Creative Writing at PENN STATE

Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; the hybrid-genre photo-text memoir Intimate; the book-length essay The Broken Country: On Trauma, A Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam; and a book on cultural appropriation in literature titled Appropriate: A Provocation, published by W.W. Norton in February 2021.  She is also the author […]

Tim Seibles is the author of six collections of poetry, including Body Moves (1988), Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), Hammerlock (1999), Buffalo Head Solos (2004), and Fast Animal (2012), which won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was nominated for a 2012 National Book Award. His latest work of poetry, One Turn Around the Sun, was published by Etruscan Press in 2017. His […]

              Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; […]

XU XI 許素細 (b. 1954) is a former Indonesian national of Chinese descent from Hong Kong who became a U.S. national at the age of 33. An author of fifteen books — five novels, nine collections of fiction and essays and one memoir — she is considered one of Hong Kong’s leading writers in English. […]

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of nearly thirty novels, novellas, collections, and comic books. The most recent are The Only Good Indians and My Heart is a Chainsaw. Up next are Earthdivers and Don’t Fear the Reaper. His many awards include an NEA grant, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, […]

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, The Evergreen Review, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. His fiction has been supported with fellowships, residencies, and scholarships from the Norman Mailer Center, International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Columbus State […]

SPRING 2023 POETRY SALON: Professor Shara McCallum and students in her graduate poetry workshop (ENGL 513) will host a series of poetry readings during the spring 2023 semester. Poets will offer brief readings from their books and engage in conversation with Professor McCallum and the students. These events are open to anyone (other faculty & students) interested […]

Krista Eastman is the author of The Painted Forest, which was named one of the best literary nonfiction debuts of 2019 by Poets & Writers. The Painted Forest also won the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Nonfiction Book Award and an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her essays have appeared in journals such […]

SPRING 2023 POETRY SALON: Professor Shara McCallum and students in her graduate poetry workshop (ENGL 513) will host a series of poetry readings during the spring 2023 semester. Poets will offer brief readings from their books and engage in conversation with Professor McCallum and the students. These events are open to anyone (other faculty & […]

Adrian Matejka is the author of five books of poetry, as well as a collaborative mixed media project and a forthcoming graphic novel. His third collection of poems, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, […]