The MFA in Creative Writing
We believe you shouldn’t need an MBA to afford an MFA.
We provide an affordable, flexible graduate education—full-time or part-time—in Southampton or Manhattan for talented writers searching for a place to advance their craft.
Stony Brook's MFA in Creative Writing welcomes writers who seek to create original work primarily in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. We offer generous guidance that is friendly, rigorous, and professionally useful.
Unlike most MFA programs, ours encourages students to take workshops in all kinds of writing, rather than being tracked upon acceptance into a single genre. Since we believe that writing across genres strengthens skills in all genres, we invite students to explore outside their primary areas of interest.
Beyond the familiar categories of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, we offer workshops in forms of creative expression relevant to understanding and mastering a world constructed of words and images. Recent course offerings have included speculative, YA, and experimental literature. In our Manhattan location, students will find opportunities to explore writing for television or film. Our literature courses are taught by working writers, with an eye to how reading informs craft.
While we believe the major focus of your MFA should be on developing students' own writing, understanding the larger world of writing is also important. We therefore offer practica in publishing, teaching, arts administration, and the business of being a writer, along with query workshops and agent visits.
Our student body brings together everyone from recent grads, to doctors and lawyers. This diverse group of full-time and part-time students enriches our community with a wide array of perspectives and experiences. Together, they cultivate an atmosphere where learning thrives, and every voice contributes to the collective narrative. To serve this thriving and multifaceted community, we offer courses year-round. Traditional semester-long courses are offered at both our Southampton and Manhattan campuses, as well as occasional weekend intensives throughout each semester. In addition, many of our students register for the Southampton Writers Conference, our intensive summer session. Other students work on TSR: The Southampton Review, our literary magazine.
Full-Time Students
Full-time students are expected to take 12 credits in each of their first two semesters, 9 credits in both the third and fourth semester, and 4 credits in the fifth (final) semester. Full-time students graduate in 2.5 years. Full-time students should expect to take at least one daytime course per semester.
Part-Time Students
We are one of the few MFA programs that offer a part-time option: writers with full-time lives can take up to five years to earn their degrees by choosing to take one or more classes per semester, as best fits their schedule. Students can study at a slower pace and receive your degree in five years. We are one of the few MFA programs that offers a part-time option.
All of our courses are taught by practicing writers who are themselves continually producing original work. Our full-time core faculty is joined by visiting writers who provide creative breadth to the program, as well as to bring expertise in more specialized areas of creative writing.
These distinguished authors rotate into the schedule throughout the year, teaching in the regular term at Southampton or Manhattan and in the summer at Southampton.
We also welcome visiting writers to both Manhattan and Southampton through our reading series, Writers Speak. In the spring, we bring to campus a series of literary agents to hold individual conferences with students who are in the thesis stage of their study.
While diverse in specialty and pedagogy, all our faculty members—full-time and visiting alike—have joined us because they care about encouraging new voices. Many other writers also "visit" us in the pages of our distinguished literary journal, The Southampton Review.
Because Stony Brook University is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, New York State residents will find the opportunity to study with us quite affordable at less than $30,000.
For specific pricing information, please visit the Student Financial Services website.
Teaching Assistantships/Graduate Assistantships
We award a small number of full and partial Graduate and Teaching Assistantships (along with limited prizes and awards) to our incoming students. All applications for full-time study in the Fall term are considered, provided that the application is submitted by the deadline. These GA/TA awards are extremely competitive. In 2025-2026, 2 students were fully funded and 8 were partially funded.
As of Fall 2026, a full funding line comes with an academic-year stipend of $30,000, a 15-20 hour/week workload, full tuition waiver and subsidized health insurance. A half-line TA/GA offer comes with a 50% tuition scholarship and academic-year stipend of $15,000, as well as subsidized health insurance and an 8-10 hour/week workload.
Students in good standing can expect to have their funding renewed for their second year, when they teach creative writing courses to Stony Brook undergraduates.
Recipients of funding offers who can contribute to the diversity of Stony Brook may be eligible for the Turner Fellowship. Those with outstanding academic promise may be eligible for the Graduate Council Fellowship. These fellowships award an additional $30,000 over the course of three years to their recipients, along with tuition waiver and stipend.
Teaching Assistantships for Unfunded Students
Full-time, unfunded students have the opportunity to take our teaching practicum and apply for a TA position. These are highly coveted spots teaching Introduction to Creative Writing on Stony Brook's Main Campus in Stony Brook, NY. Occasionally, students can also teach upper-level workshops. Payment is roughly $4,400 per course and comes with subsidized health insurance.