master of fine arts degree « Jennifer de Guzman

Jennifer de Guzman is a writer and comics editor living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes stories about sad girls, seawater, bottomless wells, airborne plagues, and horses. You can find links to some of them them in the Selected Works section or read them at her Scribd page.

She also writes "Life in Comics," a monthly column for Publishers Weekly Comics Week, and collaborates on "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," a comics column on Robot 6, with her husband, artist Brian Belew.

Portrait by Brian Belew.

Writing, Post MFA

December marked the second year since I finished my coursework for my Master of Fine Arts degree. Milestones, arbitrary as they might be, can be stressful, can make you ask yourself uncomfortable questions. How far have I come? Am I successful at what I set out to be successful at? I read stories about a writer [...]

Questions I’m Tired of Answering

I get a few people emailing me every year to ask me how to become a comics editor. They seem to think that it’s a line of work that is “fun” or “rewarding” or “cool,” and they want in on the glorious words-and-pictures life. They also seem to think that there’s some secret to getting a [...]

The MFA Workshop Experience, Part Two

Giving Critiques

In an MFA workshop, you will give critiques — often for two or three pieces — every week. This consists not only in taking home a fellow student’s printed work and writing your critique down, but in a critique discussion with the rest of your class. I don’t know about anyone else, but I often [...]

The MFA Writing Workshop Experience

As I mentioned in my last post about getting my MFA in creative writing at San Jose State University, one of the draws for me was the literature units requirement. Of 48 units required for graduation, only 15 must be workshop units. The balance of workshop and literature classes varies from program to program (Iowa’s is [...]

The MFA Experience

I have a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from San Jose State University. It’s a relatively new program, as far as MFA programs go, and I debated with myself for a while before deciding on an MFA instead of an MA. A desire to focus on my own creative work was foremost in [...]