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Local Resources

• VCU's Creative Writing Program The Department of English at VCU is home to a creative writing program where graduate students can earn a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. In addition to the program itself, the Department publishes Blackbird: an Online Journal of Literature and the Arts , as well as hosting a variety of readings from VCU and visiting writers.
• James River Writers The James River Writers association is a " nonprofit, Richmond, Virginia-based group of professional writers and friends of literature who have joined to promote the art of writing and the love of books in Virginia." They sponsor many different activities, from a local writing conference to regular readings and poetry slams. Substantial calendar of listings for local literary events.
• The Poetry Society of Virginia "Since 1923 the PSV has been striving to encourage excellence in the writing, reading, and appreciation of poetry." This association runs competitions, holds meetings across the state, and has various useful information on their website.
• The Virginia Writers Club This organization is a "501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of writers and poets, screenwriters and playwrights, journalists and essayists, and other publishing professionals whose purpose is to support and stimulate the art, craft and business of writing, as well as advocate the literary arts in the Commonwealth." Their local chapter meets on a monthly basis as well as having separate critique groups.
• Visual Arts Center of Richmond The Visual Arts Center has a number of individual writing classes that can be taken by adults and children.

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Call: 1-866-VCU-BOOK E-mail: [email protected] More contact information

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Department of English

College of humanities and sciences.

Clint McCown, MFA

[email protected]

(804) 828-8315

Hibbs Hall, 900 Park Ave., room 315

Curriculum vitae

Creative Writing

• MFA, Fiction Writing, Indiana University
• MA, English Literature, Wake Forest University
• BA, English Literature, Speech Communication & Theatre Arts
• Additional training, Circle-in-the-Square Theatre School, New York

Research Interests

• Novel Writing
• Short Story Writing
• Screenwriting
• Verse Writing
• Creative Nonfiction Writing

Select Publications

• Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud:  Lessons on the Craft of Writing Fiction (Press 53, 2021)
• Music for Hard Times:  New & Selected Stories (Press 53, 2021)
• Haints (New Rivers Press, 2012)
• War Memorials (Houghton Mifflin, 2001; Graywolf, 2000)
• The Member-Guest (Doubleday, 1995)
• Short Fiction Writing
• Inducted into Writers Hall of Fame, 2021 Wake Forest University
• Midwest Book Award, 2013, Midwest Independent Publishers Association
• S. Mariella Gable Prize, 2004, Graywolf Press 
• American Fiction Prize, 1991, 1993
• Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Literary Fiction, 1995

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Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia, united states.

Building upon its recent 30th anniversary, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Master of Fine Arts in creative writing continues to celebrate its ongoing achievements and programmatic developments, including:

* Expanded creative nonfiction/CNF course offerings and created a “Dual Genre” track allowing our MFA students to formally add CNF to their academic concentrations.

* Small MFA workshop size. Excellent 3 to 1 student to faculty ratio. Currently: 9 full-time MFA faculty, approximately 27 graduate students.

* Every one of the nine full-time faculty members has a new or forthcoming book publication.

* New faculty hires in both fiction and creative nonfiction, including writers Hanna Pylvainen, Sonja Livingston, and Lina Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas.

* Graduate assistantship stipends have greatly increased, and now range from $12,500 up to $24,000 a year (plus tuition waiver). All current full-time enrolled students are funded.

* Assistantships not only offer teaching opportunities in composition and expository writing, but also undergraduate creative writing classes as well.

* Assistantship assignments also include opportunity to coordinate VCU’s national literary awards, including the Cabell First Novelist, Levis Reading Prize, and Tarumoto Prize in short fiction.

* Offered new coursework in collaborative comic/graphic novelist pairing up MFA students with artists from VCU’s acclaimed School of the Arts.

* Additional and regular offerings in screenwriting, form and theory coursework, and literary editing/publishing seminars.

* Newly established travel stipends for MFA students for summer writing conference and study abroad travel, as well as yearly travel funding and registration waivers for students attending the annual AWP conference.

* Three-year course requirements that enable MFA students to design up to 6 credits of independent study and 6 credits of professional internships, including opportunities to work in electronic publishing (editorial, web design, digital sound editing, and more) via the program’s nationally prominent online literary journal, Blackbird.

Contact Information

900 Park Ave Hibbs Hall Rm 306 Richmond Virginia, United States 23284-2005 Phone: 804-828-1329 Email: [email protected] https://english.vcu.edu/mfa/

Bachelor of Arts in English/Literature +

\nVirginia Commonwealth University offers undergraduate creative writing courses in fiction, poetry, and drama at both the introductory and advanced levels. Limited enrollment allows for individualized attention by instructors. Students frequently cite these courses as one of their most important undergraduate experiences. Of the ten upper-level courses required for the English major, undergraduates can take up to four in creative writing coursework. In addition, while no major in "creative writing" is currently offered, a minor in writing is available to all undergraduates, including English majors. The minor in writing is flexible, and students adapt it individually. It consists of 18 hours chosen from a list of selected writing courses, including creative writing, professional writing, and rhetoric courses. One of the courses in advanced nonfiction writing is required as a keystone course in the minor.

Minor / Concentration in Creative Writing +

Virginia Commonwealth University offers undergraduate creative writing courses in fiction, poetry, and drama at both the introductory and advanced levels. Limited enrollment allows for individualized attention by instructors. Students frequently cite these courses as one of their most important undergraduate experiences. Of the ten upper-level courses required for the English major, undergraduates can take up to four in creative writing coursework. In addition, while no major in “creative writing” is currently offered, a minor in writing is available to all undergraduates, including English majors. The minor in writing is flexible, and students adapt it individually. It consists of 18 hours chosen from a list of selected writing courses, including creative writing, professional writing, and rhetoric courses. One of the courses in advanced nonfiction writing is required as a keystone course in the minor.

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing +

Graduate program director.

VCU is a state institution with a total enrollment of more than 26,000 students on its two campuses in Richmond, the capital of Virginia. The Medical College of Virginia Campus is near the financial, governmental, and shopping areas of a newly-renovated downtown. The Academic Campus is in Richmond's historic Fan District, which dates back to the 19th century. VCU is Virginia's largest urban university and features one of the nation's most comprehensive evening colleges, a nontraditional student body (nearly half of VCU's students are more than 25 years old), and a well-established, highly respected School of the Arts with programs in painting, sculpture, crafts, theatre, dance, and music. The Jazz Orchestra has many times been judged the best in the country. The city of Richmond is itself an attraction to many students. Founded in 1727, it is now one of the South's fastest-growing and most cosmopolitan cities. Rich in historic significance, Richmond was an important site in the lives of Patrick Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Jefferson, to name only a few. The city offers enjoyable and affordable cultural activities, including a professional symphony orchestra and ballet, several theaters, and a number of important museums devoted to art, history, and science.

Designed to attract students from varied undergraduate backgrounds who are writers of promise, the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program is especially suited for those interested primarily in the writing of fiction or poetry. In addition, to expand students' writing experience and versatility, advanced workshops are also available in nonfiction, screenwriting, the novel, and play-writing. Students may also undertake editorial internships with Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts or with the VCU First Novelist Award, and may serve as well as judges for the annual Levis Reading Prize in Poetry. Additional internships may be arranged with other local publishers.

Students in the program are encouraged to develop a strong personal sense of aesthetic and ethics, and to pursue excellence in writing, scholarship, and teaching. Through the workshop experience, as well as personal conferences with the writing faculty, the program aims to help students to significantly advance the quality of their writing, and to enable them to become sensitive, knowledgeable readers who are expert critics of their own and others' work. Students broaden their literary sophistication in a wide range of available courses which examine the literature of varied historical periods and geographic areas, introduce a spectrum of critical theories and perspectives, and explore the techniques and possibilities of the various literary genres. Innovative graduate seminars in topics of special interest and focus are offered each semester. Degree requirements, while rigorous, are flexible so that they can be individually tailored to fit the student's needs and goals. The program's limited enrollment allows for personal attention to the student's writing by a nationally prominent faculty (graduate workshops are limited to 12 or fewer students), as well as for establishing friendships with other developing writers in a diverse and challenging, yet mutually supportive, community of artists.

Clint McCown

Clint McCown is the author of the novels Haints, The Weatherman, War Memorials, and The Member-Guest, as well as the collections of poetry Dead Languages, Wind Over Water, Sidetracks, Total Balance Farm and The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2018 (forthcoming). Several of his plays have been produced, and he has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and as a creative consultant for HBO television. As a broadcast journalist he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime. He has also toured as a principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company. He is the only writer to have twice won the American Fiction Prize; he has also received the Society of Midland Authors Award, the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Germaine Breé Book Award, the Midwest Book Award, a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association, and a Discover Great Writers designation from Barnes & Noble. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared widely. He has been a contributing editor to a dozen national literary magazines and was the founding editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he published for twenty years.

http://english.vcu.edu/mfa/creative-writing-faculty/

Kathleen Graber

Kathleen Graber is the author of two collections of poetry, Correspondence (Saturnalia Books, 2006) and The Eternal City (Princeton University Press, 2010), which was finalist for the National Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, and the winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also been supported by a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and an Amy Lowell Travelling Scholar. Her third collection of poems, The River Twice, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Gregory Donovan

Gregory Donovan is the author of the poetry collections Torn from the Sun (Red Hen Press, 2015), given a starred review by Library Journal and named to its 2015 list of “Exciting New Works for National Poetry Month and Beyond” as well as being selected as a finalist for the Julie Suk Award from Jacar Press, and Calling His Children Home, winner of the Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press. In addition to poetry, essays, translations, and fiction published in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, diode, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, TriQuarterly, and many other journals, his poems have been collected in a number of anthologies, including The Devins Award Poetry Anthology and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia. He has won the Robert Penn Warren prize sponsored by New England Writers and judged by Rosanna Warren, as well as grants and fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. With the writer/director Michele Poulos, he is a producer of A Late Style of Fire, the feature-length documentary film on the life and work of the poet Larry Levis with original soundtrack composed by Iron & Wine which premiered in 2016 at the Mill Valley Film Festival in California as well as being selected for seven more film festivals and featured in special screenings at poetry festivals and universities across the country. Donovan has often served as a visiting writer and guest faculty member for summer conferences such as the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, the Chesapeake Writers Conference, the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, the University of Tampa MFA Program, and the Other Words Conference of the Florida Literary Arts Coalition. He also has been a faculty member with VCU study abroad programs in Scotland and most recently in Peru. Donovan is the director of the Levis Reading Prize as well as the Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize, and he is Senior Editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. For additional information, his author website is: http://www.gregoryedonovan.com.

David Wojahn

David Wojahn was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1953, and educated at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. His first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen by Richard Hugo as a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, and published in 1982. The collection was also the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award. His second collection, Glassworks, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1987, and was awarded the Society of Midland Authors’ Award for best volume of poetry to be published during that year. Pittsburgh is also the publisher of four of his subsequent books, Mystery Train (1990), Late Empire (1994), The Falling Hour (1997) and Spirit Cabinet (2002). Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004, published by Pittsburgh in 2006, was a named finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the O. B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He is also the author of a collection of essays on contemporary poetry, Strange Good Fortune (University of Arkansas Press, 2001), editor (with Jack Myers) of A Profile of 20th Century American Poetry (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), and editor of two posthumous collections of Lynda Hull’s poetry, The Only World (HarperCollins, 1995) and Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2006). A new volume of his essays on poetry, From the Valley of Making, will appear in 2015 from the University of Michigan Press. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Virginia, Illinois and Indiana Councils for the Arts, and in 1987–88 was the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholar. He has taught at a number of institutions, among them Indiana University, the University of Chicago, the University of Houston, the University of Alabama, and the University of New Orleans. He is presently Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is also a member of the program faculty of the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of the Fine Arts. His newest collection, World Tree, was published by Pittsburgh in the 2011, and was awarded the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Library of Virginia Book Award in Poetry, and the Poets’ Prize.

Sonja Livingston

Sonja Livingston's latest book, The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion undertakes a series of sojourns through place and time to contemplate shifting religious and cultural concepts of devotion. She’s the author of the award-winning nonfiction books, Queen of the Fall and Ghostbread (winner of the AWP Prize and a Bronze Prize by Foreword), as well as Ladies Night at the Dreamland (named a best nonfiction book of 2016 by Kirkus). Recent essays appear The Kenyon Review, Salon, Sojourners and Lithub. Her work is widely anthologized in texts on writing and craft, including in Best of Brevity, Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, Waveform: Twenty-First Century Essays by Women, Poverty & Privilege: A Reader, and many others. Sonja’s nonfiction has received fellowships from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Deming Fund, as well as awards from Arts & Letters, The Iowa Review, and Ruminate Magazine. Sonja taught in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis before coming to VCU and has also taught for Writing Workshops Abroad in Edinburgh, San Miguel de Allende, and Cork. She serves as Writer-in-Residence at the Gap Creek Writers Studio and faculty at Vermont College of Fine Art’s Postgraduate Writers’ Conference.

https://english.vcu.edu/mfa/creative-writing-faculty/

Gretchen Comba

Gretchen Comba is the author of the story collection The Stillness of the Picture (Kore Press, 2016). Her fiction has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, The North American Review, River City, The South Carolina Review, and Yemassee. She is a recipient of the F. Scott Fitagerald Award for Short Fiction and the Yemassee Award for Exceptional Contribution to the Magazine; in addition, she was selected as a finalist for the Danahy Fiction Prize (Tampa Review), and her work has earned Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology. Gretchen’s scholarship on William Maxwell has appeared in MidAmerica: The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature Resources for American Literary Study. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Katy Resch George

Katy Resch George is the author of the story collection Exposure, published by Kore Press with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The collection was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Award, the Press 53 Fiction Award, and the Snake Nation Press Serena McDonald Kennedy Award. Her stories have appeared in Blackbird, West Branch, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pank and other magazines and have been recognized by the annual Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions list and the storySouth Million Writers Awards. She is the recipient of artist grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and Richmond CultureWorks. Katy has taught for New York University, the City University of New York, and Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a proud graduate of the fiction MFA program at VCU and the poetry MFA program at Brooklyn College.

Jessica Nelson

Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014), which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers' Association, named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review, received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, and reviewed nationally in print and on NPR—including twice in (O) Oprah Magazine. It was also a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. She is also co-author of the forthcoming textbook and anthology Advanced Creative Nonfiction along with the writer Sean Prentiss (Bloomsbury, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, PANK, Drunken Boat and elsewhere.

Publications & Presses +

New Virginia Review

Visiting Writers Program +

Richard Bausch • Bruce Beasley • Aimee Bender • Charles Bernstein • John Bresland • Linda Bierds • Robert Olen Butler • Ron Carlson • John Casey • Victoria Chang • Kelly Cherry • Joan Connor • Rebecca Curtis • Dennis Danvers • Samuel R. Delany • Mark Doty • Stuart Dybek • Mary Gaitskill • Beckian Fritz Goldberg • Linda Gregerson • Elizabeth Hand • Ron Hansen • Terrance Hayes • Fanny Howe • Richard Jackson • Allison Joseph • Alison Kennedy • Yusef Komunyaaka • Nick Lantz • Katherine Larson • Dana Levin • Philip Levine • Kelly Link • Bret Lott • Thomas Lux • Elizabeth McCracken • Thomas Mallon • Melinda Moustakis • Craig Nova • Stanley Plumly • Paisley Rekdal • Sheri Reynolds • David Rivard • Mary Ruefle • George Saunders • Alan Shapiro • Tom Sleigh • Gerald Stern • Darin Strauss • Ellen Bryant Voigt • Colson Whitehead • CK Williams • Charles Wright • Dean Young • Matthew Zapruder

Reading Series +

VCU Visiting Writers Series ( http://english.vcu.edu/about/visiting-writers/ )

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• Humanities Research Center

College of Humanities and Sciences

• Faculty Spotlight
• David Wojahn

Faculty Spotlight: David Wojahn, PhD

Written by Kathleen Graber, PhD, Professor of English

David Wojahn is a distinguished poet, essayist, and Professor of English at VCU. He is currently the Director of VCU’s Creative Writing Program, which is unique in the College of Humanities and Sciences, in that it awards this division’s only degree in fine arts, an MFA in Creative Writing. In recent years, the VCU Creative Writing Program has also been home to three Guggenheim Fellows, including David Wojahn. When I was offered the opportunity to teach poetry here, one of the most compelling factors in my decision was the prospect of working with David, whose reputation as a poet’s poet and a highly effective and dedicated teacher has earned him many other national awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the William Carlos Williams Award, The Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, the Poet’s Prize, and O.B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Indeed, if one were looking for a model of humility, sharp wit, warm humor, kindness, generosity, and measured grace, accompanied by remarkably high creative achievement, one would be hard pressed to find a more exemplary colleague, human being, and educator. This year, five graduate students will complete their studies in poetry in VCU’s MFA program, and, as is usually the case, David will have been the primary advisor or second reader on almost all of their culminating theses. David was the 2008 winner of VCU’s Outstanding Faculty Award, and many of David’s students have gone on to illustrious careers of their own. By his own estimation, he has been teaching literature and creative writing for 45 years. David Wojahn’s first collection of poetry, Icehouse Lights (1981), was chosen by the renowned poet Richard Hugo for the Yale Younger Poets Award, arguably the most prestigious and most competitive avenue by which an emerging American poet might enter the contemporary literary landscape. When I previewed a relatively new textbook (2015) from Oxford University Press designed for creative writing classrooms, I was delighted to see a section entitled “Two Case Studies: Hemingway and Wojahn,” which carefully analyzes a poem from this collection. In his original citation, Hugo writes: "David Wojahn's poems concern themselves with emotive basics: leaving home, watching those we love age and die, the inescapable drone of our mortality,” pointing from the start to the richly elegiac quality that has continued to mark David’s work. During a recent conversation, he cited Allen Grossman’s assertion that the function of poetry is to “preserve the memory of the person.” I thought of another Grossman claim from the same text (Summa Lyrica): the kind of success which poetry facilitates is called “immortality.”

Hence, when asked about what might be called “the fundamentally elegiac impulse” in his work, David said that, while his poems are very often “laced with elegy,” his aim is something more like an “homage,” an effort at expressing “gratitude.” “When I read a good poem,” he said, “I am filled with gratitude.” He sees his own poems, especially those directly dedicated to other poets and artists—such as one of his new poems “Threnody” recently published in Plume (link provided below), which is dedicated to the poet Jean Valentine (1934-2015)—as a way to honor the gifts he feels he has been given by them. His collection World Tree (2011), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, includes poems in conversation with the poets Nâzim Hikmet, Arthur Rimbaud, Tomas Tranströmer, Czesław Miłosz, and Frank O’Hara, as well other poems foregrounding musicians, including Willy DeVille, Jimmie Rodgers, Warren Zevon and Johnny Cash. In fact, his 1990 collection Mystery Train, with its iconic image of Bob Dylan on the cover, can be seen as an homage to that other more popular branch of the American bardic tradition, rock and roll.

Yet many of David’s poems are driven not by public homage and loss but by deeply personal mourning. Two poems that come immediately to mind are “Elegy: Robot Folding Laundry” and “For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk 3,000 B.C.” from his most recent collection, For the Scribe (2017). One of these poems juxtaposes his emerging adult understanding of the narrowness of his mother’s life and her profound loneliness as a housewife in post-war Minnesota with a precise description of the terribly awkward and largely ineffective mechanical movements of an actual robot programmed to fold laundry. In the other, his meditation on the first handwritten signature is precipitated by having opened a book containing the extensive marginalia of his late wife, the poet Lynda Hull.

While David Wojahn is the author of nine collections of poetry, he has also published two collections of essays on poetry and poetic craft and has just completed a third. He says that when he finds it hard to write poems—as it has been for many poets in recent years—he turns to writing essays, which he enjoys doing, and now writes simply for fun. He says that he appreciates the way that this form both enables and challenges him to weave the personal and the scholarly together in a voice that he hopes will not strike a reader as pedantic. This desire to integrate the lived emotional life into the life of the mind and to bring the experiences of the individual into larger cultural contexts is central to David’s work. The poet Linda Gregerson, one of the Judges for the Lenore Marshall Prize, describes the poems in World Tree (2011) as “exquisitely cadenced, politically astute, large of heart, and keen of mind.” “These are,” she adds, “poems of extraordinary moral penetration.” And in her praise for For the Scribe (2017), the poet Linda Bierds writes: “The juxtapositions in this extraordinary book are, in the end, both separate and united. They quiver together like filings on a magnet: This is our fractured world.”

David told me that the first poetry reading he ever attended was in 1972. The poet was Tomas Transtörmer, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011. What David says he recalls most vividly (and perhaps what spurred him on to a life filled with poetry) was a pointed exchange during the Q & A afterwards. Someone from the audience took the poet to task for having written poems about the dailiness of life—about driving a car, for instance—when there were so many large and terrible things happening with the world. Tranströmer, for his part, responded by saying that he felt all of his poems were ultimately political because they insisted on the primacy of the private life. David added that very few days go by when he does not think about that claim.

Asked about how the world of poetry might have changed since then, he said that he is struck by the pervasiveness of social media. While he is delighted that it has been able to bring both so many more voices and a wider audience to poetry than might ever have been possible otherwise, he worries that the atmosphere of “necessary quiet receptiveness” that so many poems demand is harder to locate or conjure. “A good poem can make one feel as though there are only two people in the world,” he said. “The poet and the reader.”

Here then is the opening of his very recent poem “Threnody”:

The train coach, Jean—empty except for you,

the lighting dim,

& as I wobble

the jittery aisle toward your seat

you look up from

the notebook you’ve been writing in

& say my name & I say yours.

Read the full text

From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry.  Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,  2015.

World Tree (poems). Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011.

Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2006.

Spirit Cabinet (poems). Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2002.

Strange Good Fortune: Essays on Contemporary Poetry. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2001.

The Falling Hour (poems). Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997.

Icehouse Lights (poems). Foreward by Richard Hugo. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.

At a Glance

The University of Virginia's Creative Writing Program offers a master of fine arts in poetry and fiction writing, undergraduate English concentrations in poetry and literary prose, and elective coursework at the undergraduate and graduate levels. If you are just beginning, we have 2000-level classes in our undergraduate curriculum that are open enrollment (though some sections are restricted to first- and second-year students). Intermediate and advanced writers can take courses from our full-time faculty by instructor permission, and citizen scholars can also apply. See our undergraduate page for more information. 

At the graduate level, we offer one of the best MFA programs in the country with award-winning faculty and alumni whose poetry and prose is in print or forthcoming from some of the top houses and prizes.

In the News

Meridian Short Prose Prize

The Meridian Short Prose Prize is now taking submissions at meridian.submittable.com . The deadline is August 15. For more details, see the prize entry page, or the Meridian contests page . Meridian is an MFA-student-edited literary journal started in 1998. Its main website is at readmeridian.org .

MFA Support Increases

In 2024–25, our MFA students will receive an increase of three percent to their fellowship income and teaching wages, which means students will receive up to $31,518 in their first and second years, and up to $25,214 in their third year. The first- and second-year amounts are higher because those

Tolbert Wins Frontier Open

Congratulations to MFA student MaKshya Tolbert, winner of the 2023 Frontier Open . 

Brian Teare's Poem Bitten by a Man

Congratulations to poetry faculty member Brian Teare on his new book, Poem Bitten by a Man , and this review on The Poetry Foundation website .

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Application steps

Ph.D. in Education, Art Education concentration MA in Art History (Historical Studies, Museum Studies) MFA in Fine Arts (Ceramics, Fibers, Glassworking, Jewelry/Metalworking, Wood/Furniture Design, Kinetic Imaging, Painting, Printmaking, Photography and Film, Sculpture) MFA in Design (Visual Communications)

March 1, fall entry only MFA in Design (Interior Environments)

March 15, fall entry only MAE in Art Education MFA in Theatre (Pedagogy/Performance)

International applicants should apply one month before the deadlines above to ensure that application materials are received by the deadline.

Please contact  [email protected]  with any questions.

The application for Fall 2025 admission will open on September 16, 2024.

Make sure to check your  program specific requirements  below before submitting your University Graduate Application.

All applicants must apply online using the  University Graduate Application  and are required to submit a $70 application fee. Applicants applying to more than one program must submit a separate application and application fee for each program.

School of the Arts applicants are asked to submit their personal statement/artist statement through the University Graduate Application.

Three letters of reference are required for each program and should be submitted online by your recommenders. In your  University Graduate Application , you will enter the recommender names and email addresses to send a message requesting the reference. Letters of recommendation from professional associates such as instructors, supervisors, or colleagues should address the applicant’s ability to succeed in a graduate program.

Transcripts

Unofficial transcripts from all post-secondary institutions should be uploaded with your electronic application and may be used for departmental admission review purposes.

If offered admission, you will be directed and required to submit to the VCU Admissions Office an official transcript from any institution from which a degree has been awarded to finalize your admission. Transcripts are considered official if they are sent to VCU directly from the issuing institution.

Virginia Commonwealth University Office of Graduate Admissions P.O. Box 843051 Richmond, Virginia 23284-2526

Official transcripts that are not in English must be accompanied by an official English translation. The Office of Admissions reserves the right to request English translations of diplomas prior to granting admission.

All official transcripts and relevant credentials (e.g., diplomas and marksheets) will be required if admitted.

Test scores

GRE scores are required for the following program: PhD in Education with an Art Education concentration

Scores must be directly reported to VCU by testing agencies. You can submit student copies pending receipt of official scores. An official copy must be received before a final offer of admission can be made. The school code for admission testing is 5570.

GRE scores are no longer required for the MA in Art History and MAE in Art Education programs.

GRE scores not required for MFA programs.

If you are not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, be sure to review additional requirements on the  International Admissions graduate student page.

If the program you are applying to requires you to submit a portfolio you must submit these supplemental materials through the  VCUarts Graduate Programs SlideRoom website . A link to this portfolio upload can be found in the University application. SlideRoom charges applicants $10 to upload the portfolio.

Acceptable files for supplemental materials: Documents: .PDF Images: .JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .TIF, .TIFF, .BMP, .TGA Videos:.M4V, .MOV, .MP4, .WMV, .FLV, .ASF, .MPEG, .MPG, .MKV Audio: MP3, MP4, OGG, .FLAC You may also link media from YouTube and Vimeo

Images can be up to 5 MB each. Video can be up to 250 MB each.

Specific program requirements

Personal Statement Please submit your statement on  the  University Graduate Application . In approximately 500 words, indicate the applicant’s interest in graduate study and research. Please also indicate your preferred enrollment as either full-time or part-time and explain your previous experiences teaching. There are two tracks in the MAE program. One is designed for practicing art teachers. The other track allows students to earn both the MAE degree and teacher licensure at the same time.

Be sure to indicate in your Statement of Purpose which track you would like to pursue.

GRE test scores GRE scores are no longer required for the MAE in Art Education.

Curriculum vitae/resume Please submit your CV/resume on the University Graduate Application . If applicant has a website, please include a link in your CV/resume.

Portfolio 10-15 images of personal or student work. Please show both breadth of media competency as well as depth of ability in at least one area.  Write a caption for each work and clearly indicate if it is your work or student work.

For general required materials, please view application instructions on the  School of Education’s website .

In addition to general requirements, applicants to the Art Education concentration must also submit  an academic writing sample (e.g., thesis chapter or scholarly paper) with their application. Applicants may also be asked for  an interview  with members of the admissions committee. If an applicant is interested in obtaining licensure while working toward the Ph.D., it should be indicated on the application materials.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to speak with the track coordinator prior to applying. Applications must be submitted to the Graduate School by January 15 for Fall admission to the Art Education Doctoral Program. Earlier applications may increase opportunity and consideration for funding through graduate assistantships.

• A statement of purpose, 750-1000 words in length, that briefly recounts applicant’s academic background, describes an avenue of inquiry that the applicant expects to explore, notes applicant’s professional goals beyond graduate study and explains why VCU art history is suited to applicant’s interests. Please upload your statement on the University Graduate Application.
• A research/writing sample that has a clearly articulated thesis statement, identifies and interprets primary and/or secondary sources in support of a well-argued thesis, and offers a coherent, cohesive narrative.
• Three letters of recommendation, at least two of which are from faculty members who can assess the applicant’s preparation and promise for graduate work. (Some applicants may choose to solicit the third letter from a museum professional who has supervised the applicant’s professional work in a museum setting.)
• Official transcripts from schools where applicant completed coursework applied toward the baccalaureate degree
• A current resume or CV

Same as above.

Personal statement Please submit your statement on the  University Graduate Application .

Writing sample This should be a 3-5 page (minimum) sample of academic writing.

Portfolio A Portfolio is only required if you have a background in design or the arts; however, even if you do not have a background in design or the arts, we highly encourage you to present any creative work you might have completed as a hobby, such as photography, home crafting projects, creative writing, poetry, art classes at a local museum, etc.

Your Portfolio should contain 15 images of design projects that exemplify awareness, understanding, and competency in creative design, graphic skills, and technical ability.

Your portfolio will be submitted via SlideRoom . Specific technical guidelines regarding the submission of digital images, video files, sound files, and text files are available in the SlideRoom system. SlideRoom charges applicants $10 to upload the portfolio. Click the SlideRoom tab in the menu bar above.

Portfolio 20 submissions. Please include the year, client or class for which this work was created and the type of project.

Interview The department will contact selected applicants regarding the interview (may be via telephone or Skype).

Portfolio 20 still and/or moving images. Present your work chronologically with the newest work first and the oldest work last. Images are reviewed one at a time. Please include any additional information to help us understand the image.

Portfolio 12-20 images/videos of representative work

Artist statement Please submit your artist statement in the personal statement section on the  University Graduate Application .

Portfolio 20 images of representative work.  Present work chronologically with newest work first and oldest work last. You may submit still and/or moving images. Each video clip will count as a single image. Please include any pertinent information that will assist the jury in understanding the work.

Interview Applicants selected by the jury as finalists will be interviewed by members of the faculty in February.

This should be a three or four paragraph artist statement that directly places the work being reviewed within the context of contemporary art practice, art history, and critical theory.

Curriculum vitae/resume Please submit your CV/resume on the University Graduate Application . Include education, exhibitions, curatorial activity, residencies/fellowships, honors and awards, organization membership. If you have a website, please include a link in your CV/resume.

Interview The admissions process is highly selective. If you are shortlisted by the faculty review committee for acceptance consideration, you will be contacted in late February for a mandatory personal interview on campus or by phone. During the personal interview, graduate faculty will determine if your interests, experience, and abilities would be best served by the Photography and Film MFA program and faculty. In this regard, you will also have an opportunity to ask questions to assess the program’s suitability in relation to your personal artistic and educational goals.

Other Acceptance decisions are made in early April. The graduate program requires 36 term hour credits in studio art at the undergraduate level with a minimum of 9 term hour credits concentrating in photography or cinematography. However, applicants who do not meet these requirements will be considered.

Portfolio 20 still images; or a minimum of three recent films or videos for which the applicant has had primary responsibility in production; or a combination of still images and short video clips, not to exceed 20. Single media, as well as mixed-media and multimedia works, may be submitted.

Undergraduate preparation Applicants must have earned an undergraduate bachelor’s degree. Visual Arts applicants should have completed a minimum of 36 semester hour credits in art and 20 credits of sculpture or related course work at the undergraduate level.

Curriculum vitae/resume Please submit your CV/resume on the  University Graduate Application . If applicant has a website, please include a link in your CV/resume.

Writing Sample This requirement is usually a research paper (preferably in Theatre) from previous undergraduate or MA coursework.

Interview Required

Audition Type Required for Performance Pedagogy students.

International applicants

If you are not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, be sure to review additional requirements on the  International Admissions graduate student page . Please also note that International Applicants should submit their application materials one month before the deadline listed above to ensure that all application materials are received by the deadline.

Please contact  [email protected]  with any questions or view our graduate admissions FAQ .

Submit a Novel

How to submit a novel.

Please send one digital copy (required), i.e. an easy to read PDF file, to [email protected] and five hard copies to:

For standard mail

VCU Cabell First Novelist Award c/o VCU Department of English Hibbs Building, Box 842005 Richmond, VA 23284-2005

For FedEx, UPS, etc.

VCU Cabell First Novelist Award c/o VCU Department of English 900 Park Ave., Suite 306 Richmond, VA 23284 -2005

Submissions for the 2025 contest, which is for books published in 2024, open July 1, 2024, and closes Dec. 30, 2024. Winners will be announced in June or July 2025. 

Rules for Submission

• The submission must be the author's first novel, published in calendar year 2024.
• The author may have published previous books in a different form, such as collections of poems or short stories, but the submission must be their first published book marketed as a novel. This may include hybrid works such as novels-in-verse and novels-in-stories. Collections of linked short stories not marketed as novels are not eligible. Graphic novels are also not eligible.
• The USA must be the country of first publication for the submission.
• While books with crossover audience appeal may be considered, we reserve the right to eliminate those with a primary audience of young (YA or middle-grade) readers.
• Books available in e-format only are not eligible.
• Note: Since the inception of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the award process has served as a teaching tool for VCU's MFA in Creative Writing students and the greater Richmond community and has featured a unique examination of the traditional path a debut novel takes, from early manuscript in the writer's hands, to agent, and finally to publisher. The process is intended, in part, to illuminate the inner workings of the publishing process, including how the publishing industry acquires new novels and what makes a particular novel a success within the confines of the publishing industry. Self-published novels take a very different path and are therefore outside the scope of the award.
• Books authored by alumni or affiliates of the VCU MFA in Creative Writing program are not eligible
• The winning author must agree to attend the award event, usually scheduled for November.

For updates and special features, please visit our social media pages. See "Connect with us" section in the footer of this page.

Questions? Contact us at [email protected] .

June 30, 2014

Smith, graduate of VCU Creative Writing M.F.A. program, named poet laureate of Virginia

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By Brian McNeill

Ron Smith, an award-winning poet and a 1985 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, on Friday was named the poet laureate of Virginia.

"I am delighted and humbled to be poet laureate of the 'Cradle of Presidents' (and also of poets)," Smith said.

Smith, who is the writer-in-residence and George O. Squires Chair of Distinguished Teaching at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, is the author of three books of poetry, "Its Ghostly Workshop" (2013), "Moon Road: Poems 1986-2005" (2007) and "Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery" (1988).

He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize in 2005, Southern Poetry Review’s Guy Owen Prize and Poetry Northwest’s Theodore Roethke Prize. He was a finalist for the position of poet laureate of Virginia four times previously.

"As poet laureate, I hope to celebrate poetry in general and Virginia poets in particular," he said. "Virginia is rich in poets, poets who deserve much more recognition and more readers than they currently have."

Smith's work has been published in a number of national and international publications, including The Nation, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, College English, Shenandoah, Kansas Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Blackbird, Plume, Puerto del Sol and Verse.

In addition to his MFA from VCU, Smith holds degrees in philosophy, humanities and creative writing from the University of Richmond, and also studied British drama at Oxford University, writing at Bennington College, and Renaissance and modernist culture at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Merano, Italy.

He chaired the English department at St. Christopher's for 21 years and has taught courses in poetry and poetry writing at the University of Mary Washington, VCU and the University of Richmond.

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Interested in Creative Writing MFA

Hi there! So, I have some questions about going on to receive my MFA and I'm looking for some input. This seems like a good place to start. Just a brief introduction - I am an undergrad student entering my final year of college. I have earned a degree in illustration. I am expected to complete my degree in graphic design with a focus in packaging design strategy/branding in 2018. I intend to go on and get an MFA in the future after working for at least a few years. I love being in school. (I also love acquiring lots of debt, apparently. Eh.) Being a planner, I've already been giving it a lot of thought. Since I've taken so many art and design courses, I've been considering studying a different subject to expand other skill sets. English is one of the subjects I minor in here and it has always been my favorite class to attend. Had I not chosen to study art, it would have been English (I'm allergic to money) Anyways - To explain why I am considering this - I think I want to ultimately end up working in a branding agency. Building a successful brand is much like storytelling. Crafting good sentences and strengthening that muscle could help with copywriting. I also find the idea of someday writing a book on design really exciting. I guess the question here is - Have any of you received an MFA? Did the pros outweigh the cons? Bonus points if you came into it from an art background. So, yeah! This pretty much covers it. Thanks!

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The NYU Creative Writing Program

is among the most distinguished programs in the country and is a leading national center for the study of writing and literature.

Graduate Program

The graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU consists of a community of writers working together in a setting that is both challenging and supportive.

Low Residency MFA Workshop in Paris

The low-residency MFA Writers Workshop offers students the opportunity to develop their craft in one of the world's most inspiring literary capitals.

Undergraduate Program

The undergraduate program offers workshops, readings, internships, writing prizes, and events designed to cultivate and inspire.

Spring 2022 Reading Series

The lively public Reading Series hosts a wide array of writers, translators, and editors, and connects our program to the local community.

Creative Writing Program

Low-residency mfa writers workshop in paris, undergraduate, washington square review, literary journal, a sample residency calendar, write in paris, scholarships and grant opportunities, program of study, dates and deadlines, creative writing, recent highlights from the mfa community.

• Alum Bruna Dantas Lobato   won the 2023 National Book Award in translation

• Faculty member Sharon Olds received the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize from King Felipe VI in July 2023

• Alumni  Tess Gunty  and  John Keene   each won a 2022 National Book Award in fiction and poetry , respectively

• Books by faculty members  Sharon  Olds  and  Meghan O'Rourke;  and alums  Tess Gunty, John Keene ,  and  Jenny Xie  were named finalists for the 2022 National Book Awards; books by alum  Rio Cortez and faculty member Leigh Newman were also longlisted

• Alum  Ada Limón   has been named the nation's 24th Poet Laureate  by the Library of Congress

• Alum  Amanda Larson 's debut poetry collection  GUT  was selected by Mark Bibbins as the winner of the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber Book Award

• Alum  Sasha Burshteyn  was named a 2022 winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize. Alums Jenna Lanzaro and JinJin Xu were also named semi-finalists for the prize.

• Alum Clare Sestanovich was selected as a  2022 5 under 35 Honoree  by the National Book Foundation

• Alum  Maaza Mengiste  was awarded a  2022 Guggenheim Fellowship

• Visiting graduate faculty member  Brandon Taylor 's collection  Filthy Animals  was named a 2021/22  finalist for The Story Prize  and was shortlisted for the  2022 Dylan Thomas Prize

• Alum  Raven Leilani  won the 2021 Clark Fiction Prize, Dylan Thomas prize, the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and the Center for Fiction 2020 First Novel Prize for her debut novel  Luster,  and was named a finalist for the 2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the Gotham Book Prize, the 2021 PEN/Hemmingway Award for Debut Novel, the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

• Alum Desiree C. Bailey 's debut poetry collection  What Noise Against the Cane  was longlisted for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize and was also named a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award in Poetry and the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was published as the winner of the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets

• Senior faculty member  Sharon Olds  was named the 2022 recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry

You can read more MFA Community news here and find a list of forthcoming and recently published books by alumni here .   NYU CWP alumni include  Aria Aber, Amir Ahmadi Arian, Julie Buntin, Nick Flynn, Nell Freudenberger, Aracelis Girmay, Isabella Hammad, Ishion Hutchinson, Mitchell S. Jackson, Tyehimba Jess, John Keene, Raven Leilani, Robin Coste Lewis, Ada Limón, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Maaza Mengiste, John Murillo, Gregory Pardlo, Morgan Parker, Nicole Sealey, Solmaz Sharif, Peng Shepherd, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Xie,  and  Javier Zamora. 

Announcements

Ocean Vuong joins the NYU Creative Writing Program Faculty

Mary Gabriel, Author of “Ninth Street Women”, Receives the NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize

Claudia Rankine joins the NYU Creative Writing Program Faculty

Classic podcasts from the lillian vernon reading series.

Anne Carson

Zadie Smith and Jeffrey Eugenides

Terrance Hayes

Where to find us.

Faculty Spotlight

Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of acclaimed novels The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot. His latest collection is Fresh Complaint. 

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel Intimacies was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of 2021 by numerous publications.

Claudia Rankine is a recipient of the 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, and the author of six collections including Citizen and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.

Foer was listed in Rolling Stone's "People of the Year," Esquire's "Best and Brightest," and The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list.

Terrance Hayes’s most recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin and To Float In The Space Between.

Hari Kunzru is the author of six novels, including the most recent Red Pill, and White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and the poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

Sharon Olds is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program. Her 2012 collection Stags Leap was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize and a Pulitzer.

Darin Strauss is the author of several acclaimed novels, including the most recent The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story.