|
The creative writing MFA at the University of Memphis was founded in 1989 by novelist and current faculty member Tom Russell, with the help of poets Bill Page, Gordon Osing and John Bensko. It brings together nationally recognized authors and a diverse, carefully selected group of writing students in one of the most culturally rich cities in the country. Students work in small groups with faculty to study fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, or a mix of all three. Most are fully funded under research or teaching assistantships.
In addition to their coursework, MFA students at the U of M help run the River City Writers Series, one of the oldest and most prestigious series of its kind, and run their own reading series. They staff The Pinch, an award-winning literary journal distributed nationally twice a year. Students also have opportunities to teach creative writing locally and abroad. Graduates of the program have gone on to publish books, win awards and teach in universities around the country.
Check out the most recent edition of the program newsletter, On the Southern Track, to learn more about life in the program.
|
|
Memphis sits on the East bank of the Mississippi River, about three-hours south of St. Louis and west of Nashville. It is one of the most storied cities in the South. Not surprisingly, it has attracted the attention of many great writers, including Peter Taylor, Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner, whose home in Oxford is just an hour and a half south of Memphis.
Memphis’ music history runs deep -- Graceland, Sun Studio, Stax Records, the Gibson Guitar Factory and the Rock 'n' Soul Museum all live here. Just an hour south: Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of The Blues. Memphis is also home to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel, site of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination in 1968. And, of course, the town has long been known for its nightlife. Most famous attraction: Beale Street. Lesser known, but equally important: Wild Bill’s, Ernestine and Hazel’s, Raiford’s. And countless local festivals. Memphis is also home to the historic Main Street Arts Trolley Tour, the famous Peabody Hotel, a lively farmers market, the nation’s largest urban park and, of course, the world’s best bar-b-que.
Follow the links below for more information:
Music: Live From Memphis, Memphis Mojo, New Daisy, Orpheum Theater, Sun Studio, Stax Records, Graceland, Gibson Guitar Factory, Rock 'n' Soul Museum
Arts: Playhouse on the Square, Botanic Garden, Dixon Gallery, National Ornamental Metal Museum, Brooks Museum, Pink Palace
Restaurants: Rendevous Ribs, Central Bar-B-Q, Tops Bar-B-Q, Young Avenue Deli, Huey's, The Blue Fish and Oyster Bar, Automatic Slim's Tonga Club, The Beauty Shop, Do Sushi, Sekisui Pacific Rim, Abyssinia, Soul Fish Cafe
Coffee and Breakfast: Otherlands, Java Cabana, Mo's, Brother Juniper's, Quetzal
Nightlife: Beale Street, Wild Bill's, Raiford's Hollywood Disco, Ernestine and Hazel’s, The Lamplighter, The Buccaneer
Bookstores: Burke's Books, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Bookstar
Parks: Overton Park, Audubon Park, Riverfront Park, Shelby Farms, Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park
Sports: U of M Tigers Basketball (Seeded #2 in the U.S.), Memphis Grizzlies Basketball, Tennessee Redbirds
Events and Festivals: Weekly Farmer’s Market, Mississippi Riverboat Tours, Main Street Arts Trolley Tour, Memphis in May
Local Media: Commercial Appeal, Memphis Flyer, Memphis Magazine, Culture Grits
|
|
The River City Writers Series, created in 1977, brings the best writers in the country to The University of Memphis to give readings from their work and stimulate conversation about contemporary literature; to offer conversations about fiction, nonfiction and poetry; and to work with student writers by discussing with them their manuscripts and by talking about techniques and work habits.
Over the years, the series has featured such writers as Joyce Maynard, Charles Baxter, C.K. Williams, Eudora Welty, Mark Strand, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, John Updike, Peter Taylor, Maxine Kumin, Michael S. Harper, Tobias Wolff, James Tate, W.S. Merwin, Carolyn See, Harry Crews, Charles Simic. Our speakers have also included notable authors from foreign countries: Carlos Fuentes, the great Mexican novelist; Thomas Keneally, from Australia; Eavan Boland from Ireland; Bei Dao from China; and Louisa Valenzuela, from Argentina.
The series has also hosted several Literature Nobel Prize winners, including Seamus Heaney from Ireland, Czeslaw Milosz from Poland, and Derek Walcott from St. Lucia.
This spring we welcome five distinguished writers:
Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor of English, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, teaches creative writing, American studies and critical theory. He is the author of 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old. Everett's writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, "Wounded"), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, "Erasure"), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, "Big Picture") and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, "Zulus"). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991. The Washington Post has called Everett "one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists." And according to The Boston Globe, "He's literature's NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next."
Reception and Reading: February 4 @ 6 PM and 7 PM, respectively
Interview: February 5 @ 10:30 AM
Floyd Skloot is a nonfiction writer, poet and novelist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Poetry, American Scholar, Georgia Review, Sewanee Review and many others. He contributes book reviews regularly to the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle and others. He has written 15 books, including the memoirs "In the Shadow of Memory" and "A World of Light"; the poetry collections "The Evening Light," "Approximately Paradise" and "The End of Dreams," and most recently the novel "Patient 002." His awards include the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction; the Independent Publishers Book Award in Creative Nonfiction; Oregon Book Awards in both Creative Nonfiction and Poetry; two Pushcart Prizes, and others. He's twice appeared in "The Best American Essays" and "The Best American Science Writing," and once in "The Best Spiritual Writing," "The Best Food Writing" and "The Art of the Essay." He has three books forthcoming in 2008 -- "Selected Poems: 1970-2005" from Tupelo Press, "The Snow's Music" from Louisiana State University Press and "The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life" from University of Nebraska Press. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Franklin and Marshall College, his alma mater.
Reception and Reading: March 17 @ 6 PM and 7 PM, respectively, Jay Etkin Gallery, 409 South Main Street
Interview: May 18 @ 10:30 AM, 456 Patterson Hall
Christine Kenneally, Joshua Prager and Stacy Sullivan are journalists and authors of nonfiction books.
Christine Kenneally is a freelance journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Discover, Slate and Salon, as well as other publications. Her book, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, was published by Viking in 2007. The paperback is due in May 2008. Before freelancing, she received a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University and a B.A. (Hons) in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University. She was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and she now lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Joshua Prager grew up in New Jersey and studied music theory at Columbia College. He is a senior special writer at the Wall Street Journal and lives in New York City.
Stacy Sullivan is the author of “Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the US into the Kosovo War,” which tells the story of how a Kosovar émigré spearheaded a multi-millions dollar fundraising effort from his Brooklyn roofing company and launched a guerrilla army in the Balkans. She covered the war in Bosnia for Newsweek magazine, and her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, New York Magazine, Men’s Journal as well as the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. She is now an advisor on counter-terrorism for Human Rights Watch, the largest US-based human rights organization.
Reception and Reading: March 27 @ 6 PM and 7 PM, respectively, Galloway Mansion, 1822 Overton Park Avenue
Interview: March 28 @ 10:30 AM, 456 Patterson
|
|
The Pinch is a nationally distributed, award-winning literary journal based at the University of Memphis, published twice a year. The name is derived from the historic Pinch District in Memphis, once a hub for Irish immigrants and Jewish merchants. The name The Pinch reflects the heart of our city’s history and the soul of the creative approach through the publication of diverse voices that speak from the periphery, as well as the center, of contemporary written and artistic expression.
Our goals are to publish works of literary and artistic quality in a balance of nationally reputable and emerging authors and artists; to provide graduate students in Creative Writing with experience in literary publishing, and to represent Memphis and The MFA program at The University of Memphis.
The Pinch was founded by Professor William Page in 1980 under the name Memphis State Review. With the help of NEA funding, Page recruited many well-known writers to contribute to the publication, including Robert Bly, Philip Levine, Mary Oliver, Robert Penn Warren, and Margaret Atwood. In 1988, the journal became River City and continued to grow in reputation and literary quality. In 2006, under the editorial direction of Kristen Iversen, the journal transitioned to a new, cutting-edge design and became The Pinch. Recent contributors include Linda Gregerson, Bobbie Ann Mason, Molly Giles, Mark Doty, Scott Russell Sanders, and many others.
The Pinch publishes fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, visual art and photography, and receives submissions from both established and emerging writers and artists from all over the world. The Pinch is student run; through this experience graduate students learn the process of reading and selecting submissions; working with authors; and proofreading, editing, and formatting the journal, as well as how to print, distribute, and market a publication.
The Pinch is generously supported by a grant from the Hohenberg Foundation. The Pinch is a non-profit journal for the arts. Learn more here.
|
|
Starting Fall 2008, the Creative Writing Program will have a highly flexible 48 hour degree program offering students wide choices in the courses they can take. The new program has four options:
Studio Option: Only creative writing courses are required, for those who want to focus entirely on their creative work
Literary Studies Option: Combines the study of literature with creative writing, for those who want to build a background in literature while they write
Creative/Professional Writing Option: For those who want to gain an excellent preparation for a flexible career in writing.
Cross Disciplinary Option: Allows a wide range of options for taking courses in other Departments, so that a student can use other interests to inform his/her writing and study foreign languages, history, art, theater, and other disciplines.
Both the Creative/Professional and the Cross-disciplinary options allow students to do independent study and internships on campus or within the community as part of their program.
Here is a list of the classes offered in the M.F.A. program:
Creative Nonfiction Workshop (7601) -- A writing workshop with emphasis on the examination and discussion of creative nonfiction written by the students.
Fiction Workshop (7602) -- A writing workshop with emphasis on the examination and discussion of fiction written by the students.
Poetry Workshop (7603) -- : A writing workshop with emphasis on the examination and discussion of poetry written by the students.
Forms of Creative Nonfiction (7470) -- Covers the variety of creative nonfiction including memoir, personal essay, travel writing, science writing and reportage with attention paid to contemporary theory and practice and historical developments.
Forms of Fiction (7471) -- An intensive study of how fiction works through analyzing the short story, the novella and the novel with attention to historical developments.
Forms of Poetry (7472 -- A study of meter, forms and types of poetry in English with attention to the principal traditions and critical ideas associated with the writing of verse in English.
Literary Publishing (7475) -- This course involves the development of practical, hands-on skills related to editing, producing and marketing The Pinch, an award-winning, nationally distributed literary journal. Students evaluate fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews and art, and learn the process of putting together a literary journal from galleys and bluelines to distribution and marketing. The journal is a 50/50 balance of established and emerging artists and writers, and students have the opportunity to work with top writers and artists around the country. Each year we travel to the AWP Conference (Associated Writing Programs) to participate in the Book Fair. In addition to reading and evaluating submissions to THE PINCH, students learn about the process of building a career as a writer, including topics such as submissions, contests, writers' colonies, conferences, agents and editors, book production, readings, marketing and the literary publishing environment overall. Students also gain substantial experience in editing and preparing manuscripts of their own creative work and submitting work for publication. In addition to producing The Pinch, this class writes and produces the MFA newsletter On the Southern Track.
Literary Programming (7485) -- This course teaches students about the public side of becoming a professional writer -- it covers breaking into publications, freelance writing, marketing yourself, professional bio building, networking with writers and editors, reading your work aloud in front of audiences, book reviewing, blogging and the many other ways writers must work to build a public persona. It covers the art of the author interview and interviewing techniques -- for a final project, each student conducts a detailed author interview to submit for publication. Students in this course work closely with the instructor to organize the River City Writers Series, which brings top writers to Memphis. Through organizing receptions, readings and public discussions of each author's work, students get individual time with visiting writers, and develop skills necessary for planning and administering public arts events.
For a more detailed explanation of the program requirements, take a look at Pages 35-37 of the English Department Graduate Handbook. Click here to download it in PDF form. Students also take a number of other English classes, a current list of which can be found here.
|
|
The University of Memphis offers a variety of ways for students to defray the cost of their education, including several annual awards:
The Moss Chair Writer Award -- $10,000 plus tuition remission
Graduate Research Award -- $7,500 plus tuition remission
Lawrence Wynn Award -- Awarded to an outstanding TA who excels in his/her field of study and is an effective teacher
Concentration Award -- Awarded to one notable writer in each genre annually
Service Award -- Awarded to the Graduate Student who has made a significant contribution to the department during the year
Some editorial positions on The Pinch allow students to work ten hours a week on the journal, teach one class per semester, and receive tuition remission and stipend.
Graduate assistantships and teaching assistantships carry stipends in addition to tuition and remission of university fees.
To qualify as a TA, a student must complete 18 hours of English graduate work. TAs normally teach two sections of composition each semester. Teaching assistant support for the student is available only up to 12 hours beyond the maximum number of hours required for the degree. Therefore, for the M.F.A., there is no renewal after 60 hours.
A very limited number of graduate assistantships are available for those students who have not yet completed 18 hours of graduate credit. GAs work an average of 20 hours per week in non-teaching research and support roles such as assisting in the production of departmental publications or working for departmental offices.
All TAs and GAs are expected to carry a twelve-hour load every semester, with the exception of students writing a thesis/dissertation, who if done with coursework may register for six hours of thesis/dissertation and count this as full time. Students must also be aware that renewal of any assistantship is contingent upon maintaining a G.P.A. of 3.00 or higher. To apply, contact the Graduate Studies Office (678-3602) by March 1st.
Click here for the English Teaching/Graduate Assistantship Application.
|
|
Applicants to the M.F.A. program should use this page as a checklist to be sure that they submit the required materials to the correct departments by the necessary deadlines.
-- Review the Graduate School website.
-- Complete and submit an online application for Graduate School at the University of Memphis. (In addition to submitting this completed form online, you must print a copy and mail it to the Writing Program. See below for details.)
--
Request two copies of your transcripts (of all academic work). Have one official copy sent to Office of Graduate Admissions, The University of Memphis, 101 Wilder Tower, Memphis, TN, 38152-3370. Have the second unofficial copy sent to Jan Coleman, Creative Writing Program Administrator, University of Memphis Department of English, 471A Patterson Hall, Memphis, TN 38152.
-- Request two copies of your GRE scores. Have one official copy sent to Office of Graduate Admissions, The University of Memphis, 101 Wilder Tower, Memphis, TN, 38152-3370. Have the second unofficial copy sent to Jan Coleman, Creative Writing Program Administrator, University of Memphis Department of English, 471A Patterson Hall, Memphis, TN 38152.
-- In addition to submitting your online application, you must submit the following portfolio directly to Jan Coleman, Creative Writing Program Administrator, University of Memphis Department of English, 471A Patterson Hall, Memphis, TN 38152:
> A printed copy of your completed Graduate School application, which you submitted online (from step above)
> A detailed statement of intent (2-3 pages in length)
> Three letters of recommendation (these must be in sealed envelopes with each recommender’s signature over the seal)
> Writing samples (15-20 pages for poetry, or 30-40 pages for fiction or creative nonfiction prose)
-- OPTIONAL: Submit the application for Graduate Assistantship and financial aid.
Please pay special attention to the following important deadlines for Graduate School Applicants:
-- January 15, 2008: M.F.A. portfolio and application. Deadline for Fall 2008. (Applications will be considered until all positions are filled.)
-- February 15, 2008: Graduate assistantship and financial aid application. Deadline for Fall 2008. (This is optional.)
-- October 15, 2008: M.F.A. portfolio, admissions application and Graduate Assistantship and Financial Aid application. Deadline for Spring 2009.
|
|