Innovation. Challenge. Community.
What are your goals as a student and maker of literature, as an artist contributing to the conversation about the urgent matters of our time? What is the work you want to do, the work that is specific to your experience, talent, and imagination?
Now celebrating over 19 years of accomplishment, the Rainier Writing Workshop has been helping writers to answer those questions, and to generate new, even deeper questions about the writer’s aspirations.
Our MFA is an innovative three-year, four-residency program in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Mentorships with our faculty last for a full year, ensuring a high-quality experience at a more leisurely pace – ideal for busy professionals and those who wish to take time to develop their work’s fullest potential. Combining rigor and support, each mentorship year is tailored to the participant’s goals. Our faculty are nationally known writers who are also outstanding teachers.
Outside Experience
Our MFA has other features that have made The Rainier Writing Workshop the Pacific Northwest’s premier low-residency MFA in creative writing. We offer a unique “Outside Experience” component that allows each participant to design an independent project that will enhance their skills and advance specific writing goals. A participant’s final thesis can contain work in multiple genres. Our yearly residencies are held on the PLU campus in magnificent summer weather, in the shadow of Mount Rainier, with easy access to Seattle’s urban culture. We are highly selective, and our alumni have generated a substantial record of success in publication, teaching, and other literary achievements.
The Rainier Writing Workshop is a community of talented, mature, and independent writers, working in an atmosphere in which each writer’s work deepens and flourishes.
“You have achieved balance between mutual support and self-reliance – it’s unusual, and exactly right.”
“Who knew how magical and wonderful this program could be? I feel like I belong and that I’ve found a tribe I belong with, like I matter, and that I can be a writer.”
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