OSU-Cascades Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing

In the mountainside arts center we call home for 10 days twice a year, everyone is responsible for his or her own education, setting individual goals and urged toward discipline and self-realization in an atmosphere that emphasizes creating across genres and valuing process over product, with faculty who believe passionately in this approach.

The basic premise behind our alliances is, quite simply, this: we are all better—as writers, as explorers of consciousness, as artists and, by extension, risk takers—when we create together. It also helps to play around: like the Surrealists, with their parlor games. Or the Beats, with their cutups. Or a third-grade poet writing there are more yeses than no’s.

Residences are an opportunity to create, to learn more about the contemporary writing scene, to tackle the challenges of the creative life, to brainstorm solutions, to share resources, and to get inspired by 120 acres of old-growth forest, a collapsed volcano, and Oregon’s second deepest lake, all while the sun sets on one mountain and then the next.