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Creative writing.

But Barbara Rodman , associate professor of English , could see that Hoey had a landscape in the characters and setting that should be developed more fully. He took her advice.

"It gave me the confidence to explore it," Hoey says. "That's how the novel came about."

The Butterfly Lady, which tells a story of how residents in an African American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, seek love in spite of barriers such as race, class, gender and sexuality, was published earlier this year by the independent Flaming Giblet Press — fulfilling a lifetime goal for Hoey. The project is just one of many examples of accomplishment by students in UNT's creative writing program .

And Hoey, now an assistant professor of English at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Fla., is one of many alumni who are thriving in the literary scene and now mentoring other writers.

UNT's program, part of the English department, has earned additional prestige by attracting such faculty members as poet B.H. "Pete" Fairchild , who won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and novelist Miroslav Penkov , who recently received the BBC International Short Story Award. In 2012, the UNT program began awarding the $10,000 UNT Rilke Prize , named after the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainier Maria Rilke, to mid-level poets.

But, more importantly, creative writing alumni are winning literary awards and seeing their work published. Many say their writing has grown because of the English department's strong faculty, and the cordial environment that allows students to critique each other's work respectfully.

"We want to draw students who are thrilled and challenged by the environment," says English professor Corey Marks , director of the program.

Main attraction

UNT has a rich literary history that helped to lay the foundation for notable novelists such as Larry McMurtry ('58) and Anne Rice , and Texas Poet Laureates Cleatus Rattan ('65, '69 M.Ed.), Alan Lee Birkelbach ('78) and Jan Seale ('69 M.A.).

The creative writing program has grown in the last two decades thanks to the hiring of senior-level faculty and writers, writing and poetry series and awards, and the students themselves.

During his tenure as director from 1995 to 2001, Bruce Bond , Regents Professor of English, helped launch the master's degree and the Ph.D. concentration in creative writing — UNT is one of only three Texas universities to offer such a doctoral program. He also helped develop UNT's Visiting Writers Series , which brings acclaimed novelists and poets to campus.

Marks, who took over the program in 2005, increased the variety and number of writers on the faculty.

These faculty serving as mentors are the main reason students are drawn to UNT.

Hoey read the works of Rodman and John Tait , assistant professor of English, and felt they could help him grow as a writer. He also worked with Walton Muyumba , associate professor of English.

"Because of them, the novel's actually finished," Hoey says. "They challenged me just to think differently as a writer, to deepen my characters and make them more complex."

Rodman says she asks students questions that therapists might ask — "What do you think the story is trying to do?" and "What does the character want?" — so they can better understand their characters' motivations.

Poet Ash Bowen ('12 Ph.D.) loved Bond's poetry and received valuable advice from him — such as getting each line exactly right, even if he had to rewrite it a hundred times, before he wrote the next line.

Both Bond and Marks expected their students to work hard and produce work.

"You don't sit around waiting for inspiration to strike," says Bowen, now an English instructor at the University of Alabama. "You have to write every day. The rigor of the program ultimately makes everyone a better writer."

Work and workshops

Just as important as the faculty members' advice to students is the feedback from fellow classmates. Along with literature courses, students are required to take workshop classes in which they critique each other's work.

"There's a level of respect that is key," she says. "You're sharing your baby."

But there can be challenging moments. A classmate once asked Hoey why one character in a story was so angry.

"I had to say something," Hoey says about the exchange. "'No, you're not reading it right,' I answered. It was a very tense moment in the workshop.

"We were friends, but we also were critical of each other because we wanted to become better writers."

In order to earn their degree, students must complete a thesis or dissertation that consists of a novel or a series of poems or essays and a critical preface explaining their work in the larger literary context. For students who want to get published, the process can be just as rigorous as getting their degree.

But UNT prepares them well for success in both academia and publishing. Students read and edit submissions for the American Literary Review — a biannual literary magazine established at UNT in 1990 — which gives them a sense of where their writing fits in the literary world. They also can attend panels about the business of writing hosted by the program.

A few students have taken the initiative and created the Kracken Reading Series , which brings in poets for readings.

"Many students are hungry to do all of those things," Marks says. "That's the thrill of the job. You get to work with talented people who are always trying to challenge themselves."

Now in print

And students who have completed the program are being rewarded for their hard work. Bowen's dissertation, a collection of poems about loss, beat out 300 other entries for the Orphic Book Prize and will be published by Dream Horse Press in August. He also co-manages the online poetry magazine Linebreak .

Davidson has written three poetry collections. The most recent, From the Firehills (Southern Illinois Press), was inspired by his travels to Italy, where he studied thanks to a $23,000 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship he earned at UNT.

But he says getting published is not the end goal.

"You've got to love just to write without praise or acknowledgement. It reaffirms what you're doing," he says.

Hoey, who spent five years working on The Butterfly Lady, agrees.

"I discovered that writing the truth is ugly and painful but necessary for it to be good art," he says. "Once you commit yourself to telling the truth, you have to follow through."

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Department of English

M.f.a. creative writing.

English Department

Physical Address: 200 Brink Hall

Mailing Address: English Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 1102 Moscow, Idaho 83844-1102

Phone: 208-885-6156

Email: [email protected]

Web: English

M.F.A. Faculty

Leah hampton, assistant professor.

[email protected]

Michael McGriff

Associate professor.

Brink Hall 217

[email protected]

Scott Slovic

Distinguished professor emeritus.

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Alexandra Teague

Associate chair and professor of english; co-director, mfa in creative writing; co-director, women's gender & sexuality studies.

Brink Hall 228

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Retired Faculty

Distinguished professor emerita.

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Ron McFarland

Professor emeritus.

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Daniel Orozco

Associate professor emeritus.

[email protected]

Joy Passanante

Professor emerita.

Robert Wrigley

[email protected]

Creative Writing

The Department of English offers creative writing instruction in multiple formats and offers several degrees and qualifications.

Undergraduate

At the undergraduate level, students who are enrolled in a B.A. program at UT Austin can pursue the Creative Writing Certificate .

For graduate students, there are two degree options in creative writing:

• the New Writers Project MFA in Fiction and Poetry , and
• the Michener Center MFA in Writing .

We invite you to visit the center's pages for information on their programs.

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Stanford Sparks Literary Backlash by Phasing Out Creative Writing Lecturers’ Jobs

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Sarah Frisch starts each of her creative writing courses at Stanford University by letting her students know the classroom is a working community.

Stanford can be a difficult, high-pressure space, and Frisch said creative writing courses can be a respite.

“Students read this incredible literature, and they meet people they ordinarily just read about,” Frisch said. “But I think the part that’s really powerful is to see that writers are ordinary people. Writers write within friendships, and they get plugged into that community.”

Now, Frisch and other lecturers worry that the job security and lecturer longevity that make those relationships possible will disappear. During a video meeting last week, Frisch and her colleagues learned the Stanford Creative Writing Program’s nearly two dozen lecturers would lose their current positions over the next two years.

Instead, a faculty working group recommended the program’s lectureships consist of one-year appointments with the possibility of renewal for a limited period of up to five years.

Many of the current lecturers have taught at the university for more than a decade.

“I feel like our students were betrayed,” said Frisch, who has been a Stanford lecturer since 2009. “The whole program is going to be based on temporary labor, and that is a sea change from the program that we have. And that means that the program we have no longer exists.”

Transitioning to short-term futures

In a statement posted on the university’s website on Wednesday, the School of Humanities and Sciences and Creative Writing Program leadership defended the changes, arguing that the lectureship program, known as Jones lectureships, was originally intended for limited-term appointments.

“We plan for there to be as many lecturers in the Program in five years as there are today, and we expect to offer more classes then than now,” the statement reads. “The university, school, and numerous generous donors are committed to not only the excellence of the program but also its growth.”

Colleagues credit the Creative Writing Program’s success and popularity to support for lecturers from the late Eavan Boland, a distinguished poet and former director of the program. Boland, who died in 2020, encouraged lecturers to develop their own ambitious classes and foster deep mentoring relationships with undergraduates.

“She empowered lecturers not only to have job longevity but to use that time to innovate in the classroom,” said Nina Schloesser Tárano, who has been teaching in the Creative Writing Program since 2012.

“This is being treated as a luxury — my ability to be there for the entirety of somebody’s career as an undergraduate. But it’s my job, and it should be,” Schloesser Tárano said.

Students, alums and writers sound off

The changes to Stanford’s Creative Writing Program quickly generated widespread outrage online. In a Medium post , lecturer Tom Kealey noted that the changes come a year after lecturers, who made around $52,000, asked for a pay increase.

Writer Joyce Carol Oates wrote on X , “I am puzzled most by the lack of simple collegiality & generosity at one of the most wealthy universities in the world. Stanford’s endowment could support an entire nation.”

Kyle Wang, who graduated from Stanford in 2023 with a master’s in the modern thought and literature program, started a petition calling on the university to change course and reinstate the lecturers whose contracts will be phased out.

Wang said the lecturers in the Creative Writing Program changed his life.

When Wang first came to Stanford, he was unsure what to study. He had grown up in Silicon Valley, “where everyone and their mother” worked in tech or tech-adjacent fields. He took computer science class after computer science class. Then, in January 2019, he took his first creative writing class.

“A couple of weeks later, I think I knew deep down that I was going to be studying English,” Wang said. “Every single class that I’ve taken with a Jones lecturer has, in some new way, shape, or form, not only pushed me as a writer and thinker — it showed me a different way of imagining that a life in writing and a life in the arts could be possible.”

He worries for future generations of students who may not be able to build those same life-changing relationships with lecturers and about the institutional knowledge that could be lost.

Sarah Frisch is not sure what’s next when her lectureship ends. Classes start again next month, and she said in the meantime, she will focus on her students.

“I just want them to know those of us who are in this crappy position see and hear them,” Frisch said. “We’re willing to fight for their experience and their futures.”

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Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writingm, Distance Education (MFA)

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Creative Writers are at the heart of our cultural industries. Poets, novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, graphic novelists, magazine writers: they entertain, inform and inspire. For more than 15 years, UBC's Creative Writing program has been educating writers through distance education in a program which complements our long-standing on-campus MFA program.

A studio program with the writing workshop at its heart, the distance MFA focuses on the work created by students as the primary text. Through intensive peer critique and craft discussion, faculty and students work together with the same goal: literary excellence.

The MFA granted to distance students is the same degree as granted to on-campus students, and the same criteria of excellence in multiple genres of study apply.

For specific program requirements, please refer to the departmental program website

What makes the program unique?

UBC's Optional-Residency (Distance) MFA was the first distance education MFA program in Canada and remains the only full MFA which can be taken completely online. It is designed to be uniquely flexible, allowing students across Canada and around the world to study writing at the graduate level while still living in their local communities and fulfilling career and family obligations.

The program is unique globally for its multi-genre approach to writing instruction: students are required to work in multiple genres during the course of the degree. As a fine arts program rather than an English program, students focus on the practice of writing rather than the study of literature. Students may work on a part-time basis, taking up to five years to complete the degree.

My time in the Creative writing grad program at UBC has given me the discipline and focus I need to complete long-form writing pieces and larger poetry projects.

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Minimum academic requirements.

The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies establishes the minimum admission requirements common to all applicants, usually a minimum overall average in the B+ range (76% at UBC). The graduate program that you are applying to may have additional requirements. Please review the specific requirements for applicants with credentials from institutions in:

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Each program may set higher academic minimum requirements. Please review the program website carefully to understand the program requirements. Meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee admission as it is a competitive process.

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Applicants from a university outside Canada in which English is not the primary language of instruction must provide results of an English language proficiency examination as part of their application. Tests must have been taken within the last 24 months at the time of submission of your application.

Minimum requirements for the two most common English language proficiency tests to apply to this program are listed below:

TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language - internet-based

Overall score requirement : 90

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Overall score requirement : 6.5

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The GRE is not required.

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Instructions regarding thesis supervisor contact for Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writingm, Distance Education (MFA)

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Graduates of the MFA program have found success in varied fields related to writing and communication. The MFA qualifies graduates for teaching at the university level and many graduates have gone on to teach at colleges and universities in Canada, the United States and overseas as well as holding writing residencies. Many publish books and win literary awards. Others go on to work in publishing, and graduates have become book and magazine editors.

Although the MFA is a terminal degree, some graduates go on to further study in PhD programs in the US, UK and Australia.

The Optional-Residency MFA is particularly well suited to teachers: our teacher-students have been able to gain an advanced degree while continuing their careers.

• Research Supervisors

This list shows faculty members with full supervisory privileges who are affiliated with this program. It is not a comprehensive list of all potential supervisors as faculty from other programs or faculty members without full supervisory privileges can request approvals to supervise graduate students in this program.

• Belcourt, Billy-Ray (Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry)
• French, Whitney (memory, loss, technology, and nature)
• Hopkinson, Nalo (Creative writing, n.e.c.; Humanities and the arts; Creative Writing: Speculative Ficton, Fantasy, Science Fiction, especially Other Voices)
• Irani, Anosh
• Koncan, Frances
• Leavitt, Sarah (Autobiographical comics; Formal experimentation in comics; Comics pedagogy)
• Lee, Nancy (Fiction; Creative Writing)
• Lyon, Annabel (Novels, stories and news)
• Maillard, Keith (Fiction, poetry)
• Marzano-Lesnevich, Alex (Nonfiction)
• McGowan, Sharon (Planning of film productions from concept to completion)
• Medved, Maureen (Fiction, writing for screen)
• Nicholson, Cecily (Languages and literature; Poetry)
• Ohlin, Alix (Fiction; Screenwriting; Environmental writing)
• Pohl-Weary, Emily (Fiction; Writing for Youth)
• Svendsen, Linda (Script development; Novels, stories and news; Writing for Television; Fiction)
• Taylor, Timothy (fiction and nonfiction)
• Vigna, John (Novels, stories and news; Fiction, Literary Non-Fiction, Creative Writing)

Related Programs

Same specialization.

• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Same Academic Unit

• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre (MFA)
• Master of Fine Arts in Film Production and Creative Writing (MFA)

At the UBC Okanagan Campus

• Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Further Information

Specialization.

Creative Writing combines the best of traditional workshop and leading-edge pedagogy. Literary cross-training offers opportunities in a broad range of genres including fiction, poetry, screenplay, podcasting, video game writing and graphic novel.

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Stanford Is Making a (Fixable) Mistake

The Jones Lecturer program in creative writing at Stanford has grown into a model when it comes to meeting student needs. For some reason, they’re blowing it up.

By  John Warner

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Last week, if you’d asked me for an ideal model for establishing a program that employs nontenured faculty in a fair and sustainable way while serving student needs by delivering excellent instruction, I would’ve pointed you to the Stanford University creative writing Jones Lecturers program.

This week, as reported by Ryan Quinn here at IHE , it was announced that Stanford will be firing all of the existing 23 Jones Lecturers over the course of two years and replacing them with new people.

Stanford is apparently going scorched earth on what has been a model program. What is going on here?

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To answer my question, in addition to Quinn’s reporting, we have a series of posts on Medium from Tom Kealey, one of the Jones Lecturers, who has been at Stanford for 20 years.

Dumbfounded, I also reached out personally to talk to Kealey, and he told me exactly what’s in his posts and his comments to Ryan Quinn: that despite being praised for their excellent work, all existing lecturers will be phased out over two years and replaced by new faculty on short-term contracts with finite limits on renewal.

I guess this is happening, but from my perspective, it makes absolutely zero sense, not for Stanford’s students, not for Stanford’s faculty or administration, not for Stanford’s reputation, not for anything.

There’s lots of stuff apparently burbling underneath the surface here that the public is not privy to and maybe isn’t even fully appreciated by faculty working in different silos within Stanford. Consider this me trying to put together some pieces in order to make sense of my own shock.

Longtime chair of Stanford creative writing Eavan Boland started and nurtured the program along with lecturers like Kealey as a quasi-personal project. Her passing in 2020 left a void that no one has filled. The small cadre of existing tenured creative writing faculty seems disinclined to do the administrative heavy lifting for a program that has grown to be a significant share of the overall offerings in the Stanford English department. According to a fact sheet provided to me by Kealey, in addition to creative writing being over 50 percent of the courses in English (90 percent of which are taught by Jones Lecturers), two-thirds of English majors choose a creative writing focus, and just under half of English majors choose a Jones Lecturer as their adviser.

In some ways, the successful growth of the program is the very thing that has it in the crosshairs.

While everyone in Stanford administration says it isn’t an issue of funding, the fact that longtime lecturers asked for and received raises last year suggests another possible complication. You know who isn’t going to agitate for a raise in the future? Someone on a short, fixed-term fellowship who knows they’re not going to be sticking around long term anyway.

I’m going to do something out of character for me and express some sympathy for the administration in this case. It’s clear that the program and the number of courses and students it serves has grown far beyond what can or should be managed on an ad hoc basis. This thing needs structure; guidelines for hiring, evaluation and retention; and sufficient capacity to administrate those duties.

I have even more sympathy for the administration. (Let’s not get used to this.)

Because of the incredible growth and development, the program has outstripped its original intention. As conceived, the Jones Lectureship was a landing spot for a limited number of the creative writing Stegner Fellows. The Stegner is the most prestigious creative writing fellowship in the country, a two-year program that requires no teaching and provides lots of time to write, along with a generous stipend (by creative writing fellowship standards). It is an incubator for future major literary writers and works. Stegner Fellows in fiction include Ottessa Moshfegh, Jamel Brinkley, NoViolet Bulawayo, Anthony Marra, Justin Torres, Maggie Shipstead, Jesmyn Ward, ZZ Packer and my old M.F.A. mate, the Pulitzer Prize winner and current professor of creative writing at Stanford Adam Johnson.

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The Jones Lectureship was conceived as additional incubation time post-Stegner, including teaching duties, the kind of required experience for pursuing a tenure-track job in creative writing.

The program grew, and while it remained a launching pad for some, for others it became a final destination, where they could engage in the kind of teaching that changes student lives done by people dedicated to that aspect of the university mission. For example, Kealey co-created a graphic novel project, a novel-writing course where students complete a full manuscript over the course of a semester and the Levinthal Tutorials, a one-on-one mentorship program between Stegner Fellows and Stanford undergraduates.

What was conceived as a temp job became something else, something that has benefited students and the university. I get that this was not the intention and managing this kind of program is more involved than envisioned, but what is gained by scaling back and putting the courses in the hands of less experienced faculty who, by definition, will not be trying to put down roots and further the institutional mission, but instead channeling their energies toward their individual launches?

This has become complicated for Stanford, and maybe a purge allows for a reset, but it is strange to me that they are not ready or willing to take advantage of this amazing thing that has happened, almost by accident.

Consider the competitive advantage in enrollment among technical and professional majors who may also desire a double major or minor in creative writing and have a chance to be taught by highly experienced, highly dedicated, highly accomplished faculty.

(The current Jones Lecturers have won dozens of fellowships, prizes and grants, and the longtime lecturers have CVs that look like those of tenured faculty anywhere in the country.)

Consider the halo effect for the English department as a whole, as more students are exposed to their programming through creative writing.

Consider how the program has been and could continue to be a feather in the cap of Stanford as an institution that has the resources to not only maintain what’s been built but continue to grow and innovate.

This thing is just too good to let go, and yet that seems like what Stanford is going to do.

It’s a shame, because this looks easily solvable to me.

Yes, it needs administering, but I assume there are existing lecturers who could be tasked with those duties as part of their jobs.

Yes, it’s possible that the teaching load that was conceived for people on the career launching pad is not appropriate for those in their landing spot, but this is something easily addressed and codified in clear contracts.

Yes, there must be room for some number of Stegner Fellows to move into a lectureship. Obviously not everyone can stay forever, but not everyone will want to stay forever. Some balance between long-term contracted faculty (say, three- or five-year contracts following initial probationary periods), and shorter, limited-term faculty is entirely common across higher ed—and this is the ideal situation for that kind of structure.

Additionally, the fact sheet about the program indicates there were 314 students on the wait list for classes in spring 2023. This suggests to me that there’s room for growth in terms of student demand.

Put it under the auspices of the English department, with its own administrators who report up to the chair. Or be even bolder: Spin it off into its own program and tap into the sources of funding that have already supported creative writing at Stanford so generously.

For some reason, this feels personal, maybe because my background is in creative writing, or because I’ve seen too many examples of years of dedicated work of NTT faculty that has a direct benefit to students flushed away by shortsighted decisions. Maybe it’s because I would have (metaphorically) killed for an opportunity like a Stegner Fellowship or Jones Lectureship. (Me and my work were not up to snuff at the time.)

Maybe it feels personal because when I was an undergrad, it was one creative writing professor at the University of Illinois, Philip Graham, who cared enough about the well-being of his students to help put me on the path that has led me here. I see the Jones Lecturer program as an opportunity for that kind of experience at scale (to use a term familiar to those in Silicon Valley).

To walk away from this when there are the resources, personnel and student desire to keep it going just seems like a terrible waste.

I hope Stanford finds a better way forward.

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‘It’s a tremendous honor’: Ebony Lumumba receives faculty fellowship

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - A Jackson State University department chair has received a “tremendous honor.”

Ebony Lumumba, Ph.D., chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Jackson State University, has been named a 2025 Association of Writers and Writing Programs HBCU Faculty Fellow.

“It’s a tremendous honor to have been selected. Black writers and Black schools deserve this support and attention,” Lumumba said in a statement. “Some of the most brilliant stories of our time were crafted by minds educated at HBCUs. I am elated that I get to work with the new vanguard of our field and support their writing journeys.”

According to a news release, the fellowship program is designed to help Historically Black Colleges and Universities faculty members build and enhance creative writing programs at their schools, and Lumumba’s work at Jackson State “is a testament to this mission.”

Among her achievements, Lumumba co-created her department’s creative writing program and has raised more than $100,000 to support it. Students at Jackson State can receive degrees with a minor or a concentration in creative writing.

Additionally, she “spearheaded” a partnership with her department and the Mississippi Book Festival, Lemuria Books, and Visit Jackson to Emmy-winning author Tabitha Brown. The release states that she also served as chair for the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival in 2023.

She has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Mississippi, a Master of Arts in English from Georgia State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Spelman College.

She is the wife of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and has two children.

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