Opportunities
Internships
Landing an internship or a job in a field that excites you will require initiative on your part. There are both paid and unpaid internships throughout the metropolitan area. How to choose? We’re here to help, along with Queens College’s Center for Career Engagement and Internships, which offers internship stipends for students who complete unpaid internships. See the English Department’s Career and Internships page for a list of opportunities. You may contact Professor Jason Tougaw if you have questions.
Teaching
Second year students may have the opportunity to compete for teaching positions within the English Department. The number of courses available for MFA students each year varies and depends on budgetary constraints, but MFA students have taught creative writing, literature and composition.
Archival Residencies
Imagine hearing tape recordings of Louis Armstrong and wife Lucille chatting over cocktails in their living room; or Louis and his band during a set. Imagine handling his letters and hand-decorated boxes containing photographs. What might this inspire? Would you write about Satchmo himself or maybe one of your own family members?
For ten years the MFA Program has partnered with the Louis Armstrong House Museum in a residency program. The residencies offer several MFA students the chance to work in the Armstrong archive on campus and to produce original writing prompted by Armstrong’s life and work. A modest stipend is included. In May, the writing is presented in a public reading at the Armstrong House in Corona, Queens.
Other unique campus archives include Civil Rights Archive, Art Books Archive, and a Zine & Chapbook Archive.
Off campus but still a part of CUNY: The Graduate Center’s project Lost & Found that explores and publishes central figures associated with American poetry–including the likes of June Jordan, Edward Dorn, and William S Burroughs.
The Advanced Certificate in English Language Teaching
Queens College is located in one of the most linguistically-diverse places on the planet. Our MFA program is one of the rare programs to offer both a degree in Creative Writing and Literary Translation. With our new partnership, students now have the additional option of an Advanced Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language.
In an increasingly competitive job market, where an MFA alone is often not sufficient to teach on the college-level, this Advanced Certificate in English Language Teaching will enhance the degree and give graduates other options.
For more information, visit the dedicated page here.
Publications, Awards and Events
Armstrong Literary is a journal based in Queens: a borough with a multiplicity of cultures, languages, and experiences. Rather than present a single unified voice, we aim to express the varied landscapes around us as well as our own internal terrain. Founded by students and faculty of the Queens College MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Armstrong Literary is interested in work that pushes boundaries—on an emotional level as well as a linguistic one—poems, stories, translations, and fragments that scatter, ground, croon, and devastate.
Every year, alum Peter Vanderberg selects an alum’s chapbook manuscript for publication by his press Ghostbird Press.
Students in the program have the opportunity to run their own community reading series. A faculty adviser will help facilitate launching.
