MFA Writers

What’s it like to pursue a low-residency MFA when you’re a collaborative playwright and performer? In this episode, Suli Holum describes devised work, partnerships between writers and actors, and how she created a piece based on her research in the oil fields of North Dakota. She and Jared also talk about the details of Goddard’s creative and craft assignments, and how students in this low-res program still get teaching experience.Suli Holum is a Philadelphia-based director, performer, choreographer and playwright who recently graduated with an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Goddard College in Vermont where she was the recipient of the 2020 Engaged Artist Award. She is a member of the Wilma Theatre’s HotHouse Company, a founding member of Pig Iron Theatre Company, and Co-Artistic Director of Stein | Holum Projects, whose works include Drama Desk-nominated Chimera, and The Wholehearted. She’s the recipient of a Drama Desk Award, a TCG/Fox Resident Actor Fellowship, a Barrymore Award, an Independence Fellowship, and a NEFA Touring Grant. Credits at the Wilma include Romeo and Juliet, Dance Nation and Minor Character, and you can also catch her on HBO’s Mare of Easttown. Find her at suliholumthework.org.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Noah Evan Wilson spent ten years finishing his undergraduate degree while developing as a musician and a photographer. In this episode, he talks with Jared about how that decade of experiences animates his current writing, how the craft of music and photography overlaps with and informs his fiction, and how the MFA has provided him the opportunity to experience college in a way he wasn’t able to before.Noah Evan Wilson is a writer and musician based in New York City, and a second-year MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Newark, in the fiction track. His short stories have been published in Beyond Words, Third Street Review, and the anthology, Ten Ways the Animals Will Save Us, from Retreat West Books. He received third place in the 2022 Dreamers Creative Writing Flash Fiction Contest, and second place in the 2021 Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize, and has stories forthcoming in both Chautauqua and Orca. Noah is currently working on his first novel, exploring the lasting power of a brief and intimate friendship between two young men who become entangled with a high-control religious cult. His solo records, Desert Cities, and The View from the Ground, are available on all major music streaming platforms. Find him at noahevanwilson.com or on Instagram @NoahEvanWilson.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

How do voice-driven writers find their characters? Austin Tucker tells Jared how he uses collage and research into his characters’ life histories to craft voices that are often “on the edge of collapse.” Plus, Austin discusses the pros and cons of a small program with 6-8 students in each poetry workshop, healthcare access as a PhD student, and opportunities to design and teach composition, workshop, and survey classes.Austin Tucker is a poet and fiction writer who received his MFA from the University of Rutgers-Camden and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Ohio University. He is the current editor of Quarter After Eight and his poetry was selected for The Southeast Review’s 2024 Gearhart Prize by Kareena McGlynn, and has appeared in Pleiades, Frontier, and Four Chambers, among other places. His fiction won the 2024 Masters Review Flash Fiction contest and was a semifinalist for the 2018 Halifax Ranch Prize. He’s also a two-time finalist for The DISQUIET International Literary Prize in Poetry. Find him at r.austin.tucker [at] gmail [dot] com or via the Quarter After Eight IG (@qaejournal). He is represented by Julia Eagleton with Janklow and Nesbit.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Poetic forms are sometimes considered limiting, but can we find freedom within the constraints? On this episode, Brandon Blue tells Jared about how recontextualizing traditional forms through the lens of identity creates an additional, sometimes subversive, layer of meaning. Plus, he discusses writing about intimacy and eroticism within and outside of sexual relationships; how he decided to pursue an MFA after teaching middle and high school for seven years; and the importance of advocating for your needs and goals in an MFA program, writing community, and career.Brandon Blue is a black, queer poet, educator and MFA candidate at Arizona State University from the D(M)V. He is an assistant editor for Storm Cellar Magazine and his work has or will appear in Barzakh, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Poetry Anthology, [PANK], and more. His work is also featured in the Capital Pride Poem-a-Day event. His work has received the support of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. His chapbook, Snap.Shot, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Keep up with his work at brandonbluepoet.com.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt writing imposter syndrome! We all have our hands up. On this episode, De’Andre S. Holmes of Columbia College Chicago shares his experience with self-doubt, exacerbated by pursuing an undergrad degree in business administration, not English. Plus, he talks about taking a fully-funded semester in Paris through his MFA program, provides advice for students coping with grad school burnout, and describes why racial and ethnic diversity is so critical in the MFA.A native of Philadelphia, De’Andre S. Holmes received a bachelor’s degree from Temple University and is a second-year MFA candidate at Columbia College in his current home of Chicago. He is an aspiring author, penning his first book of short stories titled "Daddy, do you love me?" and a novelette titled "Obscurity." De’Andre’s work can be found in Contextos Chicago, Short Story Break, SONKU magazine, and Allium Literary Journal. In his free time, he enjoys reading, traveling, exploring different cultures, and binge-watching animal documentaries. Find him at his website dsholmeswrites.com and on Instagram @d.s.holmeswrites.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

After writing poetry for nearly 50 years, Jude MacAllen Tatman enrolled in an MFA program. In this episode, he sits down with Jared to discuss what it’s like to revisit poems he drafted in the 1980s along with crafting new work. Plus, he discusses writing about his life’s most consequential crossroads, treating writing like work, and finding faculty who make themselves available to students even in a low-residency program.Jude MacAllen Tatman is a poet from Missouri who is in his final semester at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s low-residency program. MacAllen has been writing poetry off and on for fifty years while also serving as a deckhand on towboats, playing semi-pro baseball in West Texas, delivering pizzas, waiting tables, owning a bar, working as an historian in Missouri State Parks’ Historic Preservation Program, and even once participating in an episode of Jeopardy. His poem, “Salvation,” was published in the literary journal Envy’s Sting, and his chapbook, Echoes: Selected Poems & Stories 1984-2023, is now available.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Poets are known for considering form in their writing, but form is also critical in prose. In fact, for Tyler R. Moore, form tells us the most about the story. “It’s the structure, scaffolding, bones, and architecture.” In this episode, Tyler tells Jared about approaching each story with a different structure, including his recent piece told exclusively through voicemails. Plus, Tyler discusses how being a queer writer from a pseudo-rural Midwestern town shapes his work, finding community across genres and faculty in his MFA program, and what he has learned from his editorial experience at Ninth Letter, like the do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts) of a cover letter.Tyler R. Moore is a fiction writer from Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin and is currently in his second year in the MFA program at the University of Illinois. He is the winner of the Hobart L. and Mary K. Peer Fiction Prize. He also holds the titles of current Associate Managing Editor and Associate Creative Non-fiction Editor for Ninth Letter. His work is published or forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Find him on Instagram @tyler_rmoore and at his website, tylerrmoore.com.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Siloh Radovsky sits down with Jared to talk about her path from anarchistic activism to experimental writing, the blurry line between fiction and nonfiction, and the joys and pains of teaching in an R1 institution.Siloh Radovsky is a prose writer invested in the overlap between narrative and criticism. A recent graduate of the cross-genre MFA program at UC San Diego, she is currently at work on a collection of linked essays. Her essays, articles, and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Entropy, [PANK], Teen Vogue, Inkwell, Identity Theory, and elsewhere. Siloh is also an educator, a collaborator in a narrative medicine intervention with Adolescent and Young Adult cancer patients, and was a founding editor of Kaleidoscoped magazine. She was an artist-in-residence at the Hinge Arts program in spring 2017, and was the recipient of an Evergreen Foundation Activity Grant and a Summer Graduate Teaching Fellowship at UC San Diego. Find her on Instagram @essence_of_toast and her website silohradovsky.net.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

What happens when a tech startup employee starts taking online writing classes? They end up in an MFA program, of course. In this episode, Ray Wise sits down with Jared to talk about finding writing in their 20s and the lessons they bring from the tech world to their creative work. Plus, they discuss Rutgers-Camden’s multi-genre emphasis, weekend writing retreats with the MFA community, and the pros and cons of a small program.Ray Wise is a multi-genre writer living in Philadelphia, where they are completing their final semester in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden. Ray's work has been published in Passages North, Rose Books Reader, Barrelhouse, Hobart, etc., nominated for Best of the Net, and supported by Sundress Academy for the Arts. They are currently at work on a novel manuscript and a poetry collection. Find them on Twitter/X @ray__wise and catch them reading in Philadelphia for the Rose Books Reader launch on April 26th at Clown Bar.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Integrating elegy, ekphrasis, and dance notation, Oli Peters’s thesis project is a multilingual, multi-genre exploration in translation and lyric poetry. In this episode, she shares how her program encourages creative experimentation, even when she submits work that feels “absolutely unpublishable, verging on unreadable.” Plus, she discusses her courses in Medieval manuscripts and theater, university-funded opportunities in Paris and Ireland, and how being rejected from MFA programs right after undergrad led her to spend five years writing daily for no one but herself.Oli is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Notre Dame. Her writing is forthcoming in Annulet, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, and mercury firs. Her past work appears in Pleiades, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, Heavy Feather Review, and abobo zine. Her dance-performance piece "Body Glyph State" will be performed at the 2025 Iowa Choreography Festival. She is a MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Find her at her website, oliupeters.wixsite.com/olipeters, and on Instagram @olimpeters.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com