SNHU, in cooperation with the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, is launching a low-residency Master of Fine Arts in fiction and nonfiction. The highly focused program prepares students to write in their chosen genre at a professional level. Novelist and screenwriter Russell Banks will be the visiting writer in 2006.  Among the faculty hired to teach in the program are novelists Merle Drown and Katherine Towler, and nonfiction writer Gretchen Legler. Novelist and critic Robert J. Begiebing will direct and teach in the program. The three summer residencies will be located on campus, while the two winter residencies will be held online, using the university’s Blackboard technology.  The terminal MFA degree is a two-year program of study.  During each six-month semester students will engage in individual study with mentoring faculty. Through attendance at brief residencies (the first to take place in August 2006) students will participate in lectures, readings, and master classes with visiting writers; hone their work through mentors and peer review, read publicly from their own work, and meet with publishing professionals in a community dedicated to creative endeavor.  The program’s second year is dedicated to the completion of a book-length manuscript suitable for submission to editors, and a critical essay suitable for submission to literary and trade journals. For more information, please contact Robert J. Begiebing at r.begiebing@snhu.edu.