Creative Writing @ Georgia College “A Good MFA Program is Hard to Find” reads the website of Georgia College’s MFA program. The allusion to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is purposeful. In 2002, building on the reputation and distinction of Georgia College’s most famous alumna, Flannery O’Connor, and on the college’s new mission as “Georgia’s Public Liberal Arts University,” Georgia College initiated the Master of Fine Arts, its first terminal degree. For years, Georgia College has promoted its undergraduate program in creative writing so the addition of a stand-out MFA program is natural. “We attract students from all over the country and offer all the curricular and extracurricular opportunities that larger university MFA programs have, but in a more intimate setting that promotes community and strong access to faculty mentors,” says Dr. Martin Lammon, director of the MFA and BA programs in creative writing. At Georgia College students participate widely in this collaborative community: they assist in editing and producing Arts & Letters, a national, award-winning journal published twice a year; they lead the Writing in the Schools Project in which Georgia College’s innovative Early College middle school students improve their writing skills; and MFA students also help to coordinate the program’s Visiting Writers Series that offers public readings by nationally prominent authors. MFA student alumni have gone on to publish in many distinguished literary journals, receive national awards for their work (including a Pushcart Prize for fiction and the $15,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship), and to teach full-time at such schools as Marshall University, St. John’s University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Georgia College is also one of the nation’s few MFA programs that allows students to study all four genres: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction or scriptwriting. “Most MFA programs don’t include scriptwriting as an option,” Lammon noted, “and we’ve established an important partnership with GCSU’s Theatre Department to help promote dramatic writing at Georgia College.” In addition, the MFA in Creative Writing Program is the only program in the country that participates in the Peace Corps USA/Fellows program. “I researched the program,” says Valerie Wayson, a former Peace Corps volunteer and first year MFA student, “and saw that it was linked to the acclaimed Arts & Letters literary journal and the Flannery O’Connor Review, so I decided to apply. From the beginning, everyone has been incredibly welcoming, and I definitely think I made the right decision.”
Dr. Martin Lammon, director of the MFA and BA programs in creative writing
PROGRAMS OF DISTINCTION