BOARD OF GOVERNOR'S FELLOWSHIP

Each year Otis College of Art and Design’s Graduate Writing program offers, in addition to its other forms of aid, a Board of Governors Fellowship in the amount of $20,000 per year. The fellowship is renewable for a second year, given the student’s satisfactory academic progress.

A student writer will be selected according to his or her demonstrated potential, experience, skills and goals. Although a student need not be published, the fellowship will be awarded to a writer with a clear notion of why he or she wishes to study writing and what one hopes to accomplish with these MFA studies.

For more information, please contact department chair Paul Vangelisti, 310 665-6891.

NON-FICTION TRACK ANNOUNCED

Beginning with fall semester 2008, the Graduate Writing program at Otis will be adding a non-fiction track to its course of study, to complement our current fiction and poetry areas of emphasis. From the “lyric essay” to more traditional forms of belles letters, we are offering MFA students a non-fiction alternative to locate their writing practice within the contemporary world of writing.

Paul Vangelisti, Chair of the Graduate Writing Program

"For too long the serious study of contemporary poetry and fiction has been consigned to the English Department or to other disciplines that fail to consider the primary and complex practice of writing as a verbal art. Otis is uniquely positioned to introduce a new and comprehensive approach to the graduate writing degree. In asking “why Otis?” it is important to view our MFA program not only distinctive in the institutional market but also as an extension of Otis's historical mission to bring innovative arts education to Los Angeles. Our multi-disciplinary approach—writing, literature, critical theory, publishing and translation—is the ideal complement to the program's international emphasis, providing a singular opportunity to look at American writing in relation to other contemporary world literatures. We prepare verbal artists to make their way in a profession that increasingly involves teaching or other institutional affiliations (publishing, arts organizations, museums, etc.), along with the more traditional, individualized role of the creative writer. As a writer, specifically a California writer, I find that where I live grows daily more curious and fascinating: what is of and in the world speaks with an eloquence beyond any voice I can imagine."