Episodit
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It’s not quite Halloween, but on this episode, Emma Allman talks to Jared about the utility of defamiliarization, surrealism, uncanniness, and body horror in ecofiction (spooky!). Plus, she discusses how working in marketing pre-MFA helped her understand professionalism and realism in academia, life in Tuscaloosa as it aligns with and diverges from outsiders’ expectations, and unique opportunities of the University of Alabama’s MFA program, including teaching in youth writing camps or within the state’s prison system.
Emma Allmann studied creative writing at UW-Madison and is entering her third year in the MFA program at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. Prior to returning to grad school she worked in market research for several years in Chicago. She has had pieces published with Ellipsis and Ink In Thirds, shortlisted with Smokelong and has had a play produced for the Marcia Légère Student Play Festival at UW-Madison. She has pieces forthcoming with LandLocked and Ink In Thirds. Find her at www.emmaallmann.com and on Instagram @emryal91.
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.
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As the pod team settles into the fall semester, we’re excited to celebrate the recent accomplishment of one of our past guests. Simon Graham was awarded an AWP Intro Journals Prize for their story “Blair,” forthcoming in Puerto del Sol. Enjoy our conversation with Simon from Season 3.
How do you write about the climate crisis without becoming didactic? On this episode, Simon Graham describes their approach to activist writing, guided by their experience growing up on the beaches of Australia and working in environmental policy. Plus, they talk about queering the crime fiction genre, the financial realities for international students living in Seattle, and remembering who you’re writing to, for, and with.
Simon Graham is an Australian writer, educator, and climate change worker living in Seattle. They are an MFA Candidate in Prose Writing at the University of Washington, where they won the Eugene Van Buren Prize in Fiction and teach a class on activist writing. Simon is also a 2023 Climate Corps Fellow with the Environmental Defense Fund, and prior to moving to the US they worked on climate policy in Australia and lectured on climate change at Monash University. They are currently working on a queer crime novel set in the shadowy world of Australian climate politics.
This episode was requested by Sarah Blood and Rorie Newman. Thank you both for listening!
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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Following Venezuela’s disputed presidential election, debut author Alejandro Puyana returns to the show to discuss his novel, which explores the revolutionary lives of both ordinary and extraordinary Venezuelans over the span of fifty years. He also shares insights with Jared about the rewrites he made to his MFA thesis before publication, the experience of collaborating with an editor, and the journey of securing book blurbs.
Alejandro Puyana is the author of the upcoming novel Freedom Is a Feast, available from Little, Brown on August 20th. Alejandro moved to the United States from Venezuela at the age of twenty-six. In 2022, he completed his MFA at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His work has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The American Scholar, New England Review, and Idaho Review, among others, and his story “The Hands of Dirty Children” was selected by Curtis Sittenfeld for Best American Short Stories 2020. He lives with his wife and daughter in Austin, Texas. Learn more at alejandropuyana.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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.
STAY CONNECTED
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Ever heard of an MFA program with 12 different genre concentrations? On this episode, Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li tells Jared about how UBC’s multi-genre emphasis allowed her to work across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, filmmaking, comics, and more. Plus, she discusses self-funding her degree, receiving a grant to do research in China for her novel, and UBC’s online option for distance learning.
Vivian is a queer and neurodivergent Chinese-Canadian writer, director, musician, and interdisciplinary artist who recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of British Columbia. She is the winner in the short story category of the Creative Writing Collective Sustaining Shared Futures Writing Award, and her fiction and poetry have been published in The Massachusetts Review, The New Quarterly, QWERTY, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Someday I Promise, I'll Love You from 845 Press was nominated for The bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her debut experimental novel titled To You, in the Waves of the Future will be going on submission soon. She can be reached @vivianlicreates onX/Instagram or vivianlicreates.com.
This episode was requested by Michelle D’costa. Thank you for listening, Michelle!
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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.
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As the pod team wraps up our summer vacation, we’re highlighting one of the gems from a previous season. Watch out for the Season 5 premiere in two weeks.
On this episode, Nikki Lyssy tells Jared about how, as a blind writer, she uses research to access the sighted world and fill her fiction with vivid imagery, while in her nonfiction, she explores her own experience with blindness and plays with ideas about which forms translate between braille and the page. Plus, Nikki talks about diversity and disability representation in young adult fiction, formal training in creative writing pedagogy, and support from faculty, friends, and family when she decided to change her thesis at the last minute.
Nikki Lyssy is a third-year MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, where she writes fiction and nonfiction. She is blind, and her thesis is a young adult novel that follows the life of 17-year-old Emma Reynolds as she adjusts to her blindness and sets out on a path of self-discovery and acceptance of her disability. Find her on Twitter @Blindnikkii.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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 CONNECTED
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The pod team is still on vacation! In the mountains! Without recording equipment! The Season 5 premiere will be in your feed soon. Until then, enjoy this conversation with Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of three books and faculty member twice over.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author and faculty member at two MFA programs, joins Jared for this special episode about Maurice’s multi-year journey from corporate lawyer to professional writer (with plenty of rejection in between), the role of a creative writing professor in guiding students’ work, and the criticality of retaining joy in our writing, despite the challenges of publication, deadlines, and stories that just aren’t working. Finally, Maurice offers advice on what makes someone a successful MFA student, and where emerging writers should devote their energy.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize, among others. A New Orleans native, Maurice is a professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at Louisiana State University and a faculty member in Randolph College’s low-residency M.F.A. program. Find him at his website, mauricecarlosruffin.com, and on Twitter @MauriceRuffin.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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The podcast team is on vacation! In the meantime, we invite you to listen to one of our favorite episodes from Season 3. Wishing you all a great summer, friends.
As the editor-in-chief of Peach Mag, Rachelle Toarmino is consistently focused on the work of others. She chats with Jared about her own writing career, including finding and using playfulness in her poetry, coping with MFA faculty turnover through collective cohort support, and how learning a second language opened her mind to poetic craft.
Rachelle Toarmino is a poet, editor, and educator from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the poetry collection That Ex (Big Lucks Books, 2020) and the chapbooks Comeback (Foundlings Press, 2021), Feel Royal (b l u s h, 2019), and Personal & Generic (PressBoardPress, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Pretty Cool Poetry Thing, Metatron Press, Shabby Doll House, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. She is also the founding editor-in-chief of Peach Mag and an editorial advisor to Foundlings Press. She lives between Buffalo and Western Massachusetts, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry at UMass Amherst. Find her on Twitter @rchlltrmn and at her website rachelletoarmino.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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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It’s the Season 4 finale! On this episode, Eric Larsh tells Jared about writing into obsessions, whether he’s focusing exclusively on sonnets or, for the last two years, diving into a long poem about the Mojave Desert. Eric also discusses how his music compositions and editorship at Portland Review inform his poetry, deciding between a graduate degree in rhetoric or creative writing, and Portland State’s built-in opportunities to connect with faculty and visiting writers.
Eric Larsh is a writer, bookseller, and musician living in Portland, Oregon. He is currently serving as Editor in Chief at Portland Review and pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Portland State University. His writing can be found at Los Angeles Review, Thin Air, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere online. His music can be found at universalhealthcare.bandcamp.com. Learn more at ericlarsh.com.
This episode was requested by Emily Jacobson. Thank you for listening, Emily!
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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Former stand-up comedian Max Delsohn sits down with Jared to talk about how humor and detailed line-level revision show up in his work for the stage and the page. Plus, he discusses a pleasure-forward writing process, switching MFA programs after the first year, and his experiences with big-name faculty like George Saunders and Mary Karr.
Max Delsohn is a third-year MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. His writing appears in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, VICE, Joyland, The Rumpus, Passages North, Nat. Brut, and the essay anthology Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado, among other places. He has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Saltonstall Foundation for The Arts, Mineral School, and Hugo House, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. His debut short story collection, CRAWL, is forthcoming in fall 2025 from Graywolf Press. Find Max on social media @maxdelsohn, and sign up for alerts to pre-order his collection via his website, www.maxdelsohn.com.
This episode was requested by Amy Peltz, Sarah Blood, and Frank Turner. Thank you all for listening!
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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What’s involved in an English PhD with a creative dissertation? Abhijit Sarmah tells Jared about how this path allows him to pursue his research on global indigenous literatures while continuing to craft poetry on identity and insurgency in Assam, India. Abhijit also discusses postmemory, or the memories we inherit from earlier generations, writing about your homeland when you live far from it, and the strong literary scene in Athens, Georgia.
Abhijit Sarmah is a poet and a researcher of Indigenous literatures with particular focus on Native American women writers and writings from the Northeast of India. Currently, he is a second-year PhD student in the creative writing program at the University of Georgia where he is also an Arts Lab Graduate Fellow. He was a finalist for the 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and his work has appeared in magazines like Poetry, The Margins, The Lincoln Review, and elsewhere. Find him on Instagram @abhijitsarmahwritespoetry and on Twitter @abhijitsarmah_.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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.
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On this episode, Sam Herschel Wein tells Jared about their path to finding poetry outside of academia, co-founding and editing Underblong, and their approach to collaboration and humor in their writing. Plus, they discuss the nuances of MFA program decisions (Two or three years? English or Art departments?) and whether creative writing should live within institutions of higher education at all.
Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. They have an MFA from the University of Tennessee (2021-2023) and were the recipient of a 2022 Pushcart Prize. They have published 3 chapbooks, most recently Butt Stuff Flower Bush from Porkbelly Press, and are the co-founder and editor of Underblong Journal. They have recent work in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. Find them on social media @samforbreakfast and at their website, samherschelwein.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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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 CONNECTED
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The podcast team is on spring break, giving us (and you) the perfect opportunity to revisit an episode we love. In celebration of her new short story collection, GREEN FROG, we invite you into this conversation with Gina Chung who spoke to Jared last season about her debut novel, SEA CHANGE.
Gina Chung, debut author of the speculative novel SEA CHANGE, tells Jared how the book began with a writing prompt in her MFA program and how her fellow students encouraged her to turn it into a novel. She and Jared discuss how her experience in publishing shaped her understanding of the business of writing and the importance of a trusted writing community. Plus, Gina offers advice for making the most of your MFA experience.
Gina is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. Her debut novel SEA CHANGE was a 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book. Gina has also written a forthcoming short story collection titled GREEN FROG. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from the New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Idaho Review, among others. Find her at gina-chung.com and on Twitter @ginathechung.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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.
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Memoirist and director of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program Deborah Jackson Taffa talks to Jared about her new book, Whiskey Tender. Deborah shares how memoir writing is a form of familial and historical preservation, and offers advice on having difficult conversations with the real people who appear in our creative nonfiction. Plus, she discusses the value of the low-res IAIA program for both indigenous and non-indigenous writers, offers strategies for sustaining creative energy, and describes methods to avoid falling into a common misstep for MFA students: social comparison.
A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Deborah Jackson Taffa is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of the memoir WHISKEY TENDER and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Her writing can be found at PBS, Salon, LARB, Brevity, A Public Space, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. In late 2021, she was named a MacDowell Fellow, Kranzberg Arts Fellow, and Tin House Scholar. In 2022, she won a PEN American Grant for Oral History and was named a Hedgebrook Fellow. Find her at deborahtaffa.com and on social media @deborahtaffa.
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 SHOW
— Donate 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.
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STAY CONNECTED
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Drawing from her decade-long career in Silicon Valley, Jamie Li tells Jared about writing tech satire that struck her MFA colleagues as far-fetched and her tech friends as totally realistic. Plus, Jamie talks about how her background as a Chinese immigrant and the model minority myth shape her interest in writing about in-group/out-group behaviors, and her attraction to VCFA’s emphasis on experimental and cross-genre writing.
Jamie Li is a Southern California-based fiction writer and product marketer. She holds a BA from Dartmouth College and is pursuing her MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been recognized in the New York Times and published in Slant’d Magazine, Mangoprism, and elsewhere. She writes the Creative Juice newsletter and exists online on jamieli.co or IG @j.a.m.i.e.l.i.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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 CONNECTED
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The podcast team has been busy at the annual AWP conference, so we’re bringing you a rerelease of a great conversation from Season 2. A new episode will be in your feed in two weeks.
Luna Adler talks to Jared about moving between fiction and non-fiction, Brooklyn College’s unique novel-writing workshop aimed at accommodating the long form, the tension between a slow revision process and rapid MFA deadlines, and the benefit in recording one’s writing time while allowing grace for a broad definition of writing time that may or may not include thinking time.
Luna Adler is a Brooklyn-based writer and illustrator. She’s currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Brooklyn College, where she was a recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. She is a fiction editor for The Brooklyn Review and a reader for Pigeon Pages. Her words, art, and comics have appeared or are forthcoming in Bon Appétit, Bust Magazine, Interview Magazine, Literary Hub, Gossamer, Autostraddle, Electric Literature, Backpacker Magazine, The Rumpus, The Belladonna Comedy, Hobart Pulp, and Lux Magazine, among others. Find her on Instagram @lunaadler or at lunaadler.com, where you can subscribe to her illustrated newsletter.
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 SHOW
— Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
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— 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.
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Kate Brody, debut author of the literary thriller RABBIT HOLE, sits down with Jared to talk about crafting a true crime novel that focuses on the victim’s family. Drawing from her own experiences with publishing, she also offers advice for choosing an agent, pivoting if your book doesn’t sell, and marketing your work. Finally, she shares the most memorable pieces of advice from her own MFA teachers, including Mary Gaitskill, E.L. Doctorow, and Amy Hempel.
Kate Brody holds an MFA from NYU and her work has been published or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Parents, Crime Reads, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Noema, The Literary Review, Write or Die, and other magazines. RABBIT HOLE is her debut. Find her on Instagram and Twitter @katebrodyauthor and at her website: katebrodyauthor.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 SHOW
— Donate 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.
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Noah Evan Wilson spent ten years finishing his undergraduate degree while developing as a musician and a photographer. On 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.
This episode was requested by Marisha Hicks and Dawn Angelica. Thank you for listening, Marisha and Dawn!
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 SHOW
— Donate 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 CONNECTED
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Happy New Year from the pod team! We’re ringing in 2024 with a vacation, so enjoy this episode from our last season. Regular programming will resume in two weeks.
What’s it like writing historical fiction in an MFA program? On this episode, Kayla Cayasso tells Jared about the family histories and archival research that informed her collection portraying families affected by generational trauma. She also talks about the unique role of Florida in Southern literature, the advantages of multi-genre workshops, and the importance of Black and Brown representation in literature.
Kayla Cayasso is an Afro-Latina writer and poet from North Florida. She is a recipient of the 2012 Hollins Creative Writing Book Award, the Florida A&M University Graduate Feeder Fellowship, and placed first in Fiction in the 2021 FAMU Annual Writing Contest. She has stories, poetry, and essays published in CaKe Literary Journal, Olit Magazine, Hyacinth Review, Jabberwock Review, The Amistad, River & South Review, Saw Palm, and elsewhere. Kayla graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2023, where she received a Creative Writing MFA in fiction. Her thesis, a historical fiction collection titled Save the Drowning Child, draws on traditional elements of Southern Gothic, horror, and magical realism to explore the impacts of colonialism and the Maafa on the North Florida region and its Black and Brown peoples. Find her at her website, cayassokg.wixsite.com/writes, and on Instagram @while.smoke.rises.
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 SHOW
— Donate 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.
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When she became a mother, Sarah Ann Noel turned to autofiction as a way to process her own childhood. In this episode, she sits down with Jared to share how those reflections became a novel about teenagers growing up in a high-control Evangelical environment. Plus, she talks about shifting from magazine editing to creative writing, attending jet-lagged residencies in Paris, and getting feedback on her work from her literary heroes.
Sarah Ann Noel is a writer and editor of fiction and non-fiction. She holds an MFA from NYU’s Writers Workshop in Paris. Her first short story will appear in After Dinner Conversations in April 2024. She is the Co-Founder of the Read Write Brew reading series in Denver. Find her at sarahannnoel.com or on Instagram @sarahannnoel.
This episode was requested by Ryan Babcock. Thank you for listening, Ryan!
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 SHOW
— Donate 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 CONNECTED
Twitter: @MFAwriterspod
Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast
Facebook: MFA Writers
Email: [email protected]
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Finance proofreader turned full-time poet Matt Farley joins Jared to share how his transition out of the corporate world affects his perspective on his MFA program and future career. Plus, Matt talks about his manuscript on mycology and post-traumatic growth, becoming a parent during the MFA, setting up a thesis committee, and Miami University’s emphasis on play, practice, and experimental learning.
Matt Farley is a queer poet, activist, and multimedia artist from Ohio. He is currently studying to earn his MFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His work explores liminality, queer identity, family, and shame. He has work published in the anthology SOS Art Cincinnati presents Poems and Drawings Inspired by Social Justice. Find him on Instagram @mattfarleywrites.
This episode was requested by Rajiv Thind. Thank you for listening, Rajiv!
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 SHOW
— Donate 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 CONNECTED
Twitter: @MFAwriterspod
Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast
Facebook: MFA Writers
Email: [email protected]
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