MFA in Creative Writing

University of Guelph

The Creative Writing MFA takes full advantage of its location in Toronto, an international literary and cultural centre. The program has been designed to provide students with a wide range of opportunities to interact with the community, and especially to connect students with well-established writers from across Canada and abroad as workshop instructors, mentors, and visitors. Our partnership with Harbourfronts International Festival of Authors is a distinctive feature of the program. Through the IFOA we offer annual Master Classes with authors visiting the festival. We offer additional winter Master Classes and panels on such topics as structuring the novel, teaching writing, and writers and money. Our partnership with the Eden Mills Writers Festival offers MFA students annual reading spots at the Festival. We host a monthly program reading series, Speakeasy, in downtown Toronto. We also offer a teaching practicuum, the Parkdale Project: MFA students co-teach six once-a-week writing workshops to Grade Seven and Eight students at Parkdale Public School, or act as solo instructors for two high school level workshop sessions with Parkdale Collegiate students. We offer play reading opportunities for our playwriting students and intensive voice workshops to train students in how to read their work. Additional partnerships with the Humber School for Writers, Humber College, and Toronto theatres provide extraordinary extracurricular, volunteer, and work opportunities for our MFA students.

College of Arts