alumni
Shelby Johnson to deliver Drake Lecture – March 20
Mar. 3, 2026—Friday, March 20 Time TBA Divinity 127 “Dreaming Sacagawea” Across the thousands of pages that comprise the eighteen modern volumes of Lewis and Clark’s journals (1803-1806), Sacagawea appears in just a hundred passages. Although she may be the most documented Indigenous woman of the early 19th century, few of these entries referred to her by...
Keegan C. Finberg to deliver Drake Lecture – February 27
Feb. 27, 2026—Friday, February 27 2:00 – 3:00 PM Divinity 127 “Reproduction and Generality: Feminist Diets in Poetry by Bernadette Mayer, Adrian Piper and Eleanor Antin” This talk will examine feminist performance art and poetry that experiments with food intake to consider effects of the political economic welfare conditions of the 1970s. Speaking directly to the tightening...
MFA alums Max McDonough and Kiyoko Reidy to join reading series – April 2
Feb. 12, 2026—Thursday, April 2 6:30 PM Literary Salon 7:00 PM Reading 8:00 PM Book Signing Vanderbilt Special Collections Library 1101 19th Ave South Nashville, TN 37212 Max McDonough’s debut poetry collection, Python with a Dog Inside It, won the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His...
Vanderbilt Reading Series welcomes novelist Rita Bullwinkel – December 4
Dec. 3, 2025—Thursday, December 4 Book-signing, 6:30 PM Reading, 7:00 PM Vanderbilt Special Collections Library 1101 19th Ave South Nashville, TN 37212 Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the novels Headshot (2024) and Belly Up (2018). Headshot was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Gordon Burn Prize. It...
Alum Donika Kelly fronts Poets & Writers Magazine
Nov. 17, 2025—Poet Donika Kelly, who received her PhD in English from Vanderbilt, is featured in the November/December 2025 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, following the publication of her third volume of poetry, The Natural Order of Things, from Graywolf Press. “In a time when escapist fantasies dominate the fiction charts, The Natural Order of Things is...
2025 Creative Writing newsletter now available
Nov. 13, 2025—The newsletter can be viewed by clicking here. PDF Version
New Yorker publishes MFA alum Nathan Blum
Oct. 28, 2025— A story by Creative Writing alum Nathan Blum (’25) appears in the November 3 issue of The New Yorker. “Outcomes” follows two college students who meet and form a connection. “I think I could set out to write about pretty much anything, and it would end up being in...
Vanderbilt MFA students featured in Cheekwood Exhibit
Sep. 16, 2025— MFA faculty, students, and alumni are currently featured in the exhibition Verse & Visions at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens. Visit Cheekwood and read the ekphrastic poems of Sydney Mayes, Carson Colenbaugh (MFA ’25), Ajla Dizdarevic, and Assistant Professor Didi Jackson. Verse and Vision,...
Bryan Byrdlong (BA ’15) publishes debut collection of poetry
Sep. 16, 2025— Bryan Byrdlong’s Strange Flowers is a staggering debut that maps the lines and links between the living and undead, ritual and where the speaker belongs. Byrdlong’s exploration of the zombie, from the Caribbean to cocktails, marks what changes us, takes us out of ourselves, and...