Earn your MFA from Anywhere in the World
The National University MFA program is ideal for Americans living overseas who want to learn the craft of creative writing and work toward publishing their first book.
Since our founding in 2005, many students have completed our completely online MFA program from various countries around the world.
We have had students in Romania, Guam, Korea, Japan, Turkey, the UAE, soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan, and even a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia.
These students have written about their experiences abroad or just followed their creative impulses in poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, or screenwriting.
The program is ideal for ESL teachers overseas. Having a masters degree and publications in literary journals may help career advancement. In addition, students may take coursework in composition pedagogy and the pedagogy of creative writing, among many other literature electives that may be beneficial to teaching ESL overseas.
We are sure that you have many stories to tell from your travels and immersion into different cultures. If you are interested in joining our international literary community, please feel free to contact the MFA program lead faculty, Frank Montesonti at fmontesonti@nu.edu or check out the other informative pages on this website.
Here is a testimonial from an NU MFA Alum who taught ESL in Korea while completing our program.
Cary Bertoncini: Just after completing an M.A. in English at NU, I began my first job in Korea, where I was a writing instructor for a government teacher training institute. While there, I worked on and completed NU’s MFA in Creative Writing. I was certainly busy, but I also actually found that being a student while working often helped me to be a better teacher. Now, I am teaching for a great little university in Shantou, China, where I also have started a little creative writing workshop. Though I am not regularly teaching creative writing courses, I consistently have found ways to apply creative writing and workshop techniques and ideas to my classroom teaching, and have published two journal articles on the subject of using poetry and creative writing in EFL classrooms. NU’s Creative Writing Program has definitely helped me develop my skills and confidence as a writer, but it has also helped me to be a better teacher, husband, father – it has helped me become better at being me.