News and Announcements

Class of 2016 Announced!

We welcome poets Marty Cain: Clinton, NY; Virginia K. Henry, Chattanooga, TN; Amie Irwin: Millington, TN; and Jonathan Veach: Kalamazoo, MI. We welcome fiction writers Jason Harrington: Chicago, IL; Mark Inman: Salt Lake City, UT; Jason Molesky: Pittsburgh, PA; Kate Sparks: Indianapolis, IN; and David Tran: North Port, FL.

Alum Wins Stegner!

Huge congrats to Rachel Smith, who graduated in spring of 2012. She’s just been awarded a Stegner at Stanford!

Current MFA Gets Novel Deal

Congrats, Gregory Sherl, current Grisham in poetry, who has a book deal with Algonquin for his fascinating novel written alongside Julianna Baggott! Details are here:

http://www.sobelweber.com/featured-title/future-curious-people

Current MFA Awarded Cave Canem Residency

Congrats, Caroline Williams, who has been awarded a prestigious fellowship to attend Cave Canem!

Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady founded Cave Canem in 1996 with the intuition that African American poets would benefit from having a place of their own in the literary landscape. Over the past 16 years, that intuition has become a conviction. In Cave Canem, emerging poets find sustenance, a safe space to take artistic chances. The organization’s community has grown from a gathering of 26 poets to become an influential movement with a renowned faculty and high-achieving national fellowship of 344. In addition to an annual writing retreat at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, programs include two book prizes with prestigious presses; workshops in New York City and Pittsburgh; Legacy Conversations with such poets and scholars as Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Arnold Rampersad and Derek Walcott; a Poets on Craft series; nationally based readings and panels; and the publication of three anthologies,Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade(University of Michigan Press, 2006), The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009 (Willow Books, 2011).

Another Alum Publishes a Book!

We’re thrilled to announce that recent MFA graduate Sean Ennis just got a contract from Amazon’s new publishing venture for his MFA thesis, “Chase Us.” The book of short stories will be published in Winter 2014. SO proud of Sean’s hard work and let’s start planning that book release party!

ATTENTION, MFA STUDENTS AND ALUMNI—

We celebrated the awesomeness of our program at the AWP convention in Chicago. Thanks for all of those who came by our program happy hour at The Pour House. See you at next year’s party in Seattle!

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations to current student Michael Shea, whose poem, “Rough Draft of a Poem About Heartbeats,” has been selected by Matthew Dickman for inclusion in Best New Poets 2012.

Congratulations to current students Dottie Knight and Chris Allen–both won a Spring dissertation fellowship so they are free of teaching duties this semester. Yup, they are getting paid to write!