The master of fine arts degree in creative writing with an emphasis in prose is designed to develop your growth as a writer and reader of fiction and creative nonfiction, enhance your awareness of the contemporary literary field, and highlight opportunities in publishing, teaching, and community work. We are an intimate community of writers (the prose program has 40–45 total students on average), and our alumni maintain strong connections with one another and the Bay Area literary communities. Graduates of our program publish their work in magazines, anthologies, and full-length collections; regularly perform at local and national venues; and are themselves successful publishers and editors.

While at Mills you’ll have the opportunity to study with renowned writers and core faculty members Elmaz Abinader, Yiyun Li, Cornelia Nixon, Sarah Pollock, and Kathryn Reiss. Your writing professors may also include our wide range of dynamic visiting writers working in diverse aesthetic traditions. Recent visiting writers in prose include Daniel Alarcón, Cristina Garcia, Adair Lara, Micheline Marcom, and Patricia Powell. You’ll also have the opportunity to work with our distinguished literature faculty in courses that focus on the history and criticism of literature and literary theory.

Every semester several fiction and creative nonfiction writers visit campus as part of our Contemporary Writers Series, including local and national stars such as Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) and Dave Eggers; rising young novelists from across the country such as Tayari Jones; and prolific and multi-genre writers like William T. Vollman and Chris Abani.

At Mills you’ll engage with your own writing and that of your peers. You’ll listen as fiction presented in workshop moves to the microphone at our regular Works in Progress reading series. You may have an idea for a new performance series, or work on the editorial staff of our magazine, 580 Split. You may be a graduate assistant at The Place for Writers, where you’ll help make the reading series happen, or build important community relationships placing creative writers in volunteer teaching positions in local schools. In short, there are a variety of ways you can shape your MFA in prose to create a one-of-a-kind educational experience.

The MFA in Prose Program includes both fiction and creative nonfiction. While you apply and are accepted into only one area of concentration, there’s a great deal of flexibility in the course work for fiction and creative nonfiction students.