The Writing Seminars congratulates Richie Hofmann (MFA Writing Seminars 2014) on the publication of his debut poetry collection, Second Empire, by Alice James Books. Second Empire is the winner of 2014 Beatrice Hawley Award, given in past years to collections by Jean Valentine, Laura Kasischke, B.H. Fairchild, and Brian Turner. Of Second Empire, Mary Szybist […]

The Writing Seminars congratulates faculty member Dora Malech, whose poem “Party Games” was selected by Sherman Alexie for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2015. “Party Games” first appeared in Volume 7, Issue 4 of The Hopkins Review. The Best American Poetry series, published in annual installments since 1988, has been described by former U.S. […]

Writing Seminars faculty member James Arthur has received a U.S. Scholar Award from the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission. From January through June of 2016, Arthur will be the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast’s Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Arthur will teach two courses at the Seamus Heaney Centre while completing his […]

The faculty and staff of the Writing Seminars are pleased to welcome our incoming class of MFA students, who were chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants. Fiction: Ralph Hubbell (Istanbul, Turkey) Kathleen Hull (Mundelein, IL) Isabella Martin (Shutesbury, MA) Mary Terrier (Madrid, Spain) Poetry: John Allen (Danville, KY) Dylan Carpenter (Glencoe, IL) Julia Friedrich […]

The Writing Seminars is delighted to share the news that Andrew Motion, soon to join the Department as a Homewood Professor of the Arts, has received the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for his radio performance Coming Home, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Based upon Motion’s recorded conversations with the last British soldiers to leave […]

Writing Seminars faculty member Dora Malech has been awarded an Engaged Faculty Fellowship by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Social Concern. The Fellowship, which includes support for a graduate assistant, a $2,000 stipend, and formal training in the principles and practice of community-based learning, will allow Malech to design and implement a 2015-2016 Writing Seminars […]

The Writing Seminars is happy to announce that Sir Andrew Motion will join the department as a Homewood Professor of the Arts in July 2015. Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009, he was knighted in 2009 for his services to poetry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature […]

Eric Puchner, Assistant Professor in the Writing Seminars, has won the 2015 Jeannette Haien Ballard Writer’s Prize, a $25,000 annual prize given to “a young writer of proven excellence in poetry or prose.” The prize was established in honor of author Jeannette Haien and is intended to encourage young writers in “the production of literary […]

Mary Jo Salter, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Writing Seminars, has received the $3,000 Poets’ Prize for her book Nothing by Design, published in 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. David Yezzi, Associate Professor in the Writing Seminars, has been named as one of two additional finalists for the prize, along with Mark Halliday of Ohio University; […]

Matt Morton (MFA Writing Seminars 2014) has been chosen by Bob Hicok as the winner of the 2014 Wabash Prize for Poetry for his poem “Windfall.” Of “Windfall,” Hicok writes, “I find myself wanting to live in this poem every time I read it … I like the mix of missing and having, how full […]