MFA Writing Faculty Achievements

Clifford Thompson’s Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays was published by the University of Georgia Press. 
 
Victoria Redel  published her highly anticipated novel, I Am You (SJP Lit) in September 2025. The story follows Dutch painter Maria van Oosterwijck and her assistant, the younger painter Gerta Pieters, as the two challenge the norms of the male-dominated art world and fall in love. The book was recently featured on WBUR’s Here and Now. 

Marie Howe was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton).

Domenica Ruta's latest novel All the Mothers was published by Random House.

Patricio Ferrari's MUD SONGS was selected by Patricia Killelea as the winner of the 2026 FENCE Modern Poets Series Prize. He was also recently named the host of the Limelight Poetry series in NYC and awarded a Shanghai Writing Residency hosted by the Shanghai Writers’ Association.

Joseph Earl Thomas ’ novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer was awarded The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

Richie Narvaez was named a 2024 Letras Boricuas Fellow, in a cohort comprising twenty Puerto Rican authors whose work spans a host of diverse literary genres and styles. Fellows are awarded unrestricted grants of $25,000 each to support their literary practice and provide opportunities to connect and learn across cohorts.

Joseph Earl Thomas published an essay in The Paris Review.

Julia Phillips’ novel Bear was published in June 2024 by Hogarth, and was a National Bestseller, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, and one of the most anticipated books of the summer by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, People, Vulture, Elle, Bustle, LitHub, Parade, Publishers Weekly, Electric Lit, and WBEZ Chicago. She was interviewed on Late Night with Seth Meyers, CBS News, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, and received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.

Joseph Earl Thomas’ novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer was published in June 2024 by Grand Central Publishing, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick and longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, as well as received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

Dennis Nurkse’s (published as D. Nurkse) poem “The Age of Miracle Weapons” was published in The New Yorker

Elvia Wilk was featured on the Momus Podcast

Heather Harpham was named the Strachan Donnelley Visiting Professor in Environmental Writing.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap was granted tenure at Sarah Lawrence College.

Garth Risk Hallberg’s novel The Second Coming was published in May 2024 by Knopf and profiled in The Guardian, The New Yorker, and Interview Magazine

R. A. Villanueva’s poetry collection A Holy Dread was named a winner of the 2024 Alice James Award and will be published in February 2026

Elvia Wilk and Kate Zambreno published a conversation “A Light in Dark Times” with Pioneer Works Broadcast

Marie Howe’s New and Selected Poems was published in April 2024 by W. W. Norton, which was profiled on NPR

Patricio Ferrari published a folio of new poems in The Brooklyn Rail

Marie Howe’s poem “The Hymn” was published in The New Yorker

Lincoln Michel’s story “Werewolf at Dusk” was illustrated by David Small, published by W. W. Norton in March 2024

Marie Howe’s poem “A Certain Light” (From What the Living Do, W. W. Norton, 1997) was featured on The Slowdown Podcast guest-hosted by Victoria Chang

Elvia Wilk published an article “The Art of Decolonization” with Pioneer Works Broadcast

R.A. Villanueva's poem “This dark is the same dark as when you close” was featured in Poem-a-Day on January 9, 2024

Victoria Redel’s poem “Pleasure” (From Paradise, Four Way Books, 2022) was featured on The Slowdown Podcast hosted by Major Jackson

David Ryan’s story “Horse With Tornado” was published in the Georgia Review Winter 2023 issue

Lincoln Michel published an article “The Year That A.I. Came for Culture” in The New Republic

Lincoln Michel was featured on The Kurt Vonnegut podcast and published a short story “The Pond God” in McSweeney’s Issue 71: Horror Stories, guest-edited by Brian Evenson

Afaa M. Weaver was awarded the 2023 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a lifetime achievement honor in poetry

Dennis Nurkse’s (published as D. Nurkse) poem “End of Summer in the Foothills” was published in The New Yorker

Timothy Kreider published a guest essay in The New York Times

Afaa M. Weaver was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s Golden Rose Award

Patricio Ferrari’s translation (with Margaret Jull Costa) of The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa was published by New Directions (July 2023)

Garth Risk Hallberg published an essay in LitHub on the TV adaptation of his novel City on Fire

Marie Howe was in conversation with poet Charif Shanahan “on Ecopoetics, Spirituality, and Losing Oneself” on The Poetry Magazine Podcast

Dennis Nurkse's (published as D. Nurkse) poem “The Dim Tenements” was published in the May 2023 issue of Poetry Magazine

Meredith Talusan received a Creative Capital Award and MacDowell Fellowship for fiction in 2023

R.A. Villanueva’s live story “Offerings” was featured in “The Push and the Pull” episode of The Moth Radio Hour

David Ryan’s story “Elision” (published in the New England Review) won a 2023 O’Henry Prize for Short Fiction

Afaa Weaver’s poetry collection A Fire in the Hills was published in April 2023 by Red Hen Press and subsequently awarded the The 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize

Marie Howe’s poem “Reincarnation” was published in The New Yorker in March 2023

Lincoln Michel’s story “The Last Serving” was published in Lightspeed

Meredith Talusan’s short story “Crosscurrents” was published in the Bellevue Literary Review issue 43, and interviewed