Upcoming Events
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
a look at the options available to writers with an emphasis on how traditional publishing works, including the major players (Big 5 and indie presses), thinking about "where your book belongs on the bookstore shelf" (considerations of genre, category, and comp titles), the agent search, and how a writer can begin thinking now (well before having a finished manuscript) about setting themselves up for success.
- Location:
- Flowers Hall 230
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
MFA administration will be in attendance (welcome our new Director, Dr. Pence!) to go over important dates and deadlines for the Fall semester. ALL STUDENTS are strongly encouraged to attend. We will address the entire program for the first 30 minutes and then we will address only Thesis students for the last 30 minutes (however, interested 1st and 2nd years are welcome to stay).
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
2025-2026 Endowed Chair of Creative Writing, Mai Der Vang, will be doing a reading, Q&A, and book signing.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, along with Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection, PRIMORDIAL, is forthcoming in 2025 from Graywolf Press. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, along with Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection, PRIMORDIAL, is forthcoming in 2025 from Graywolf Press. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to MFA grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Tim O’Brien is the author of nine books, including the universally acclaimed books, The Things They Carried, and Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1978 National Book Award. His other novels include If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; Northern Lights; The Nuclear Age; Tomcat in Love; July, July; and In the Lake of the Woods. His most recent book is the memoir Dad's Maybe Book. He was a major contributor to Ken Burns’ renowned PBS documentary on the Vietnam War (2017), where his writing was featured. In 2012, O'Brien received both the Texas Writer Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). She is also the author of Mint Snowball, Never in a Hurry, I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are you Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven (essays); Habibi and Going Going (novels for young readers); Baby Radar, Sitti's Secrets, and Famous (picture books) and There Is No Long Distance Now (a collection of very short stories).
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 W Center St, Kyle, TX 78640)
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Katherine Anne Porter Literary Series
ire'ne lara silva is a Chicana feminist poet and writer from Austin, Texas. Her parents were migrant farmworkers. She has published numerous works of poetry and her short story collection won the 2013 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to MFA grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
this presentation will offer a look at how literary agents work with writers, including what they're looking for when considering taking on a client, what writers need to know before querying, the 4Cs of a great query letter, common missteps writers make, specifics regarding genre and category (including how poetry), and more.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Tim O’Brien is the author of nine books, including the universally acclaimed books, The Things They Carried, and Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1978 National Book Award. His other novels include If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; Northern Lights; The Nuclear Age; Tomcat in Love; July, July; and In the Lake of the Woods. His most recent book is the memoir Dad's Maybe Book. He was a major contributor to Ken Burns’ renowned PBS documentary on the Vietnam War (2017), where his writing was featured. In 2012, O'Brien received both the Texas Writer Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
- Location:
- Flowers Hall 376; Flowers Hall 376
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA Students
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Opportunity for MFA students to speak one-on-one with Becka Oliver about their query letters, publishing, working with an agent, etc., Sign up form will be sent to students ahead of time.
- Location:
- Alienated Majesty Books (613 W 29th St, Austin, TX 78705)
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Cecily Parks; cecily.parks@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
(Via Alienated Majesty Books)
We're celebrating the launch of The Seeds by local author Cecily Parks, with guest readings from poets Jennifer Chang and Mai Der Vang.
It's a poetry party at Alienated Majesty this October as we celebrate the release of Cecily Parks's latest collection about ecology, homemaking, and motherhood. Joining Cecily are UT professor Jennifer Chang (whose recent collection An Authentic Life was a 2025 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and Texas State MFA Endowed Chair Mai Der Vang.
✦✦✦ ABOUT THE BOOK ✦✦✦
The Seeds confronts the ecological paradox of homemaking in an environment domesticity rejects—one of mess, disease, and everyday violence—to explore the equal distress and delight entangled in caring for a family, a new home, and the earth that sustains them.
Cecily Parks draws on literary sources ranging from nursery rhymes to The Odyssey to examine how we form relationships with the natural world. The lessons of these poems are in processes that underscore humanity's power to alter nature and powerlessness to control it: an epiphyte's fall from a live oak, an urban creek's response to drought, or a roof rat's nest-building in the attic of the poet's home. Motherhood positions the speaker to revisit her girlhood relation to the earth, and as her two young daughters exemplify the ease with which children can become nature's intimates, the speaker must confront the ecological disturbances that arise from her own attempts to prevent upset to the garden through aggression by weeds, animals, and weather.
The Seeds deconstructs what it means to love nature, especially when the natural world challenges our desires for beauty, abundance, and safety. Looking to more-than-human guides with an open mind and heart, Parks' third book is a collection of unconventional contemporary environmental histories, in which places become biological and emotional primers for those who will inherit them.
We're celebrating the launch of The Seeds by local author Cecily Parks, with guest readings from poets Jennifer Chang and Mai Der Vang.
It's a poetry party at Alienated Majesty this October as we celebrate the release of Cecily Parks's latest collection about ecology, homemaking, and motherhood. Joining Cecily are UT professor Jennifer Chang (whose recent collection An Authentic Life was a 2025 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and Texas State MFA Endowed Chair Mai Der Vang.
✦✦✦ ABOUT THE BOOK ✦✦✦
The Seeds confronts the ecological paradox of homemaking in an environment domesticity rejects—one of mess, disease, and everyday violence—to explore the equal distress and delight entangled in caring for a family, a new home, and the earth that sustains them.
Cecily Parks draws on literary sources ranging from nursery rhymes to The Odyssey to examine how we form relationships with the natural world. The lessons of these poems are in processes that underscore humanity's power to alter nature and powerlessness to control it: an epiphyte's fall from a live oak, an urban creek's response to drought, or a roof rat's nest-building in the attic of the poet's home. Motherhood positions the speaker to revisit her girlhood relation to the earth, and as her two young daughters exemplify the ease with which children can become nature's intimates, the speaker must confront the ecological disturbances that arise from her own attempts to prevent upset to the garden through aggression by weeds, animals, and weather.
The Seeds deconstructs what it means to love nature, especially when the natural world challenges our desires for beauty, abundance, and safety. Looking to more-than-human guides with an open mind and heart, Parks' third book is a collection of unconventional contemporary environmental histories, in which places become biological and emotional primers for those who will inherit them.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 W Center St, Kyle, TX 78640)
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Katherine Anne Porter Literary Series
Deb Olin Unferth is an American short story writer, novelist, and memoirist. She is the author of the collection of stories Minor Robberies and the novel Vacation, both published by McSweeney's, and the memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, published by Henry Holt.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). She is also the author of Mint Snowball, Never in a Hurry, I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are you Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven (essays); Habibi and Going Going (novels for young readers); Baby Radar, Sitti's Secrets, and Famous (picture books) and There Is No Long Distance Now (a collection of very short stories).
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
- Location:
- The Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 W Center St, Kyle, TX 78640)
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Cyrus Cassells; cc37@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Drawn from eight acclaimed books of poetry and spanning forty years, Everything in Life is Resurrection: Selected Poems, 1982-2022, is 2021 Texas Poet Laureate Cyrus Cassells’s long-awaited retrospective volume. Ellen Hinsey, in her compelling introduction, “A Lyric Poet in Dark Times,” heralds Cassells as “America’s foremost lyric poet, who, under the pressure of adverse circumstances, has turned from his home in music to unflinchingly face the blood and havoc of his era's civil sphere.” Hinsey makes revealing comparisons with Yeats’s trajectory from high lyricism to poems of lament and Irish Civil War witness: “when we read Cassells’s work over the last four decades, we are aware that the music he hears is intrinsically intertwined with the noise of the world’s destruction.” In addition, Hinsey lauds Cassells’s always riveting language “characterized throughout by a highly visual and expressive vocabulary, one touched by the grandeur of Shakespeare and the authority of the King James Bible. There is a love of verb and noun, a richness of consonance and assonance, and a voluptuousness that makes a feast of description.” Mark Doty has said: “The astonishing lyric fabric of Cassells’s work is weighted, as true lyrics of the earth must be, with the sorrow and cruelty of history. The sparkle of light on waves, the ‘foam and fish-scale blue’ of wild indigo can only be sung honestly beside the memory of the Middle Passage. One side of the song doesn’t cancel out the other; they are held, in Cassells’s sweeping oratorios, side by side. (via TCU Press)
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Dr. drea brown (lbm74@txstate.edu)
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Therese Kayser Lindsey Literary Series
Danez Smith is an American poet, writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have received multiple awards, and Homie/My Nig.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to MFA grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- TXST MFA in Creative Writing
this presentation will offer a look at how book editors work with writers, including what they're looking for when considering taking on a project, what they are looking for in a writer's experience and credentials, what happens inside a publishing house, how editors approach the editing process, common missteps writers make as they navigate the publishing process, and more.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to MFA grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Tim O’Brien is the author of nine books, including the universally acclaimed books, The Things They Carried, and Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1978 National Book Award. His other novels include If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; Northern Lights; The Nuclear Age; Tomcat in Love; July, July; and In the Lake of the Woods. His most recent book is the memoir Dad's Maybe Book. He was a major contributor to Ken Burns’ renowned PBS documentary on the Vietnam War (2017), where his writing was featured. In 2012, O'Brien received both the Texas Writer Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Tim O’Brien will have students read and discuss a maximum of 2 unconventional short stories per workshop. Thirty to forty-five minutes of every workshop will also be dedicated to conceptual free writing, outside any project the students are currently working on. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their short story in for consideration.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- English Department
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). She is also the author of Mint Snowball, Never in a Hurry, I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are you Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven (essays); Habibi and Going Going (novels for young readers); Baby Radar, Sitti's Secrets, and Famous (picture books) and There Is No Long Distance Now (a collection of very short stories).
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
Other works include several prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, including Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Transfer. Her collection of poems for young adults entitled Honeybee won the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association. The Turtle of Oman was also awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. She was named Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2019, awarded the 2019 Lon Tinkle Award by the Texas Institute of Letters, and elected into The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018; Greenwillow Books, HarperCollins) and The Tiny Journalist (2019; BOA Editions).
Description of workshop:
A workshop led by Naomi Shihab Nye where MFA students are asked to bring poems to the session (they can be based on her prompt or not). Students will then critique and provide helpful suggestions to each other as Naomi leads and gives her insight. TXST MFA poetry and fiction students are welcome to send their poems in for consideration.
- Location:
- Flowers Hall 376
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA Students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English
Opportunity for MFA students to speak one-on-one with Becka Oliver about their query letters, publishing, working with an agent, etc., Sign up form will be sent to students ahead of time.
- Location:
- Zoom (link provided to MFA grad students)
- Cost:
- Free; only open to TXST MFA students
- Contact:
- Bianca A. Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- TXST MFA in Creative Writing
Final Q&A - with special guests, a look at the ways writers can make a living, beyond publishing that great American novel (or memoir, or collection), including working inside publishing, collaborative writing, and other opportunities. This final session will include an extended Q&A session for any and all questions on the path to publication.
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Dr. drea brown (lbm74@txstate.edu)
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Therese Kayser Lindsey Foundation
Zach Williams is a Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University, where he previously held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. His story "Trial Run" was one of three that won The Paris Review a 2023 ASME Award for Fiction. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, he currently resides with his family in San Francisco.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Katherine Anne Porter Literary Series
Nnedimma Nkemdili "Nnedi" Okorafor is a Nigerian American writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults. She is best known for her Binti Series and her novels Who Fears Death, Zahrah the Windseeker, Akata Witch, Akata Warrior, Lagoon and Remote Control. She has also written for comics and film.
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Dr. drea brown (lbm74@txstate.edu)
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Therese Kayser Lindsey Literary Series
Malika Booker, currently based in Leeds, is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writer’s collective). Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the Poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022)
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Dr. drea brown (lbm74@txstate.edu)
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Therese Kayser Lindsey Literary Series
Carolyn Finney, is a storyteller, author, artist, educator, and currently a scholar-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College. Finney's work reveals how nature and the environment are racialized in America.
- Location:
- Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- Department of English; Katherine Anne Porter Literary Series
Naomi Shihab Nye is an Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. In total, she has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry.
- Location:
- The Wittliff Collections
- Cost:
- Free; open to the public
- Contact:
- Bianca Alyssa Perez; mfinearts@txstate.edu
- Campus Sponsor:
- TXST MFA in Creative Writing; TXST English Department
Clark Fiction Prize winner to be announced at the beginning of 2026.
Reception start time: 3:30
Reading & Q&A: 4-4:30pm
Signing: 4:30-5pm
Reception start time: 3:30
Reading & Q&A: 4-4:30pm
Signing: 4:30-5pm