Faculty
Isle McElroy
MFA, Arizona State University, PhD, University of Houston. Author of the novels The Atmospherians and People Collide, which was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick and a best book of 2023 by Vogue, NPR, Vulture, Them, Electric Literature, and others. Their essays appear in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Cut, Vulture, GQ, Vogue, The Atlantic, Tin House, and elsewhere. SLC, 2025–
Graduate Courses 2026-2027
Master of Fine Arts in Writing
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Seminar—Spring
WRIT 7306
“Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality,” José Esteban Muñoz famously wrote in Cruising Utopia. He went on to conclude that “the future is queerness's domain.” In this workshop, we will explore what is unique about queer fiction, an umbrella term that seems both reductive and indecisively broad. Beyond the sexual orientation and gender of its subjects, what makes a piece of fiction queer? How do queer writers play around with time, character, setting, and desire in manners that seem uniquely queer? Must a queer book contain queer characters, or can queerness be a lens through which the author writes about any subject? We will read texts from Torrey Peters, Carmen Maria Machado, Djuna Barnes, Dennis Cooper, and others to get a better sense of what exactly we mean when we talk about queer literature. In addition to class readings, all students will workshop twice during the semester. Students do not need to be writing queer literature to enroll in the class. All fiction submissions are welcome.
Faculty