The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a studio-academic program designed to assist talented students in developing their skills as poets or fiction writers. While the MFA is the accepted credential for teachers of creative writing, our program gives primary emphasis to the development of students as writers. There are also a number of opportunities to gain experience in literary publishing while interning at Crab Orchard Review or SIU Press as well as opportunities to teach in the community. Students may even join an organization like Graduate Writers Forum and work on organizing our spring literary festival, Little Grassy.<br><br>The fundamental elements of the program are writing workshops, in which students read and critique the writing of their peers under the guidance of a faculty writer, intensive tutorial work with the thesis director on the student's writing, and the study of the traditions, forms, and theories of literature from a writer's stance. The faculty work closely with the students and insure that each student will have exposure to a variety of styles and personalities, from traditional to experimental.<br><br>The fiction program at SIUC focuses on professionalization without regard to subject matter or genre. SIUC fiction writers have found success in literary journals and at literary publishing houses, as well as at large commercial houses, with literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy fiction, slipstream fiction, horror fiction, and crime fiction. The fiction program also supports podcasting, audiobook creation, game narrative, virtual reality narrative, 360-degree video-making, Twitter fiction, subreddit fiction, and other forms of technological narrative. You need not be versed in these new approaches to storytelling, but you'll need to be open-minded, given the wide opportunities available with these novel venues.