By Chinazaekpere Amalu 

The Poke press 

Three award-winning alumni of McNeese’s Master of Fine Arts in creative writing program will present a poetry and fiction reading March 27 at 7 p.m. in Hardtner Hall’s Stokes Auditorium.

The reading, presented by the MFA in Creative Writing program and the Frank Granger poetry series, features three MFA alumni who were awarded the Wallace Stegner fellowship at Stanford University following their graduation from McNeese. Admission is free and open to the public. 

“The Wallace Stegner fellowship is a very prestigious fellowship that people apply for and its connected to Stanford university,” said Michael Horner, director of the Creative writing MFA program at McNeese. “You are paid about $80,000 a year to write and do workshops at least once a week and a reading. It is guaranteed time and money to work on writing, but very competitive. They select only about five to 10 people a year from all over the country and world.” 

J. Bruce Fuller, director of the Texas Review Press and faculty at Sam Houston State University; Michael Shewmaker, a poet and creative writing teacher at Stanford University; and Jenn Alandy Trahan, a fiction writer and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, will read and take time to work with attendees who want reviews and mentorship.  

The event coincides with the 45th anniversary of McNeese’s MFA program, which awards a three-year terminal degree. Graduates are qualified to teach at the college level similarly to those with a Ph.D. The program accepts about eight students per semester across the world, a group which is split into two, with half studying poetry and the rest studying fiction. 

“We have about 18 students in total in the MFA program,” said Ryan Abshire, an MFA fiction student. “It is a studio and literature program where we work on our writing and craft, as well as literature. We have the opportunity to get an MFA and a master’s in literature in the course of the three years if we choose.” 

The fourth awarded alumnus, though not present at the workshop, is Adam Johnson who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. 

Connor Lee, another student in the fiction MFA program, said the work is something they love.

“Being an MFA student means a lot of writing, a lot of reading which luckily those are things that we enjoy doing.”