Saint Leo’s low-residency degree is a family- and career-friendly option for graduate study. Instead of relocating to attend a full-time graduate program, you attend classes on campus for just one week annually in July. The remainder of your coursework is completed online from home.

Low-residency degrees are particularly attractive to students who have career, community, or family commitments that make quitting a job and relocating across the country impractical or even impossible. Many low-residency programs require two residencies per year; the Saint Leo MA requires just one, making it that much more accessible.

The 2025 summer residency will be held from Monday July 14th to Saturday July 19th on University Campus.

Each day is divided into several different sessions and goes from around 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Students attend a workshop of their peers where they provide feedback on each other’s in-progress fiction, poetry, or nonfiction. We eat lunch together as a community on campus. Our faculty and visiting writers lead lectures, craft talks, and discussions on topics ranging from writing techniques to publishing strategies, all with a focus on teaching you how to enter the world of professional writing. On some days you’ll attend readings by faculty mentors and distinguished visiting writers, and on others you’ll have the option to share your own work with each other at informal open mic events. We like to begin the week with a dinner out together in Tampa, and we end with a celebratory reading from our graduating students and a graduation ceremony and reception on campus.

Students who choose a low-residency program for graduate study do not come from any specific demographic. They range from recent college graduates who wish to continue their academic studies, to working professionals seeking to explore new career options, and to retirees pursuing the long-deferred dream of creative writing.

Our program is designed to be completed in just two calendar years. It requires 36 graduate credit hours of study. Students attend four semesters of study, plus three summer residencies.

We offer tracks of study in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Within each of those genres, the possibilities are endless. We do not favor any particular school of writing; we are excited by both literary and genre-specific styles (fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, YA, etc). No matter your genre or style, our main focus is to help you improve your writing through workshop and literature courses and personalized attention from core faculty members.

The ability to produce concise and thoughtful written work is a fundamental skill not just for fiction writers, essayists, and poets, but also for successful professionals in almost any field. This is in keeping with the mission of Saint Leo University, which fosters a student-centered environment in which the love of learning is of prime importance.

The reasons someone pursues a graduate degree in the arts are as varied as the students who seek those degrees. Our degree is aimed primarily at students who are approaching writing as a type of personal development, or those who are just beginning their exploration of the writing life. That means our community is one that offers mentorship and supportive critique, and provides models of the professional writing life in all its various forms, helping students build a base of skills in the study of both writing and literature.

The MA program at Saint Leo offers a broad approach to preparation for a possible writing career, requiring not only creative work but also the study of literature. These literature courses, called foundations courses, give an MA student a sense of both the historical and contemporary trends in their chosen genre of study. While the MFA has been considered a terminal degree in the past, many writers—especially those who wish to teach at the university level—elect to continue their studies through the doctoral degree.

Saint Leo is a national leader in providing educational options for students of all types. All our programs are designed to assist professionals in meeting challenging career goals, and to prepare them for the rapidly changing world in which they live and work. But there is no “typical” low-residency student; the community is necessarily diverse in age and background, but it is very much a community, bound together by a shared love of writing and support for each other’s creative endeavors.

As you explore your continuing education, costs need not be an obstacle. The Saint Leo MA is an affordable advanced degree, costing as much as fifty percent less than degrees at other institutions.

Financial aid programs are available and there are ways to help you finance your educational investments. It may be helpful to know that there are federal student loan programs for graduate and professional students. Graduate students may be eligible for up to $20,500 in Unsubsidized Direct Loans.

Applying for financial aid is easy! The only application you need is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which can be completed online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

Alternate ways to finance your education:

• Employer assistance
• Military tuition assistance
• Veteran benefits (352) 588-7534 or (352) 588-8980