauser, and prominent literary editor Robert Wilson. For more about the conference, see http://writing.jhu.edu/craftconference or email craftconference@jhu.edu.