2026 Creative Writing MFA Applicants Forum

[SocialKonstruct]

1 hour ago, Ogwick said:

Just to echo this point above: obviously everyone in this thread wants to get into a grad school this season. Why else apply?

But don’t seek your personal validation, happiness or sense of self from a certificate, job, or even a long career. 
 

If you’re ultimately rejected from all schools this season - screw them, and publish anyway!  You don’t need a MFA certificate to let others hear your voice. 

Perhaps but I think that having a MFA or PhD will make it a lot easier to land a literary agent or develop the professionalized career. Writing is great but I doubt that many would be writing for just themselves without a public audience. So dismissing the MFA or a PhD route isn’t always inevitable.

[Ogwick]

13 minutes ago, SocialKonstruct said:

Perhaps but I think that having a MFA or PhD will make it a lot easier to land a literary agent or develop the professionalized career. Writing is great but I doubt that many would be writing for just themselves without a public audience. So dismissing the MFA or a PhD route isn’t always inevitable.

I guess the other way to think of it is - how many authors of the past decades who became “successful writers” (however you define that - could be prestige not monetary) were MFA or PhD certificate holders?

Don’t get me wrong - I applied so that I could earn a MFA degree and would be damn proud to have one. 
 

But the lack of one won’t stop my either.  Not saying I’ll be “successful” just that it won’t prevent the future from happening, whatever that might be. 
 

I’ve become a pre-destinationalist I think….

[SocialKonstruct]

40 minutes ago, Ogwick said:

I guess the other way to think of it is - how many authors of the past decades who became “successful writers” (however you define that - could be prestige not monetary) were MFA or PhD certificate holders?

Don’t get me wrong - I applied so that I could earn a MFA degree and would be damn proud to have one. 
 

But the lack of one won’t stop my either.  Not saying I’ll be “successful” just that it won’t prevent the future from happening, whatever that might be. 
 

I’ve become a pre-destinationalist I think….

I wouldn't use authors from the past decades as a benchmark for how things function today in the publishing world. In fact, I suspect most of the successful authors who land agents or get published by the big 5 are derived from MFA/PhD programs especially during the past 10 years when things got more conservative especially since 2016.

We aren't going to get the great days when folks like Thomas Pynchon or William Gaddis or Cormac McCarthy getting their debut novel through the gate in 2026.

My God if you can tell me an agent or even a major publishing house in 2026 who would dare publish a literary equivalent of The Recognitions in this day, then I promise to pay you a million bucks if an experimental novel of that caliber sees the light of day in this age.

Gone are the days when agents and publishing houses took risks unless you are Deep Vellum or Dalkey Archive Press and even those guys are hard to get published through. I am going to the submit to as many literary contests as I can approach while waiting to see if I got into a MFA/PhD program for this fall take. Now I feel is the time that I am ready to send out my publishable works to the public (I wouldn't have done it 10 years when I felt my writing wasn't as polished)...

Edited February 23 by SocialKonstruct

[whitneyyyy]

2 hours ago, SocialKonstruct said:

I wouldn't use authors from the past decades as a benchmark for how things function today in the publishing world. In fact, I suspect most of the successful authors who land agents or get published by the big 5 are derived from MFA/PhD programs especially during the past 10 years when things got more conservative especially since 2016.

We aren't going to get the great days when folks like Thomas Pynchon or William Gaddis or Cormac McCarthy getting their debut novel through the gate in 2026.

My God if you can tell me an agent or even a major publishing house in 2026 who would dare publish a literary equivalent of The Recognitions in this day, then I promise to pay you a million bucks if an experimental novel of that caliber sees the light of day in this age.

Gone are the days when agents and publishing houses took risks unless you are Deep Vellum or Dalkey Archive Press and even those guys are hard to get published through. I am going to the submit to as many literary contests as I can approach while waiting to see if I got into a MFA/PhD program for this fall take. Now I feel is the time that I am ready to send out my publishable works to the public (I wouldn't have done it 10 years when I felt my writing wasn't as polished)...

I am from China. In my country, we don’t have many Creative Writing programs compared to US. We do have programs in Chinese literature, but they focus more on reading and literary studies rather than creative writing. But still, many Chinese authors have produced extraordinary works, like Yu Hua and Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, my two favorite authors. They didn’t even finish middle school. While I personally know two Chinese authors who graduated from Chinese literature programs, their books are not well known or widely read.

I am not sure about situation in US, but for books I read, most authors didn’t come from MFA programs. I also have a friend who self published her science fiction who majored in Art. So that is another path to publication.

Based only on my personal experience, I do think MFA programs can be very helpful, but are not necessary. The focused writing time, the literary environment, and the opportunity to receive funding are nice, but many of these can also be developed through reading craft books and having a consistent writing habit

 

[idkmann]

2 hours ago, SocialKonstruct said:

I wouldn't use authors from the past decades as a benchmark for how things function today in the publishing world. In fact, I suspect most of the successful authors who land agents or get published by the big 5 are derived from MFA/PhD programs especially during the past 10 years when things got more conservative especially since 2016.

As someone in traditional publishing, this is very much wrong. Most people publishing today (tradpub or otherwise) do not have MFAs/PhDs. Programs are great for a lot of reasons, but publications is not one of them. 

[XXY]

Please MFA gods, please some news this week. GIMME DAT SWEET SWEET CLOSURE

[molemola]

I just wanna say I am very impressed with the acceptances here. Threadmates are killing it. 

[SocialKonstruct]

5 hours ago, idkmann said:

As someone in traditional publishing, this is very much wrong. Most people publishing today (tradpub or otherwise) do not have MFAs/PhDs. Programs are great for a lot of reasons, but publications is not one of them. 

Yes but for literary fiction, not genre fiction having a MFA/PhD is pretty useful. Genre fiction definitely a very different animal ya know?

[SocialKonstruct]

6 hours ago, whitneyyyy said:

I am from China. In my country, we don’t have many Creative Writing programs compared to US. We do have programs in Chinese literature, but they focus more on reading and literary studies rather than creative writing. But still, many Chinese authors have produced extraordinary works, like Yu Hua and Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, my two favorite authors. They didn’t even finish middle school. While I personally know two Chinese authors who graduated from Chinese literature programs, their books are not well known or widely read.

I am not sure about situation in US, but for books I read, most authors didn’t come from MFA programs. I also have a friend who self published her science fiction who majored in Art. So that is another path to publication.

Based only on my personal experience, I do think MFA programs can be very helpful, but are not necessary. The focused writing time, the literary environment, and the opportunity to receive funding are nice, but many of these can also be developed through reading craft books and having a consistent writing habit

 

Indeed, the Chinese publishing industry is pretty different than that of the US. Damn, even the French and UK publishing industries are too. The American publishing industry has pretty much been mostly about who you know and where you been rather than literary quality in so many cases. Also Mo Yan probably doesn't need a degree as he is state sanctioned by China  until recently. https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2012-fall/selections/anna-sun-656342/ Plus if he were here in the US, I doubt that his brilliant prose would have seen the light of day.

In fact, we aren't really even getting today's American writers who are critical of the regime in an explicit way. Perhaps American censorship is much worse than we thought and even more forbidding than that of the Chinese government (I feel that we have less freedoms here than overboard tbh).

In France, I really love the fact that many of their brilliant writers didn't even get a MFA at all. Michel Houellebecq and Annie Ernaux didn't even have that fabled degree. Houellebecq went to the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon whereas Ernaux went to her education to become a schoolteacher and never finished her literary degree.

Much of the blame can be placed on American literary agents in many cases. Granted, very rarely will you get a solid experimental novel from the slush pile but most American literary agents tend to look at the professional credentials of the person or get a referral rather than read the ACTUAL work itself.

A prime example of such a royal screw up was the disasterous publication history for Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai which shows how bad the US publishing industry is. https://lithub.com/seven-ways-to-hand-sell-a-lost-modern-masterpiece/ and https://theadvocateblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/afterglow-the-last-book-textual-survival-and-apocalyptic-knowledge-in-helen-dewitts-the-last-samurai/. Thank God (or Allah) for New Directions Publishing for saving it from obliteration.

5 hours ago, idkmann said:

As someone in traditional publishing, this is very much wrong. Most people publishing today (tradpub or otherwise) do not have MFAs/PhDs. Programs are great for a lot of reasons, but publications is not one of them. 

I should have been a lot more specific and mentioned that genre fiction usually doesn't require the degree but literary fiction usually does and there is way more gatekeeping in that area, tragically enough.

[molemola]

23 minutes ago, SocialKonstruct said:

Yes but for literary fiction, not genre fiction having a MFA/PhD is pretty useful. Genre fiction definitely a very different animal ya know?

I do think lit and genre fiction have very different norms. My partner writes more literary/surrealism, and their impression is that for literary fiction, MFAs do matter.

[SocialKonstruct]

8 minutes ago, molemola said:

I do think lit and genre fiction have very different norms. My partner writes more literary/surrealism, and their impression is that for literary fiction, MFAs do matter.

Indeed, I just finished reading my first Sarah Maas novel a few weeks ago and it was so painful to see how poor the sentence construction and paragraph structure were that I facepalmed continuously for about the 4-5 hours it took to blaze through volume 1 of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Apparently apart from her poor grammatical construction (please read https://www.grammarbook.com/) her inability to make heads or tails of her novel's fabula and syuzhet caused me to wince in complete despair. Thank goodness reading Thomas Pynchon's latest fare saved the light of day for that month of reading.

[molemola]

1 minute ago, SocialKonstruct said:

Indeed, I just finished reading my first Sarah Maas novel a few weeks ago and it was so painful to see how poor the sentence construction and paragraph structure were that I facepalmed continuously for about the 4-5 hours it took to blaze through volume 1 of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Apparently apart from her poor grammatical construction (please read https://www.grammarbook.com/) her inability to make heads or tails of her novel's fabula and syuzhet caused me to wince in complete despair. Thank goodness reading Thomas Pynchon's latest fare saved the light of day for that month of reading.

I think you missed my point.

[SocialKonstruct]

Just now, molemola said:

I think you missed my point.

More of an aside this round, Tristam Shandy fashion.

[lizard in a blizzard]

12 hours ago, martysupreme said:

i consider my work literary fiction, but it seems like the cohort has diverse aesthetic interests so far (at least from what sam told me). i'm familiar with the work of a recent alum who writes in the fantasy vein...i don't know anything about iowa's process but don't count yourself out on account of genre!! 

Massive congrats! So cool to see everyone’s success on this forum! Did you get any sense of how many calls have gone out so far?

Edited February 23 by lizard in a blizzard

[BowelMovement]

Are we expecting the first wave of Columbia and NYU this week! I really can't wait to get all this over with regardless of the results. Also I love how JHU just completely disappeared like??? 

[womanonline]

I’m hoping I just hear from someone this week; it’s been over two weeks since I’ve heard from any schools (Northwestern on 2/5 was my last) and it’s driving me crazy!! Thought I would’ve heard from Oregon State and Colorado State by now. I still think it’s weird we didn’t see any SAIC interviews on the spreadsheet also

[hermione granger]

anyone have an idea of when brown acceptances might come in? or has anyone heard anything from them (fiction or poetry). can’t find any info besides playwriting & rejections. 

[Emblazonries]

I just woke up from the most vivid dream where Michener sent me a personal rejection. Letter started professional but then started going off the rails and kept talking about how much I suck, why would I even try to get in their program, I wasted their departments time, etc. Woke up all sweaty disoriented and feeling like the worst person alive until I remembered.... I didn't even apply to Michener?? And their results came back like last week via email??? My subconscious is playing tricks on me lol I relate to a lot of the stress here 

[Emblazonries]

30 minutes ago, hermione granger said:

anyone have an idea of when brown acceptances might come in? or has anyone heard anything from them (fiction or poetry). can’t find any info besides playwriting & rejections. 

Brown acceptances and waitlists in 2025 came out around 3/19-3/20 and rejections around 3/21! In 2024 acceptances (poetry) around 3/5 and rejections (poetry) 3/6. For fiction acceptance/waitlist 3/8 and rejections around 3/11 so it could be earlier, but safe to say it will be in March! 

Edited February 23 by Emblazonries

[arghgradapps]

sorry to be the worst but do u think iowa is now over for real. it looks like there are a lot of people on draft discussing being added to an accepted group lol 

[hermione granger]

15 minutes ago, Emblazonries said:

Brown acceptances and waitlists in 2025 came out around 3/19-3/20 and rejections around 3/21! In 2024 acceptances (poetry) around 3/5 and rejections (poetry) 3/6. For fiction acceptance/waitlist 3/8 and rejections around 3/11 so it could be earlier, but safe to say it will be in March! 

thank you smmm

[Sumire11]

11 minutes ago, arghgradapps said:

sorry to be the worst but do u think iowa is now over for real. it looks like there are a lot of people on draft discussing being added to an accepted group lol 

Yeah the comment thread has been closed there as well. I don't know what's going on, but I do hope there's more in the pipeline: they take 25 people after all. And then there's the waitlist which I haven't seen mentioned yet. 

[meanwhile]

38 minutes ago, Emblazonries said:

I just woke up from the most vivid dream where Michener sent me a personal rejection. Letter started professional but then started going off the rails and kept talking about how much I suck, why would I even try to get in their program, I wasted their departments time, etc. Woke up all sweaty disoriented and feeling like the worst person alive until I remembered.... I didn't even apply to Michener?? And their results came back like last week via email??? My subconscious is playing tricks on me lol I relate to a lot of the stress here 

lol very real, the other week I had a dream that U of Minnesota sent me an email saying exactly where I ranked on the reject list (285) that explained the elaborate points-based system they used and where my work fell. also cc’d was a coworker (who I barely interact with) because he reached out to them to recommend a rejection because “I just don’t like her in general” 😭

now it’s a running joke with my work bestie that anything that goes wrong is Jon’s fault. so if anyone wants someone to blame for their rejects, please know that it has to be Jon. 

Edited February 23 by meanwhile

[arghgradapps]

1 minute ago, Sumire11 said:

Yeah the comment thread has been closed there as well. I don't know what's going on, but I do hope there's more in the pipeline: they take 25 people after all. And then there's the waitlist which I haven't seen mentioned yet. 

i think the mods probably didn't want people disclosing their iowa acceptances so publicly on a thread like that and attracting lots of questions about decisions, apps, etc. but it did seem like a good handful were accepted so far, and that's only from draft data. but yes im definitely hoping for waitlist info soon! 

[impatientjoy]

Who are folks expecting to hear from this week?? It was a quieter end of the week / weekend than I anticipated!