​Are you applying to MFA programs? Are you curious about how an MFA can support your professional and writing goals?  Are you baffled by what to even include in an MFA application?

​Join University of Alabama MFA in Creative Writing faculty members John Estes and Brooke Champagne for an AMA on the MFA life - from the application process, to what to expect as a student and citizen of an artistic community, to how an MFA in Creative Writing prepares you for the rest of your life. 

​About the University of Alabama MFA

​Founded in 1974, the University of Alabama MFA in Creative Writing is among the oldest writing programs in the country, known as a welcoming landing-place for developing artists with a rigorous yet flexible curriculum that fosters cross-genre experimentation. Their award-winning faculty work closely with students at all levels, culminating in an individual thesis project. Students become part of a vibrant community of fellow writers, participate in local readings, meet with visiting writers, and build lifelong friendships along the way. They offer workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction as well as a wide-range of craft classes that inspire wide reading, teach new modes of invention, explore aspects of genre and hybridity, and that encourage students to grow as practicing writers.

​Home to the prestigious literary magazine Black Warrior Review, the MFA also provides students with the opportunity to engage with a Visiting Writers Series, receive conference and research funding, and explore diverse teaching opportunities including through the Alabama Prison + Arts Fellowship. 

​John Estes

​John Estes directs the Creative Writing Program at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Previous books include Kingdom Come (C&R Press, 2011), Sure Extinction (Elixir Press, 2017)—which won the Antivenom Poetry Prize—with two books forthcoming from Apocryphile Press, a volume of poetry and a collection of short fiction. 

​Brooke Champagne

​Brooke Champagne is a native New Orleanian and the award-winning author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, named a Best Book of 2024 from Kirkus Reviews. Her work has been selected as Notable in several editions of the Best American Essays anthology series, and she is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose.  Champagne also serves as Book Reviews Editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction. A forthcoming book of journalism, Drive-Thru Daiquiri, will be published with LSU Press in 2027. A memoir-in-essays, Your Bones are My Bones, is contracted through University of New Mexico Press.