The master of fine arts in book art and creative writing, the first such program in the country, is designed to allow you to develop your growth as both a writer and a visual artist, to enhance your understanding of the visual forms of contemporary writing, and to explore opportunities at the intersection of these two fields through the creation and production of your own books. You will join a select group of book art students situated within the intimate community of writers in our creative writing programs, whose alumni maintain strong connections with one another and with Bay Area writing communities. Graduates of our writing programs publish their work in magazines, anthologies, and full-length collections; regularly perform at local and national venues; and are themselves successful publishers and editors. Graduates of the MFA in book art and creative writing can look forward to these many facets of publishing as well as to workshop teaching, production work, exhibition curation, and of course the display and purchase of your own work by libraries, galleries, and museums.

While at Mills, you'll have the opportunity to study with renowned artists and core faculty members Kathleen Walkup and Julie Chen in book art, as well as with members of Mills' distinguished core faculty in creative writing: Juliana Spahr, Stephen Ratcliffe, Cornelia Nixon, and Elmaz Abinader. You'll also have the opportunity to work with exciting visiting writers such as Truong Tran, Leslie Scalapino, Cristina Garcia, and Micheline Aharonian Marcom. In recent years the Book Art Program has welcomed many national and international artists to its classes, including Helen Mirra, Susan King, Ronald King, Susan Johanknecht, Sarah Bodman, Tom Sowden, and Daniel Kelm.

Every semester several prominent writers visit campus as part of our Contemporary Writers Series. As a student in the MFA in book art and creative writing program, you will have the singular opportunity of working with writers such as Edwin Torres, Bhanu Kapil, and Joan Retallack to produce an original broadside of their writing. Past writers who have contributed work for the broadsides include Grace Paley, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snickett), Rosemarie and Keith Waldrop, Michael Palmer, and Kenneth Goldsmith. As a writing student, you also will have the opportunity to attend a workshop or meet directly with some of the writers from this notable series.

At Mills you'll engage with your own writing and artists' books as well as with those of your peers. As a writer, you'll listen and participate in our regular Works in Progress reading series. As an artist, you'll create in a dedicated graduate studio with your colleagues, where you will have the opportunity to work with a broad range of letterpress and hand-binding equipment. You will participate in regular critiques, mount small interim exhibitions, and finally display your book art thesis as part of your graduate exhibition. You may find yourself collaborating with a musician, a dancer, or another visual artist or writer as you join the community of innovative MFA programs across the campus.

In short, your Mills experience will be not only one-of-a-kind, it will give you the opportunity for a truly unique degree that you simply can't get anywhere else.