An online home for the American University Creative Writing MFA community
By Yohanca Delgado In September, AU’s Center for Israel Studies brought Etgar Keret to campus for a reading and conversation. Before the event, I was delighted to sit in on a casual, roundtable conversation with Melissa Scholes Young and her students in the MFA lit…
By: Bailey Blumenstock For the past year, in addition to the various hats I wear at AU, I’ve also had the pleasure of working in the Box Office at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. While best known for its theatre productions, the Folger hosts a number…
By Emily M. Smith “I celebrate myself and sing myself.” In honor of the bicentennial of Whitman’s birth, American’s Lit Department took these words to heart and held a group reading of “Song of Myself” on Friday, March 29th. Literature and creative writing professors, graduate…
By Emily Smith A defining aspect of AU’s MFA program is its close relationship between faculty and students, both past and present. The Annual Faculty Reading, held this past Wednesday night at 826 DC, is the embodiment of this communal spirit. MFA faculty, current students,…
By Austine Model Fady Joudah is a poet living in Austin, Texas. His most recent collection, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance, was published earlier this year by Milkweed Editions. Joudah has three other collections of his own work published, in addition to extensive works…
By Austine Elizabeth Chilton Model Kyle Dargan’s fifth collection of poetry, Anagnorisis, came out this September. Prescient, reflective, and unapologetically aware, the collection confronts the reader with a sense of urgency coupled with a lack of effective and lasting agency. Anagnorisis succeeds in expressing…
By Yohanca Delgado As the semester enters full swing (and everyone recovers from Saturday night’s literary sugar coma) we’ve all got another wonderful event to look forward to, our first Visiting Writers event featuring Fatimah Asghar. Asghar is a nationally touring poet, performer, educator, and writer.…
By Amy Trotter In anticipation of her visit to American University’s Visiting Writers Series this Wednesday, Mai Der Vang graciously answered a few questions about her explosive new collection, Afterland, and her involvement in the Hmong writer’s community. AT: Have you been busy…
By Yohanca Delgado Elizabeth Acevedo is a slam poet and used to teach middle-school before she turned to writing books— and you can tell from the moment she steps onto the stage. She’s wearing sweatpants, her signature curls are flawless, and she’s one of those…
By Vince Granata I asked recent MFA grad, Tom Hatcher, about his translations of Romanian poetry. Tom began his translation work in David Keplinger’s seminar on translation when he was introduced to the Romanian poet, Claudiu Komartin. Tom’s translations of Komartin’s work have been published in Poetry International and Pleiades.…