The coming year promises to be an exhilarating one for the MFA program. We will be making two hires this year, one of a poet (to replace the retiring Gary Sange, who will teach his final semester with us in the spring), and another of a writer of creative non-fiction, a field which many of our current students, both fiction writers and poets, have been drawn to. Thanks to some strong support for the program from the dean’s office, been able to increase the program’s annual budget—allowing us, among other things, to expand our visiting writers’ series, advertise the program more aggressively in print and online venues, and offer MFA student support for next winter’s AWP Conference, where we will host a special reading celebrating the MFA program’s 25th anniversary, featuring current faculty as well as several past faculty, among them Sheri Reynolds, Dave Smith, and T.R. Hummer. Our visiting writers’ series is a distinguished one this year, featuring several literary figures, including Pulitzer prizewinning poet C.K. Williams in the fall, National Book Award-winning poet Jean Valentine in the winter, and the distinguished fiction writer Bret Lott, editor of The Southern Review—whose work has been featured on the Oprah Book Club—in the spring. 2007 will mark the tenth anniversary of the Larry Levis Reading Prize. This year’s winner, Joshua Weiner, will visit the campus in September. This year also marks the fifth year of the VCU First Novelist Award; the current winner, Peter Orner, will come to the campus in November. Finally, the program has been given funding to support a Visiting Distinguished Writer, who will come each year to VCU to conduct a short-term seminar and present a reading. We are pleased to announce that poet Claudia Emerson, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, will serve as our first distinguished writer and will conduct a six-week seminar with MFA students in the fall. A new visiting appointment, of a fiction writer, will be made in 2008.

This is truly an exciting time for the MFA program, and I hope that you will be able to attend our events.

David Wojahn
VCU MFA Program Director