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MFA for All was born from our desire to create a space where MFA-quality instruction is widely accessible to writers no matter their age, background, location, or financial situation. MFA for All is not a degree-granting program—it is a community-rich online educational experience led by top-notch faculty, free of the significant hurdles of time, expense, and geography that MFAs demand.
These master classes will offer structured insight into your craft and writing practice, giving access to a rarified level of instruction that is usually reserved for students at privileged institutions. Taught by some of the most elite authors of our day, the lectures are designed to be as rewarding for seasoned authors as they are for writers earlier in their careers.
Each semester is comprised of three classes taught by three different authors; each class—two linked lectures, a couple weeks apart—will include the opportunity to engage in Q&As with the instructor and fellow students, writing prompts, suggestions for further reading, and more. Students may sign up for one class or a full semester. Those who enroll for the semester will receive a 20% discount on tuition and access to an online community of their fellow students.
Classes will be held on Zoom Webinar. They will be recorded and available for the following month. You do not have to be present during the class time to sign up. Please use an email that you check regularly. We will send your Zoom invite and recording link to this email. If purchasing classes for someone else, please enter their email address.
Answers to our FAQs can be found here.
Single Class: $150
• Entry to one two-lecture class
• Curated reading list and writing exercises
• Access to a recording of each lecture for one month after the class’s completion
• Discount on a year’s U.S.-based subscription to the magazine
Single class details coming soon!
Full Semester: $360 (20% discount)
• Entry to three two-lecture classes (one full semester)
• Curated reading list and writing exercises
• Access to a recording of each lecture for one month after the class’s completion
• Access to our community platform
• One virtual seminar on the submission process, including submitting to contests, with ASF editors
• One virtual seminar with Stephanie Delman of Trellis Literary Management and her authors Jenny Tinghui Zhang and Temim Fruchter about the agent-writer relationship
• Discount on a year’s U.S.-based subscription to the magazine
Registration for the full semester will close on October 5, 2025.
A Pair of Pants, A Mountain Range: The Physical in Fiction
Elizabeth McCracken
Tuesdays, October 7 & October 21
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
Thinking about the physical world of your novel is a kind of research only you can do: what do these people wear? What rooms do they move through? How do their own bodies affect their inner and outer lives? In this class, we will do some of that research together, whether you have a novel draft, are stuck partway through, or are just beginning to think about starting. We’ll discuss clothing, landscape, bodies, furniture, maps.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author most recently of the novel Appleseed (a New York Times Notable Book) and the craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision. He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur’s Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Tin House, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, Orion, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
Registration for Elizabeth’s class will close on October 5, 2025.
Voices in Your Head
Tommy Orange
Tuesdays, November 4 & November 18
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
A close look at what makes a piece of writing voice-y. What are the pluses and minuses of writing with an emphasis on voice to render characters that feel real to the reader? How can we utilize experimentation with POV to find voices for our characters? This class will be an exploration of the most voice-y writers I love and don’t love, and how and why you might want to think about the ways in which you are or are not using voice-iness in your work.
Tommy Orange is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel There There, a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. There There was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year, and won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Pen/Hemingway Award. There There was also longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new novel, Wandering Stars, was published in February 2024. Orange graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.
Registration for Tommy’s class will close on November 2, 2025.
The Houdini Method: Embracing Constraint
Kevin Wilson
Tuesdays, December 2 & December 16
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
Magic is often predicated first on acknowledging the constraints. Without all the chains, the upside-down suspension, the sharks circling the magician, how impressive is the escape?
Our writing process is inevitably a mix of applying methods that you’ve learned from people you admire and trust and simply inventing ways to work with the limitations of your own brain and body and temperament. For me, I’ve always loved and embraced constraint as a way to tap into my brain’s desire to never let anything ruin me, to meet obstructions with weird tricks in order to make what I want to make. In this class, we’ll think about both short fiction and novels—as well as the generative and revision stages of writing—assessing our own perceived constraints, and then ADD more constraints to in order to turn impediments into the material that will fashion our own escape.
Kevin Wilson is the author of seven books, including Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019), a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna selection, and Run for the Hills (Ecco, 2025). His short fiction has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and two editions of Best American Short Stories. He lives in Sewanee, TN, and teaches creative writing at the University of the South.
Registration for Kevin’s class will close on November 30, 2025.
Click below to explore our previous classes:
Lauren Groff
Carmen Maria Machado
Luis Alberto Urrea
Jamel Brinkley
Susan Choi
Karen Russell
Matt Bell
ZZ Packer
Kristen Arnett
