News
Joshua Moore, MFA ’20, Discusses Nashville’s Freedom Riders on WPLN
Jun. 12, 2020—Season 4 of Versify, a WPLN podcast hosted by poet Joshua Moore, debuts next month. Its subject: Nashville’s Freedom Riders. In honor of the freedom rides and sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement held in Nashville 60 years ago, Versify pairs members of the Nashville community who were present at these actions with local writers, such as Destiny...
Tiana Clark Wins 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Mar. 18, 2020—Tiana Clark, MFA ’17, has received the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her 2018 poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood. The Kate Tufts Discovery Award is presented by Claremont Graduate University to a “first book by a poet of genuine promise,” and includes a prize of $10,000. Clark is the author...
Yiyun Li Reading CANCELLED
Jan. 19, 2020—We regret to announce that this event has been CANCELLED. Vanderbilt Creative Writing Gertrude & Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series Yiyun Li is the author of five works of fiction—Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in...
Book Release: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Nov. 5, 2019—Kevin Wilson, BA ’00, has received enthusiastic reviews for his new novel, Nothing to See Here, released October 29, 2019 by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. Read Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s review for the New York Times, and listen to Wilson’s interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Wilson is the author of two collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial,...
Words Are Windows: New Anthology Amplifies Immigrant and Refugee Voices
Nov. 1, 2019—Anna Silverstein, MFA ‘2016, has edited a new anthology, Words Are Windows—a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by immigrant and refugee writers in the Nashville community. The anthology is a product of Silverstein’s workshop with The Porch, Nashville’s literary nonprofit, which has provided a creative space specifically for immigrant and refugee writers since 2016. The...
Dailiness: Forthcoming Essay Collection by Mark Jarman
Oct. 16, 2019—Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English, has completed a new collection of essays. Dailiness: Essays on Poetry will be released by Paul Dry Books on February 18, 2020, and is available for preorder now. “In this wonderful collection of essays, Mark Jarman explores with wit and passion the practice of poetry―of making it, of reading it,...
Book Release: Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland by Cara Dees
Oct. 7, 2019—Cara Dees, MFA ‘2014, has published a new book of poetry. Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland is the winner of the 2018 Barrow Street Poetry Prize, selected by Ada Limón. “Navigating a landscape of loss with language that is both lyrically charged and freshly brutal, Cara Dees has given us a first book that is unexpected...
Matthew Baker and Anders Carlson-Wee in The Paris Review
Sep. 23, 2019— The work of two Vanderbilt MFA alumni, Matthew Baker and Anders Carlson-Wee, can be found in the Fall 2019 issue of The Paris Review. The issue contains Baker’s story “Why Visit America,” and Carlson-Wee’s poems “Hired” and “Cora.” Matthew Baker is author of the story collection Hybrid Creatures and the children’s novel Key Of X, originally published as If...
Current MFA Jessica Lee in The New Yorker
Sep. 23, 2019—Jessica Lee’s poem “Lust Must Have Struck for the First Time” was featured in the September 2, 2019 issue of The New Yorker. Lee is currently a first-year candidate in the MFA program. Her poetry has also been featured in Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Find her at readjessicalee.com.
3rd Year Fellow Alina Grabowski wins Master’s Review Award
Nov. 29, 2018—Congratulations to 3rd year fellow Alina Grabowski on her story “Confirmation,” which won the Master’s Review Summer Short Story Award!