Creative Writing Program at Penn State

Centre County Reads/CALS Community Read Discussion of Jess Walter’s novel Beautiful Ruins Jess Walter is the author of eight books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins. He was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and won the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award. His short fiction has appeared in Best American … Continue reading Discussion of Jess Walter’s novel Beautiful Ruins →

Jess Walter is the author of eight books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins. He was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and won the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Harper’s, Esquire, McSweeney's and many other publications.

Join us for an evening of Pennsylvania poets, next Thursday, 3/26, 7:30 pm, Foster Auditorium. Featuring PSU MFA and former faculty member Sheila Squillante, along with Tameka Cage Conley, Paul Siegell, and Mary Szybist (via video).

Student Writers: Mark your calendars for our next WRITE NIGHT at Webster's: Friday, 3/27, 3-5 pm Join a community of student writers for our next night (ok, afternoon) designed to invigorate your writing life -- burst into spontaneous writing, share your writing with friendly ears, get constructive feedback, discuss publishing opportunities, and more. The third in our series … Continue reading WRITE NIGHT at Webster’s →

Hugh Martin, poet and Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, spent six years in the National Guard and was deployed to Iraq in 2004. His publications include the chapbook So How Was the War? (2010) and a full-length collection titled The Stick Soldiers (2013) in addition to poems in numerous journals.

Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State, Robin Becker has received fellowships in poetry from the Bunting Institute at Harvard, The Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2014, The Pitt Poetry Series published her seventh collection, Tiger Heron. Becker writes a column on the national … Continue reading Geffrey Davis/Robin Becker Reading →

A full day of community workshops and readings by recent Penn State MFA graduates: Sarah Blake, Katie Bode-Lang, Rachel Mennies, and William Woolfit, followed by a gala open reading. For more information on each poet and a schedule of the day's events, visit the First Book Fest page on this website.

Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of four collections of poems: Pilgrimage (Coyote Love Press), House of Thanksgiving (Deerbrook Editions), Prayers and Run-on Sentences (Deerbrook Editions), and Only Now (Deerbrook Editions). He has also written The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press), a book of brief essays on craft and community. Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely … Continue reading Poet Stuart Kestenbaum, longtime director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts →