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 virtual seminars and a community of their fellow students.
Classes will be held via Zoom Webinar. Students will not be visible or audible during class but can participate actively through the chat. Depending on the instructor, participants may occasionally be invited to speak or appear on screen. All sessions will be recorded and available for one month following each class, and live attendance is not required to enroll. Zoom access and recording links will be sent to the email address used at registration, so please be sure to register with an email you check regularly. If you are purchasing classes for someone else, please enter the participant’s email address at checkout.
Class details subject to change. Answers to our FAQs can be found here.
Full Semester: $360 (20% discount)
• Three two-lecture classes (one full semester)
• A curated reading list and writing exercises from faculty
• A recording of each lecture for one month after the class’s completion
• Two virtual writing sessions, hosted by ASF editor and writer Avigayl Sharp, including time for writing and feedback in small break-out groups
• One virtual seminar on the submission process with ASF editors
• One virtual seminar on finding an agent, featuring Kate McKean and Danielle Bukowski
• Discount on a year’s U.S.-based subscription to the magazine
Registration for the full semester will close on March 1, 2026.
Single Class: $150
• One two-lecture class
• A curated reading list and writing exercises from faculty
• 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
Purchase single-class registrations below.
Dreaming Awake: Generative Techniques
Dan Chaon
Tuesdays, March 3 & 17
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
This course will discuss a variety of exercises and approaches for idea generation, world building, and developing a first draft, with a particular emphasis on the ways the two halves of our brains communicate (and don’t).
Dan Chaon‘s most recent novel is One of Us (2025). Other works include Ill Will, a national bestseller that was named one of the ten best books of the year by Publishers Weekly; the short story collection Stay Awake, a finalist for the Story Prize; the national bestseller Await Your Reply; and Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and the O. Henry Collection. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction and the Shirley Jackson Award, and he was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Chaon lives in Cleveland.
Registration for Dan’s class will close on March 1, 2026.
Entrances & Exits, Blocking & Business: Making Tangible Fictional Scenes
Jonathan Lethem
Tuesdays, March 24 & April 7
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
Novels are made of language; they flourish on the power of voice to abolish literal time and space, to dip into the characters’ interior fears, wishes, recollections, and dreams. Yet the necessary vehicle for all of fiction’s psychological and emotional depth remains the “scene”, a thing as firmly fixed as an occurrence on a theatrical stage. We’ll examine this paradox in depth and set ourselves to the task of how to satisfy a reader’s craving for scenes and set-pieces, for outward behavior, for dialogue, and for a progress of action — as well as how scenes are galvanized by that mysterious essence we call “plot.”
Jonathan Lethem is the author of Brooklyn Crime Novel, The Fortress of Solitude, Girl In Landscape, and ten other novels. His fifth, Motherless Brooklyn, won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. His stories and essays have been collected in seven volumes, including last year’s A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories. He is the recipient of many fellowships including the MacArthur and Guggenheim, and of the World Fantasy Award and The Berlin Prize. He teaches writing at Pomona College.
Registration for Jonathan’s class will close on March 22, 2026.
Bodies in Space, Bodies in Place
Katie Kitamura
Tuesdays, April 21 & May 5
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. to 8 p.m CST
How do we write setting in fiction? How can we use setting to generate characters and plot? How might place shape physical and psychological experience – and thus the construction of identity? We will look at a variety of examples across genres and forms, from literature to theater to dance, including the work of Sam Selvon, JG Ballard, Shirley Jackson, Pina Bausch, Jerome Bel, and others. The sessions will be comprised of lecture, close reading and in class exercises.
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Audition. A finalist for the Booker Prize, it was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was one of President Obama’s 2025 Favorite Books of 2025. Her previous novel, Intimacies, was one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cullman Center Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature and the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 27 languages and is being adapted for film and television. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Author photo credit: Clayton Cubitt.
Registration for Katie’s class will close on April 19, 2026.
The Dos and Don’ts of Acquiring and Agent panel will take place on Tuesday, March 31.
The Submissions Process panel with ASF editors will take place on Wednesday, April 15.
Kate McKean is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MA in fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, and Catapult, and her first book, Write Through It: An Insider’s Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life, is available from Simon Element. In 2026, Sourcebooks will publish her picture book Pay Attention to Me. She writes the Agents & Books newsletter at agentsandbooks.com. You can find her at all the places online as well as katemckean.com.
Danielle Bukowski represents critically acclaimed, award-winning fiction and nonfiction. For fiction, she likes books that balance plot with voice, have a strong sense of place, a unique hook, and are stylistically bold; for nonfiction, she’s looking for work grounded in the author’s personal interest, rigorously reported and researched, and will expand the reader’s view of the world. Recent and forthcoming books include Palaver by Bryan Washington (Finalist for the National Book Award), Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani (Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize), Alligator Tears: A Memoir-in-Essays by Edgar Gomez, I Leave it Up to You by Jinwoo Chong, and Obstetrix by Hugo, Lodestar and Nebula-award winning Naomi Kritzer.
Avigayl Sharp‘s first novel, Offseason, is forthcoming in May 2026 from Astra House (US) and Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK). It will be followed by a story collection, Animals After Dark. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, New England Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the DISQUIET Literary Prize, and fellowships from Yaddo and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
