Mountain Writers Series

The Carnegie Mellon University/Mountain Writers Series Low-Residency MFA

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
-Truman Capote

With Carnegie Mellon University, the Mountain Writers Series is pleased to announce its new Low Residency MFA program with its first summer residency scheduled for June 2009. The summer residency will be held on the beautiful campus of Columbia Gorge Community College perched on a hill overlooking the mighty Columbia River and the historic town of The Dalles, Oregon. Nationally award winning faculty will mentor students in four genres: fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and screenwriting. In addition to working in their own genres, students will participate in an editing/publishing seminar with Gerald Costanza, editor of Carnegie Mellon University Press.

The Columbia River Gorge offers a myriad of outdoor activities from summer snow skiing on majestic Mt. Hood to windsurfing on the wide expanse of the Columbia. World class trout fishing and river rafting is only minutes away on the rugged Deschutes River and hiking the hills above the Columbia through fields of colorful wildflowers offers the student writer time to reflect.

The Winter Residency of this two-year program will be in Portland, Oregon, with its user-friendly light rail available to take the student writers to award-winning restaurants, coffee shops, microbreweries and bookstores.

In September, 2008, applications will be available at this website, so stay tuned. Your chance to work side by side with some of the best writers in the world will be one click away . . . .