Founded in 1948, the Creative Writing program at Indiana University is one of the oldest and most storied in the nation, with faculty and alumni who have garnered nearly every major literary prize available. Our program is consistently one of the most selective and highest ranked MFA programs in the country, offering competitive funding packages dedicated to creating true diversity of learning and experience.

Indiana University has offered courses in creative writing throughout most of the twentieth century. Robert Frost, Marguerite Young, Robert P. T. Coffin, Robert Penn Warren, and John Crowe Ransom, among others, taught courses in poetry and fiction writing at Indiana University as early as 1941. IU was among the first North American universities to grant a creative writing M.A., awarding its first graduate creative writing degree in 1949 to poet and novelist David Wagoner.

In 1980, IU began granting the M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Since that time, our resident tenured faculty has included such distinguished and prolific writers as Philip Appleman, Roger Mitchell, Yusef Komunyakaa, Cornelia Nixon, David Wojahn, Dana Johnson, Kevin Young, Maurice Manning, and Scott Russell Sanders. We offer students access to an exceptional faculty, annually ranked among the top fifteen English departments in the country.

Our alumni include award-winning writers like Allison Joseph, Carol Guess, Dean Young, Marcus Wicker, Brian Teare, Kiese Laymon, Kyle Dargan, Christine Sneed, and Brian Leung. Many of our graduates go on to successful careers in publishing and academia, and they have published hundreds of books.