In the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, students gain foundational knowledge of literary craft, developing a deep capacity to read as writers read --- for pleasure and surprise, and also for strategy, technical dexterity, and how language works on the page. Students take two workshops in their primary genre (fiction or poetry) as well as one workshop in another genre. The department offers courses in creative nonfiction, translation and creative methods, designed each year in alignment with student curiosity, faculty interests and pressing questions in the field at large.

Mentorship at ASU includes artistic vision and practice, as well as framing career goals and planning for a writer's life --- potentially within, and often outside --- the academy. Three years of study allow students to grow as writers, immersing themselves in multiple genres and cross-genre innovations, collaborative artistic or community projects, and the deep engagement of their own work, often a book-length manuscript.

The program is unswervingly student-first. Incoming poets and fiction writers work with an outstanding faculty who have received major national and international recognition, including fellowships from the Guggenheim, Howard, Lannan, and MacArthur Foundations; the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists; the Freedom Scholar Award; National Book Critics Circle Award; National Magazine Award; OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; and Whiting Writers Awards; multiple Pulitzer Prizes; medals of achievement from the National Society of Arts and Letters; two Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets; and the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

In concert with the MFA program in creative writing, three additional ASU entities extend the programming, funding opportunities and training available to MFA students. The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing offers fellowships, support for professional development, and other teaching and leadership opportunities including a Community Outreach Graduate Assistantship. They also host an annual conference that brings major writers to campus each fall. The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands brings writers and other artists for intensive workshops, classes and public events throughout the year, and it offers research and pedagogy-based fellowships. The Worldbuilding Initiative brings major external writers together with ASU writers --- from the MFA program and elsewhere in the university --- for workshops and events. The creative writing program also hosts the Craft and Content lecture series and the Stellar Alumni reading series featuring MFA graduates with recent books.

MFA poets and writers may also serve on the editorial board of an international literary journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, gain translation experience through the Thousand Languages Project, and intern with award-winning independent literary press Four Way Books.