Thesis Work

Your MFA thesis is the culmination of your time in the Creative Writing & Poetics program. There is a lot of flexibility in how you develop your thesis and you will collaborate with faculty in the program and your Thesis Advisor to determine the direction you would like to take. Students may also elect to engage multi-media or performance venues in pursuing their thesis work.

Your completed thesis will have two substantial parts:

1) Original creative work

An accomplished creative work (i.e. poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and/or cross-genre) of appropriate length with respect to the project undertaken and time dedicated to its completion. There are no fixed page stipulations for this component. In general, prose theses are generally between 75 – 200 pages, maximum while poetry theses are between 48 and 75 pages.

2) Artist’s statement

An artist’s statement that situates your creative work and demonstrates a breadth and depth of theoretical, critical, and literary knowledge. The artist’s statement can take the form of an extended poetics paper and must account for why you have undertaken the creative project you pursued and your understanding of it in relationship to larger fields of creative endeavor.

Students need to be active and deliberate in developing their thesis work, beginning once their first year of core courses is completed. In order to complete a thesis that represents the best work of which you are capable, students are encouraged to be mindful in their interactions with advisors and peers; to seek out, evaluate and incorporate useful critiques; and to attend to thesis timelines and institutional expectations. Visit the UW Graduate School’s Thesis / Dissertation website for more information about thesis requirements.

Thesis advising

Thesis work is directed and encouraged by a Thesis Advisor, a Second Reader, and our MFA salon culture.

Thesis Advisor

Students will work with a Thesis Advisor whose expertise aligns with the student’s proposed thesis work. The Thesis Advisor serves as a student’s primary advisor during their second year of study and chairs the student’s thesis committee. In this role, the Thesis Advisor supervises 15 credits of independent thesis work (BCWRIT 700 Creative Writing) over three quarters of the second year.

In the first quarter of the second year, the student and advisor will create a three-quarter plan to guide the overall journey. In subsequent quarters, students will carry through on this plan and/or modify it as the work itself necessitates. View the Thesis Timeline for more details.

Go to thesis timeline webpage

Second Reader

Second readers serve on the student’s thesis committee, and in this role, will be one of the two signatories required to review and approve the thesis for graduation and the degree. Their primary institutional responsibility is to make sure that the thesis meets minimal MFA requirements with respect to its standard of quality.

Second Readers may have a more or less active involvement in the development and direction of the thesis, as determined by the needs and desires of the student and the Thesis Advisor. In some instances, the Second Reader will only become active in a student’s thesis at the conclusion of their project.

Salon Culture

In the second year of the program, all MFA students are encouraged to participate in the MFA Salons during late fall, throughout the winter, and in early spring quarters, both as a writer and as a listener/commentator.

Organized by MFA faculty, salons are informal evening gatherings that provide opportunities for students to read excerpts of their in-progress work and get feedback from their peers and faculty. Salon culture models a collaborative form of writing community that students can build on after the program ends.