The MFA office is delighted to introduce JOSIE LANE, our new MFA Project Manager for Administration, Finance, and Web Communications.  Josie is a lifelong resident of western NC and currently lives in Black Mountain. She holds an MA in Liberal Studies from UNC Greensboro and a Masters in Public Administration from Western Carolina.   She brings to this role a multitude of technical and financial skills, experience in coordinating the continuing education program at Asheville-Buncombe Tech, and an avid devotion to literature. Josie will begin her new position on Monday, March 7.

The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College will once again have a table at the AWP Conference. This year’s gathering will be held in Los Angeles. The Bookfair is open Thursday, March 31 to Saturday, April 2, from 9:00 to 5:00. We seek volunteers, in one- or two-hour shifts, to answer questions from prospective students and to talk about their experience in our MFA program.

If you’re coming to AWP and are able to donate some of your time toward staffing our table, please contact Warren Wilson alum Noah Stetzer (poetry, July 2014) at [email protected] by March 12 with specifics about your availability. Noah will coordinate the schedule, and will be back in touch with you to confirm.

Our thanks in advance for your assistance. As one of our recent print ads stated: “Our graduates are our best advertisement.” Your many successes, and your abiding enthusiasm for our program provide impressive evidence of what the Warren Wilson MFA yields and makes possible for your lives as writers.

Go to the MFA Program for Writers store to find great lectures from the Winter 2016 Residency Faculty, including Dean Bakopoulus, Maud Casey and Heather McHugh.

You’ll find the MFA Store at this link:  THE MFA STORE

Longtime faculty member Maud Casey spoke to the Winter 2016 graduating class of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Here are her remarks:

Welcome to my colleagues, guests of the college, and, most of all, this year’s graduates and their beloveds who have traveled here today. A relative newbie on this esteemed faculty, I’m honored, humbled, and slightly terrified to be delivering today’s graduation remarks to an audience filled with people—students and faculty both—who have over the years, and over the last ten days, been my fairy god-people of wisdom.

What I’d like to talk about today is solidarity and that sacred attic space called solitude, both essential to the making of art. As our tireless, inspiring leader, Debra Allbery, noted in her opening remarks on the first day of this semester’s residency, “an artist’s life is a negotiation between life and the upper room.” Let me begin by offering a story of solidarity to the loved ones of the graduates, loved ones who have provided that essential feeling of home as the graduates wandered in the wilderness of the imagination. I, too, am familiar with the mysteries of living with someone embroiled in that strange, amorphous, inscrutable endeavor called writing. You see, I was raised by those fascinating wolves otherwise known as writers. Read more

Applications are now being accepted for the 2016/2017 Joan Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship. The Beebe Fellowship is available to all alumni of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, including those who received the degree during the years the program was at Goddard College. Some teaching experience is required. This year’s Beebe Fellow will have a concentration in fiction, though a facility with multiple genres is most beneficial for the program. The Fellow will teach the equivalent of five four-credit undergraduate courses in composition and creative writing, including the mixed-genre advanced MFA Residency/Workshop course, which is tied to the MFA Program’s winter residency. He or she will also supervise the undergraduate literary journal. The fellow will work under the supervision of the Director of the Creative Writing Program and will receive a stipend of $34,500 and full faculty benefits. On-campus housing for the fellow is available at a modest rental rate. Relocation assistance is also available.

An applicant should submit the following:

  • a letter of application which discusses:
    • teaching philosophy, especially in relation to a work college’s undergraduates
    • relevant teaching experience
    • areas of expertise, including experience and confidence teaching in multiple genres
    • the relationship the applicant sees between his or her creative work and teaching
    • current writing projects
  • a current CV
  • a writing sample of no more than 25 pages

An applicant must also have three letters of recommendation addressing his or her experience/ potential as a teacher sent directly to the Program office. Letters of recommendation may not be submitted by members of the MFA Program’s Academic Board, which includes Debra Allbery, Marianne Boruch, Liam Callanan, Christopher Castellani, Jennifer Grotz, Brooks Haxton, David Haynes, C.J. Hribal, Kevin McIlvoy, Debra Spark, Daniel Tobin, Peter Turchi, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and C. Dale Young.

While the fellowship may be received only once, previous applicants are encouraged to apply. Applications will be reviewed and finalists chosen by the Academic Board; advancing candidates will be interviewed by phone and/or brought to campus for interviews and a teaching demonstration. The final decision will be made by a committee of the Undergraduate Writing Program, with the approval of the Dean of the College.

Applications for the 2016/2017 academic year must be received by February 1, 2016. All application materials should sent to Debra Allbery, via email to [email protected], indicating Beebe Fellowship Application in the subject line—or via US mail to Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship;  c/o Debra Allbery, Director;  MFA Program for Writers; PO Box 9000; Warren Wilson College; Asheville, NC 28815-9000.  Electronic submissions are preferred.

Friends of Writers congratulates the Winter 2016 graduating class from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College:

Amelia Boulware

Joseph J. Capista

Lara Hermina Egger

Chantal Aida Gordon

Kim Hamilton

Sue Mell

Ashley McIwain Nissler

Eric James Rampson

Jennifer Stern

David S. Mills

Kate Murr

 

Applications are now being accepted for the 2016/2017 Joan Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship. The Beebe Fellowship is available to all alumni of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, including those who received the degree during the years the program was at Goddard College. Some teaching experience is required. This year’s Beebe Fellow will have a concentration in fiction, though a facility with multiple genres is most beneficial for the program. The Fellow will teach the equivalent of five four-credit undergraduate courses in composition and creative writing, including the mixed-genre advanced MFA Residency/Workshop course, which is tied to the MFA Program’s winter residency. He or she will also supervise the undergraduate literary journal. The fellow will work under the supervision of the Director of the Creative Writing Program and will receive a stipend of $34,500 and full faculty benefits. On-campus housing for the fellow is available at a modest rental rate. Relocation assistance is also available.

An applicant should submit the following:

  • a letter of application which discusses:
    • teaching philosophy, especially in relation to a work college’s undergraduates
    • relevant teaching experience
    • areas of expertise, including experience and confidence teaching in multiple genres
    • the relationship the applicant sees between his or her creative work and teaching
    • current writing projects
  • a current CV
  • a writing sample of no more than 25 pages

An applicant must also have three letters of recommendation addressing his or her experience/ potential as a teacher sent directly to the Program office. Letters of recommendation may not be submitted by members of the MFA Program’s Academic Board, which includes Debra Allbery, Marianne Boruch, Liam Callanan, Christopher Castellani, Jennifer Grotz, Brooks Haxton, David Haynes, C.J. Hribal, Kevin McIlvoy, Debra Spark, Daniel Tobin, Peter Turchi, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and C. Dale Young.

While the fellowship may be received only once, previous applicants are encouraged to apply. Applications will be reviewed and finalists chosen by the Academic Board; advancing candidates will be interviewed by phone and/or brought to campus for interviews and a teaching demonstration. The final decision will be made by a committee of the Undergraduate Writing Program, with the approval of the Dean of the College.

Applications for the 2016/2017 academic year must be received by February 1, 2016. All application materials should sent to Debra Allbery, via email to [email protected], indicating Beebe Fellowship Application in the subject line—or via US mail to Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship;  c/o Debra Allbery, Director;  MFA Program for Writers; PO Box 9000; Warren Wilson College; Asheville, NC 28815-9000.  Electronic submissions are preferred.

We’re delighted to announce the January 2016 faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College:

Debra Allbery (Director)
Dean Bakopoulos
Karen Brennan
Liam Callanan
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Maud Casey
Stacey D’Erasmo
Jeremy Gavron
C.J. Hribal
A. Van Jordan
Dana Levin
Sandra Lim
James Longenbach
Heather McHugh
Nina McConigley
Peter Orner
Michael Parker
Martha Rhodes
Robin Romm
Daniel Tobin
Kirstin Valdez Quade
Laura van den Berg
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Connie Voisine
Alan Williamson

Applications are now being accepted for the 2016/2017 Joan Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship. The Beebe Fellowship is available to all alumni of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, including those who received the degree during the years the program was at Goddard College. Some teaching experience is required. This year’s Beebe Fellow will have a concentration in fiction, though a facility with multiple genres is most beneficial for the program. The Fellow will teach the equivalent of five four-credit undergraduate courses in composition and creative writing, including the mixed-genre advanced MFA Residency/Workshop course, which is tied to the MFA Program’s winter residency. He or she will also supervise the undergraduate literary journal. The fellow will work under the supervision of the Director of the Creative Writing Program and will receive a stipend of $34,500 and full faculty benefits. On-campus housing for the fellow is available at a modest rental rate. Relocation assistance is also available.

An applicant should submit the following:

  • a letter of application which discusses:
    • teaching philosophy, especially in relation to a work college’s undergraduates
    • relevant teaching experience
    • areas of expertise, including experience and confidence teaching in multiple genres
    • the relationship the applicant sees between his or her creative work and teaching
    • current writing projects
  • a current CV
  • a writing sample of no more than 25 pages

An applicant must also have three letters of recommendation addressing his or her experience/ potential as a teacher sent directly to the Program office. Letters of recommendation may not be submitted by members of the MFA Program’s Academic Board, which includes Debra Allbery, Marianne Boruch, Liam Callanan, Christopher Castellani, Jennifer Grotz, Brooks Haxton, David Haynes, C.J. Hribal, Kevin McIlvoy, Debra Spark, Daniel Tobin, Peter Turchi, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and C. Dale Young.

While the fellowship may be received only once, previous applicants are encouraged to apply. Applications will be reviewed and finalists chosen by the Academic Board; advancing candidates will be interviewed by phone and/or brought to campus for interviews and a teaching demonstration. The final decision will be made by a committee of the Undergraduate Writing Program, with the approval of the Dean of the College.

Applications for the 2016/2017 academic year must be received by February 1, 2016. All application materials should sent to Debra Allbery, via email to [email protected], indicating Beebe Fellowship Application in the subject line—or via US mail to Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellowship;  c/o Debra Allbery, Director;  MFA Program for Writers; PO Box 9000; Warren Wilson College; Asheville, NC 28815-9000.  Electronic submissions are preferred.

We’re delighted to welcome Amanda Lowery as our new MFA Project Manager for Administration, Finance, and Web Communications. Amanda recently moved to Asheville from Baltimore where she worked as a project manager, event planner, and executive assistant for seven years with two nonprofits, Maryland Works, Inc. and the Maryland Disabilities Forum. She holds a BA in English from Salisbury University and an MA in Liberal Studies from Loyola University. Her first day was August 24. Welcome, Amanda! And we all send our best wishes and gratitude to Jessica Lane, whose last day with us was August 28.

 

New staff 1L-R: Amanda Lowery, Jessica Lane, and Elana Roseberry