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WKU One Step Away from Offering MFA in Creative Writing

WKU

WKU is one step closer to offering a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

The Council on Postsecondary Education has approved the school’s proposal, which would allow students to pursue degrees in four tracts: fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and script-writing for film.

WKU is hoping the film component is something that will help the school’s new program stand out.

“We’re an hour away from Nashville, which has a thriving film industry. We’re about five hours away from Atlanta, which has a thriving film industry. And we have many undergraduates already working in film in Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans,” said Dr. David Bell, English Professor and Director of Creative Writing at WKU.

If WKU receives approval from The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, it will admit its first class of students seeking the MFA in creative writing this fall.

WKU’s program would offer students a distinctive set of secondary concentrations designed to make them more employable once they graduate. Students can choose to take classes in literature, composition/rhetoric, and teaching English as a second language.

“We’re trying to get past the idea that people come to an MFA and then all they do is write, and then all they can do when they finish school is try to make it as a writer, or try to make it as a teacher of writing,” Bell said.

Kevin is the News Director at WKU Public Radio. He has been with the station since 1999, and was previously the Assistant News Director, and also served as local host of Morning Edition.
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