MFA Program in Writing chair Aimee Phan is currently working on her statement.

About CCA's MFA Program in Writing

The MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts provides an inspiring, diverse, and rigorous writing community.

The program offers workshops in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, cross-genre writing, and playwriting or screenwriting. Rather than requiring students declare a specific genre, we instead extend the option to take workshops in various genres.

We affirm innovative and traditional practices alike, offering a flexible and rigorous course of study to support each writer’s unique path. Graduate writers benefit from the dynamic literary cultures of the Bay Area, just as they do studying writing at an art school where many modes of artistic expression converge and flourish.

Student writers have direct, committed relationships with their instructors, and we have an exceptional faculty made up of highly accomplished and nationally recognized writers who are engaged in the larger writing communities. This has a huge impact on the program.

At CCA our community grows out of the program’s rich vision and curriculum and is physically centered in the MFA Program in Writing’s amazing new building, the Writers’ Studio. Formerly a gallery for Asian art, our new facility is dedicated solely to the MFA Program in Writing. With lots of open, light-filled interior space as well as a walled garden complete with pagoda, bridge, and pond, the new building has work areas with computers, lounge and study areas, a full kitchen, and ample space to hold readings and receptions, a vital part of the curricula.

Our students are enthusiastic learners, and they grow tremendously in a relatively short period of time; much of this can be attributed to the professors’ deep personal engagement with writing and the literature they teach.