Wichita State MFA in Creative Writing

TWO DAYS LEFT before our PRIORITY application deadline on February 1! The MFA Program in Creative Writing at WSU offers GTA stipends of $10,000 w/ free tuition, plus opportunities for additional funding; Distinguished and Emerging Visiting Writer Tutorials; publishing internships and service-learning opportunities; and a close-knit, supportive, and diverse community led by award-winning faculty.

(Note: We also welcome applications after the priority deadline, but the sooner you get them in, the better!)

Congratulations to Chinonyelum Anyichie (Fiction MFA '24) for being awarded a $20,000 grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. Chinonyelum is working on a collection of stories, tentatively titled Taming the Wild, about the experiences of Igbo women living within a strict patriarchal culture.

https://www.elizabethgeorgefoundation.org/who-we-are

Please join us for the launch reading for the new issue of Mikrokosmos, the student-run literary journal of WSU, Thursday, May 19th, at the Ulrich/McNight. Reception starts at 5pm, and the reading begins at 5:30. The event is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

The Wichita State Creative Writing Program is thrilled to announce that Jason Allen will join our MFA Fiction Faculty this Fall. Jason is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The East End from Harper Collins, and he will teach both graduate and undergraduate fiction workshops at Wichita State beginning in August.

Welcome to Wichita, Jason! 🎉🥳🙌🏼

Jason Allen – Author of The East End Author of The East End

Congratulations to our 2022 MFA Graduates—Janet Federico, Robert Burke, Luke Ulatowski, Merrick Preti, Reid Kurkerewicz, Robert Yates, and Stephen Woodgeard! We are proud of you and can't wait to see what you do!

Here are highlights from the MFA graduation reading at the Ulrich Museum of Art two weeks ago. Thanks to everyone at the Ulrich and to Kendra Cremin for the terrific photos!

Please join us for our MFA graduation reading this Sunday, May 2, at 2pm, via Zoom. This year’s reading will feature not only our 2021 graduates (Kelsey Abendroth, Tyler Dillow, and Austin Putty) but also several of our 2020 graduates (Dan Arndt, John Darr, Sydney Martin, and Becca Yenser).

You can register for the event here.

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Writing Now/Reading Now | MFA Graduate Reading. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Come celebrate the graduating class of Wichita State’s MFA Program in Creative Writing as they read from their final projects. Writing Now/Reading Now is cosponsored by the WSU Department of English, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Watermark Books & Café, and the Ulrich Museum of Ar...

What are you doing right now? It's not too late to drop in to hear our Spring 2021 Distinguished Visiting Writer Michael Parker read over Zoom from the Zoom Ulrich Museum. The reading starts in half an hour at 6 Central.

Follow the link to register here:

Fiction Reading: Michael Parker - Ulrich Museum of Art Oklahoma is the setting for Prairie Fever, Michael Parker’s seventh and latest novel, a book that pulls the reader into what one critic calls a “whole family acting out what can and can’t be forgotten, against the backdrops of prairie and range—characters so magnificently and sometimes comic...

A big congratulations to Soon Wiley '14 for selling his debut novel in a two-book deal to Dutton-Penguin. We also want to thank Soon for visiting with our students and Ben Nickol's fiction workshop last month. So happy for his success!

A belated congratulations to WSU Faculty Poet Sam Taylor for receiving the 2020 Anne Halley Prize from The Massachusetts Review for his poem "Postcards from Babel."

https://www.massreview.org/node/8619

Tyler Dillow '21 is now an Assistant Editor at X-Ray Magazine, but before he joined their staff, he published two hybrid shorts shorts there. Tyler is one of several current students who have been working across genres, and here's a densely lyrical piece of his published last year.

https://xraylitmag.com/expanse-by-tyler-dillow/fiction/

TYLER DILLOW Archives | X-R-A-Y EXPANSE by Tyler Dillow Posted: June 4, 2020  ·  Tagged: FICTION · TYLER DILLOW · UNDER 750 WORDS She talks to me at the bar. She talks about him. Him, the fu***ng bastard. How could you not fall in love with him and how could you not hate him? She talks back at me. On the front patio of the ba...

Check out this poem by Kallie Falandays '16 in Bedfellows Magazine's Little Black Book Anthology!

https://www.bedfellowsmagazine.com/lbb7.html

In her final year in the program, Shannon Nakai Wingert , class of '18, wrote powerful poems about deep loss and how it both challenged and reaffirmed her faith. It's been wonderful to see the blessings she's enjoyed since then, including her success publishing these poems. Here's a poem from this series she published in the beautiful journal Image.

https://imagejournal.org/article/new-years-day/

New Year’s Day - Image Journal Suffering, I once believed, was a human privilege, but in that moment I watched as God died, as God witnessed.

Congratulations to Robert Burke '22 on his publication this week in HaveHasHad Magazine. Robert has been working in a hybrid zone between fiction and poetry and participating in both workshops.

https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/excerpts-from-a-novel-yet-unnamed

HAD :: Excerpts From A Novel (Yet Unnamed) Father has a large family that he does not get along with, but in my mother’s small family, he got along with her Uncle Howard because he respected Howard’s passions.

Our priority application deadline is in two weeks, February 1!

We thought it would be a good time to highlight some recent work published by our students, alumni, and faculty. We start today with alumnus Woody Skinner's story collection A THOUSAND DISTANT RADIOS, which was released a few years ago and was longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

http://www.atelier26books.com/a-thousand-distant-radios.html

A Thousand Distant Radios * Featured in Foreword Reviews Debut Fiction Spotlight Issue, October 2017 * * An Anticipated Book of 2017, Memorious Magazine * * Featured in Electric Literature's ​ 2017 Great Indie Press...

Some of us at WSU now are huge Anne Boyer fans and were surprised to learn that she graduated from WSU in the 90s!

We are thrilled to congratulate her on winning the Pulitzer Prize in Creative Nonfiction for The Undying!

https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-boyer

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care, by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) An elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America.

Congratulations to 2019 WSU Distinguished Visiting Poet Jericho Brown for winning the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry!

https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jericho-brown

The Tradition, by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press) A collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.

If you're in or around Columbia, MO on 12/10, catch WSU faculty member Ben Nickol reading from his latest collection of stories (SUN RIVER) with The Next Weather Reading Series.

Hey CoMO! // get ready:

WSU MFA ALUMS (and students)—share your recent publications and accomplishments by replying to this thread!

(You can also share those of another alum who is modest or not on here.)

WSU poetry professor Sam Taylor spent 15 years working on this ten page poem in the new issue of The Adroit Journal. It only takes about ten minutes to read. Lots of other strong work in the issue to check out too.

Issue Thirty: Sam Taylor | The Adroit Journal - The Adroit Journal Note— Shofar: an ancient musical instrument made from a ram’s horn that is blown on the Jewish New Year and other special occasions to symbolize the call of God. “Here I Am” or “I am ready, my Lord”—“Heinini”—is said throughout the Old Testament in response to God’s call.

Can we pick them or what? The last two poets to read for WSU's Writing Now, Reading Now series are BOTH finalists for the 2019 National Book Award. Congratulations to Jericho Brown and Ilya Kaminsky!
https://www.nationalbook.org/the-2019-national-book-awards-finalists-announced/

The 2019 National Book Awards Finalists Announced Twenty-five Finalists to contend for National Book Awards in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature

Hope to see everyone tomorrow night for faculty member Ben Nickol's reading at the Ulrich Museum of Art on Wichita State's Campus. Reception at 5:30 pm and reading to follow. In the meantime, check out Ben's interview about his latest book with KMUW's Beth Golay.
https://www.kmuw.org/post/marginalia-ben-nickol

Marginalia: Ben Nickol Short story collections can be difficult to discuss in one sitting, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Luckily, with his new collection, author Ben

Kudos to another WSU MFA alum. While at WSU, Chance Swaim's investigative journalism at The Sunflower got everyone talking. Now, as a reporter at the Wichita Eagle, he has the whole town talking about his expose "Wichita’s mayor steered multi-million-dollar water plant contract to friends." The details here are almost as shocking as some of our national politics.

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article234701932.html

Wichita’s mayor steered multi-million-dollar water plant contract to friends Going against staff recommendations, Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell pushed to have the City Council award a multi-million-dollar contract to help build a new water plant to his friends and political supporters.

Here are some pictures of the wonderful reading last night. Thanks, Ilya! And thanks to everyone who came out!

Becca Yenser John Darr Ben Nickol Caroline Erickson Kerry Jones Branine Tyler James Dillow Sydney Martin Joey Lemon Ilya Kaminsky
Jana Erwin Durfee

Did you read Ilya Kaminsky's GORGEOUS essay in the NYTimes Magazine? Writing doesn't get much better than this. Come see him read on September 10th in McKnight Art Center on the WSU campus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/magazine/searching-for-a-lost-odessa-and-a-deaf-childhood.html

Searching for a Lost Odessa — and a Deaf Childhood A poet returns to the city of his birth.

Jericho Brown did a beautiful interview with Wichita KMUW radio host Beth Golay. He reads tomorrow!

https://www.kmuw.org/post/jericho-brown-tradition

Jericho Brown on 'The Tradition' At the beginning of 2019, NPR, Publishers Weekly , Lit Hub , and other national media flagged at Jericho Brown's new poetry collection as one to watch. The

The NYTimes reviews Jericho Brown's new book The Tradition! Come see him read this Tuesday!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/books/review/jericho-brown-tradition-poems.html

A Poetic Body of Work Grapples With the Physical Body at Risk In “The Tradition,” Jericho Brown witnesses and celebrates vulnerability and resilience in a country that too often scorns or condemns them.

Congratulations to the entire Mikrokosmos staff for a great release party reading Friday and a beautiful issue. Here are a few pics!

Did you catch WSU's 2019 Distinguished Visiting Poet Jericho Brown on the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine recently?!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/30/t-magazine/black-authors.html

We can hardly keep up with all the exciting links for Jericho. He's also recently been on the cover of APR, had a poem featured in the New York Times, and given a great interview with Bennington Review. We'll send some more links out soon! Jericho arrives March 18th, and he will give a reading at the Ulrich Museum on April 9th.

Due to WSU's weather closure, tonight's reading by Margaret Malone has been canceled and rescheduled for Thursday, February 21st. We look forward to seeing you then!