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The Master of Fine Arts Degree at Vanderbilt
Creative Writing has been a vital part of the Vanderbilt English Department for nearly a century, since the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom’s famous class which he called “a practical course in writing various types of prose, including the short story.” Notable students who studied with Ransom at Vanderbilt include Robert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, and Peter Taylor. Vanderbilt’s writing tradition continues today with the English Department’s new Master of Fine Arts Program.
The M.F.A. at Vanderbilt is a two-year program involving four semesters of graduate work in writing workshops and seminars. Students enrolled will take a workshop and two seminars each semester, until their final semester, when work on the thesis will take the place of the seminars. The thesis will be a substantial piece of creative writing: a novel, a collection of short stories, or a collection of poems
Fall 2008 Courses
English 304-01 Graduate Poetry Workshop
Kate Daniels
(Thursday 12:30 - 3:00 p.m.)
This is an intensive graduate workshop in writing poetry. We will read various volumes of contemporary poetry in conjunction with the Visiting Writers series. Students will be expected to produce a significant portfolio of poems by semester's end; attend regular conferences with the instructor; and participate intensely in class by preparing advance written responses to the week's offerings.
English 307-01 Literature and Craft of Writing
Topic: Reading Emily Dickinson
Kate Daniels
(Tuesday 12:30 - 3:00 p.m.)
This is a graduate seminar designed for MFA students. Our focus will be on the syntax, grammar, parts of speech, diction, and punctuation preferred by Dickinson in both her poems and her prose. Our goal will be to develop some ideas about how those choices accounted for her startlingly unconventional, pre-Modern, pre-psychoanalytic literary voice. We will examine Dickinson’s language through close readings of many poems and letters. There will be some comparison of her unique utterances with more conventional examples from the period (Longfellow, for example), but for the most part, we will spend our time getting our hands dirty in the guts of the poems to discover how they work. Over the summer, please read The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Thomas Johnson, ed.) and one of the biographies. You will also need to familiarize yourself with Dickinson’s preferred metrical form, common (or hymn) meter. Additional readings during the semester will include letters and manuscript versions of many poems. In a final writing project, students will address aspects of Dickinson’s praxis within the context of the aesthetics and formal practices of their own creative work. Grading: 1/3 each for class participation; seminar presentation; writing project.
English 303. Graduate Fiction Workshop
Nancy Reisman
(Tuesday 3:30-6:00 p.m.)
The central goal of this graduate fiction workshop is to help graduate writers further develop their art and refine their aesthetics. This is primarily a studio course; participants will also consider published works of fiction and discussions of craft. As workshop writers present fiction-in-progress, we’ll discuss artistic vision in relation to questions of form and structure, and the possibilities for invention and for reinvigorating tradition. We’ll consider the questions of perception, narrative stance, varieties of tension, dramatic and non-dramatic progression, voice, language, and other aspects of craft. What role does lyricism play? How do we represent various experiences of time? Conceptualize character? To what extent is secular epiphany central, marginal, false? How might we consider conflicting and/or echoing movements within a given piece? Which ‘rules’ might be most interesting to explore the limits of, and which to break? Finally, how might we think about the relationships between fiction writing and other arts? Between and among our experiences of culture/cultural moments, the ways in which we tell stories, and the stories we tell? Throughout the semester, graduate writers will be required to produce and present new original fiction, to read and respond to published writing in class discussion and written discussions.
Spring 2009 Courses
English 303 Graduate Fiction Workshop
Lorraine Lopez
(Monday 3:30 - 6:00 p.m.)
This workshop/studio course focuses on the development of fictive works-in-progress in connection to investigation and discussion of elements of craft. Graduate writers will be required to present a minimum of three pieces of new and original fiction composed during the semester, to provide substantive reviews of work by peers on a regular basis, to compose a publishable book review, and to lead a workshop discussion on craft in conjunction with a selected short story that will be appropriate for presenting in an undergraduate workshop. Finally, this workshop will investigate the novella form and how it works in relationship to the short story and the novel. Toward this end, workshop participants will read and discuss Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter, Guided Tours of Hell by Francine Prose, Sabbath Creek by Judson Mitcham, and Here to Get My Baby out of Jail by Louise Shivers.
English 304. Graduate Poetry Workshop
Rick Hilles
(Tuesday 3:30-6:00 p.m.)
The primary focus of this graduate poetry workshop will be a discussion of your work-in-progress. Since all of you are in the process of compiling your own collections, we will supplement our reading with a selection of notable contemporary poetry books--some first and second books, others by poets well into careers--including:
Larry Levis, Elegy
Brian Turner, Here, Bullet
Tracy K. Smith, Duende
Andrew Feld, Citizen
Srikanth Reddy, Facts for Visitors
Afaa Michael Weaver, The Plum Flower Dance
A Van Jordan, Macnolia
Mary Karr, Sinners Welcome
In addition to writing your own work and providing commentary on the work of your peers, you will also be asked to give one presentation (on one additional poetry collection, of our choosing).
English 305 - 01 Graduate Nonfiction Workshop
Peter Guralnick
(Tuesday 3:3 - 6:00 p.m.)
This is a graduate workshop in Creative Nonfiction with a particular emphasis on the profile and long-form narrative piece. Three major pieces will be required, along with some brief additional exercises. Every student in the course will critique each of the papers in writing, and the class will consist primarily of constructive discussion of the work. In addition there will be readings of work by such writers as Gay Talese, Gary Smith, Janet Malcolm, Jonathan Lethem, Joseph Mitchell, Jack Kerouac, and Louis Menand. Much of the focus of discussion will be on issues of characterization, narrative technique, selectivity of detail, and angle of perception--in other words, how to make a real-life story or profile come alive in much the same way that fictional narrative can. The implicit bond between reader, writer, and subject will also provide a jumping-off point, along with the proverbial Rashomon-like nature of truth. Most of all, the workshop should be seen as a kind of shared enterprise in which a mutual enthusiasm for writing should lead to discussion that is as wide-ranging as it is lively and engaging.
The application deadline for Fall 2008 admission is January 22, 2008. In order to encourage candidates to use the online application system, Vanderbilt’s Graduate School will waive the application fee for electronic applications this year.
Online Application
The electronic application form makes it possible to provide the following required materials:
- Writing sample.
- College transcript
- Statement of purpose.
- Three letters of recommendation.
- GRE scores.
The writing sample for M.F.A. candidates should be creative work. Fiction manuscripts may be made up of stories or a section of a novel, between 20 and 25 pages. Poetry manuscripts should be 10 to 15 pages.
The statement of purpose should be concise and no more than two pages.
Schedule of Courses
The two year schedule of courses will look as follows. Some upper division undergraduate seminars may be taken for graduate credit, for 3 rather than 4 hours. All graduate seminars, including the graduate workshops, are worth 4 hours. Ultimately a student will graduate with between 42 and 48 hours. A graduate workshop in the student’s genre is required each semester.
First Year
Fall semester:
Graduate workshop (4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Spring semester:
Graduate workshop (4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Second Year
Fall semester:
Graduate workshop (4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Graduate seminar (3 or 4 hours)
Spring semester:
Graduate workshop (4 hours)
Thesis (1-8 hours)
Funding
Full funding is offered to all students admitted.
For first year students, the University Fellowship includes:
A full tuition benefit (valued at $34,400)
A $6,000 stipend
A $3,250 salary for assisting in the Writing Studio
And health insurance ($1,938)
First year University Fellowships may be enhanced by University Graduate Fellowships, topping up awards, of $10,000, which may be retained for the second year.
For second year students, the University Fellowship includes:
A full tuition benefit (valued at $34,400)
A $6,000 stipend
A $3,250 salary for teaching a beginning creative writing workshop for one semester
Health insurance ($1,938)
And retention of University Graduate Fellowship, if earned in the first year.
All students are admitted with University Fellowships. Those who make good progress toward their degree will retain their fellowships in the second year.
Venues for creative writers to share their work at Vanderbilt include an annual, The Vanderbilt Review. Another yearly event is the competition for the
Academy of
American Poets Prize, given for the best poem submitted by a student enrolled at Vanderbilt. Each semester the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S.Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series brings writers to campus to read from their work and visit classes. In the spring, the literary symposium gathers writers around a theme for two days of readings and panel discussions. Every other year a distinguished writer in residence visits for a semester and teaches a workshop in his or her genre. Vanderbilt’s literary life is an ongoing resource for creative writers.
The Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series
Robert Penn
Warren * Eudora Welty * Kingsley Amis * V.S. Pritchett *
Elizabeth Spencer * Yusef Komunyakaa * Ruth Fainlight * Rose Tremain *
Allan Sillitoe * Rita Dove * Agha Shahid Ali * Ellen Gilchrist *
Marilyn Nelson * Garrett Hongo * Judith Ortiz Cofer * William Matthews *
Diane Ackerman * Ellen Douglas * Margot Livesey * Jessica Hagedorn *
Alan Shapiro * Julia Alvarez * Seamus Heaney * Charles Wright *
Chase Twichell * J.M.Coetzee * Richard Ford * Maxine Kumin *
Michelle Boisseau * Ellen Bryant Voigt * Robert Lowell * Pauline Kael *
David Lehman * Linda Gregerson * James Wood * Stanley Elkin *
Lee Smith * Chang-rae Lee * Al Young * Wally Lamb *
Donald Justice * Philip Levine * Peter Matthiessen * Andrew Hudgins *
Medbh McGuckian * Erin McGraw * Jill McCorkle * Lorna Goodison *
Madison Smartt Bell * Sydney Lea * Marita Golden * Antonya Nelson *
Gerald Stern * Eileen Simpson * Karen Yamashita * Richard Bausch *
Elizabeth Spires * Richard Tillinghast * Anne Patchett * Martín Espada *
Tony Hoagland * R. S. Gwynn * Mary Gordon * T. R. Hummer *
Alison Lurie * Fred Chappell * Pam Durban * Edward Hirsch *
and more have read in The Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series.
Distinguished Writers in Residence
Philip Levine, Spring 1995
James McConkey, Spring 1997
Marilyn Nelson, Spring 1999
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Spring 2001
Garrett Hongo, Fall 2002
Peter Guralnick, Spring 2005, Spring 2007
Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Program: Fall 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007, 8 p.m., Buttrick 102, poet Robin Becker, author of Domain of Perfect Affection.
Friday, October 12, 3 p.m., Buttrick 101, Faculty Reading, Alumni Reunion Weekend: poets Beth Bachmann, Kate Daniels, and Mark Jarman, and novelists Tony Earley, Lorraine Lopez, and Alice Randall.
Wednesday, October 31, 8 p.m., Wilson 126, novelist Robin Lippincott, author of In the Meantime.
Tuesday, November 13, 8 p.m., Buttrick 101, poet Kate Light, author of Gravity’s Dream. (A performance of Ms. Light’s “Einstein’s Mozart” by the Blair String Quarter will be given at The Blair School of Music’s Turner Recital Hall, Monday, November 12, at 8 p.m.)
Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Program: Spring 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 8 p.m., Buttrick 101, poet James Hoch, reading his poems. Hoch’s poems have appeared in Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Black Warrior, Gettysburg, Five Fingers, and other magazines. His first book, A Parade of Hands, won the Gerald Cable Book Award, and he was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His latest book, Miscreants, was published by Norton in June 2007. Hoch teaches at Ramapo College and splits his time between New Jersey and Seattle, Washington.
Thursday, February 28, 7 p.m., Buttrick 102, poet and novelist Judson Mitcham, reading from his work. Mitcham, the only two-time winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction, isvisiting associate professor in fiction at Emory University. He is the author of a new collection of poetry, A Little Salvation, published by the University of Georgia Press. His novels The Sweet Everlasting and Sabbath Creek both won the Townsend Prize for Fiction for outstanding novel or short story collection by a Georgia writer. The Townsend Prize is sponsored by Georgia Perimeter College, the Chattahoochee Review and the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum in Atlanta.
Spring Literary Symposium: Beyond Our Beginnings—Women Writers from Working and Lower Class Backgrounds: Dorothy Allison, Joy Castro, Karen Sayler-McElmurray, Heather Sellers, and Minton Sparks
Tuesday, March 25 4:00 Panel—All Presenters BJJC
5:00 Reception RPWC
6:00 Reading—Allison & Sellers AFC
Wednesday, March 26 6:00 Reading—Castro & McElmurray AFC
Thursday, March 27 6:00 Reading/Performance—Sparks AFC
BJJC: Bishop Joseph Johnson Center
RPWC: Robert Penn Warren Center
AFC: All Faith Center (Divinity School)
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. The first member of her family to graduate from high school, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit Scholarship and in 1979, studied anthropology at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of the chapbook, The Women Who Hate Me (1983); the novels, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Cavedweller (1998); and the short story collection, Trash (2002), which included the prize-winning short story, "Compassion," selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003.
Joy Castro studied literature at Trinity University and Texas A&M University. She is the author of the memoir, The Truth Book (Arcade 2005). She teaches at the University of Nebraska and in the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in anthologies and in journals such as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, and Puerto del Sol.
Karen Salyer McElmurray’s short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in The Kenyon Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. Her books are Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven (a novel), which won the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing in 2001, and Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother's Journey (a memoir of the relinquishment of her son to state-supported adoption in Kentucky in 1973), a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book and the recipient of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2003. Her most recent work, a novel entitled "The Motel of the Stars," will be published in 2008 by Sarabande Books.
Heather Sellers is the author of Georgia Under Water (Sarabande 2001), a book of linked stories which won a place in the Barnes and Noble New Discovery Writers Award in Summer 2001. Her first children’s book, Spike and Cubby’s Ice Cream Island Adventure!, illustrated by Amy Young, was published by Henry Holt in October 2004. A poetry collection, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses, was published in November, 2002 from Ahsahta Press (Idaho). Her textbook for introductory creative writing students, The Passionate Beginner, is just released by Bedford/St. Martins. She is the author of two memoirs on the writing life, Page after Page: how to start writing and keep writing no matter what! (Writer’s Digest, 2004) and Chapter After Chapter. Currently, she is completing a memoir about her experiences with prosopagnosia, or “face blindness.”
Minton Sparks is a spoken word poet whose performances are captured on her CD’s Middlin’ Sisters, This Dress, and Sin Sick, and on the DVD Open Casket. She has also published a collection of her poetry, Desperate Ransom: Setting Her Family Free. This Dress won the 2004 “Spoken Word Record of the Year” from Just Plain Folk Music Awards. Sin Sick won the New York Book Festival’s Spoken Word 1st Prize. In wide demand as a performer, she has appeared with John Prine and collaborated with Waylon Jennings and been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and on the BBC. She makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee.
Kate Daniels, author of three volumes of poetry, including The Niobe Poems and her most recent work, Four Testimonies: Poems. Her first volume, The White Wave was awarded the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. She has her M.F.A. from
Columbia
University . She has won the James Dickey Prize for Poetry from Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art and the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry from
Southeastern
Louisiana
University . Her poems have been anthologized in a number of publications and have appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review, Critical Quarterly, and the Southern Review. She has also edited a volume of poems by Muriel Rukeyser and co-edited the book Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly.
Tony Earley, author of three books: Here We Are in Paradise, Somehow Form a Family, and the novels Jim the Boy and The Blue Star. He received his M.F.A. from The University of Alabama. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire and The Oxford American, and has been anthologized multiple times in The Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South. He was named by Granta as one of the twenty best young American novelists, and The New Yorker named him one of twenty writers to watch in the twenty-first century. He won a National Magazine Award for his short story "The Prophet from Jupiter." He is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English.
Peter Guralnick, author of a celebrated trilogy on America’s roots music—Feel Like Goin’Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock ’n’ Roll, Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals ofAmerican Musicians, and Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm & Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom—and a definitive, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, each volume of which won a Ralph Gleason Music Book Award. His most recent book is Dream Boogie: the Triumph of Sam Cooke.
Rick Hilles, author of Brother Salvage, winner of the 2005 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. He received his M.F.A. from Columbia University. He was the 2002-03 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar and has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Ruth and Jay C. Halls Fellow at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and was awarded the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from The Missouri Review. His work has appeared in Harper's, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Salmagundi, Field and Witness.
Mark Jarman, author of eight collections of poetry, including Iris (a book-length poem), Questions for Ecclesiastes, and Unholy Sonnets. His most recent volumes are To the Green Man and Epistles. He received his M.F.A. from the
University of
Iowa . His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize of the
Academy of
American Poets, and The Poets’ Prize. His poems have appeared in journals such as the American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. In addition, he is the author of two collections of essays: The Secret of Poetry and Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry. He is Centennial Professor of English.
Lorraine López, author of Soy la
Avon Lady and Other Stories, has a doctoral degree in English through the Creative Writing Program at the
University of
Georgia . Her first book was selected by Sandra Cisneros to win the inaugural Miguel Marmól Prize for Fiction. It also garnered the Independent Publishers Book Award for Multicultural Fiction and the Latino Book Award for Short Stories, awarded by the Latino Literary Hall of Fame. Her novel The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters is forthcoming from Warner Books. Call Me Henri, a young adult novel, has just been published by Curbstone Press. She has co-edited a collection of critical articles on the work of Judith Ortiz Cofer.
Nancy Reisman, author of House Fires and The First Desire, received her M.F.A. from the
University of
Massachusetts ,
Amherst . Her short story collection House Fires won the 1999 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her novel The First Desire won the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction. She has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in
Provincetown , and has won an O.Henry Award and the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. Her stories have been included in numerous anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, O.Henry Award Stories, and Jewish in America.
For More Information
Director, M.F.A. Program
Department of English
Vanderbilt
University
Nashville, TN
37235
(615) 322-2276
(615) 343-8028 Fax
The Vanderbilt University Creative Writing Faculty at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, February 28 to March 2, 2007. Vanderbilt University was a major sponsor of the event. Pictured, from the left, Tony Earley, Alice Randall, Nancy Reisman, Beth Bachmann, Kate Daniels, Mark Jarman, Lorraine Lopez, Rick Hilles.
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