Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s new Master in Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing program will host award-winning novelist Vu Tran and poet TJ Jarrett Friday and Saturday, April 5-6. Both authors will read in The Cougar Store at the Morris University Center (MUC) followed by lively question-and-answer sessions.
“Bringing visiting writers to campus is a hallmark of a vital MFA program,” said Professor Valerie Vogrin, one of the creative writing faculty organizing the event. “Our current students benefit immensely from hearing a variety of voices. Excellent literary programming also serves the local community and helps raise the profile of our new degree program.”
At 4 p.m. Friday, Vu Tran, author of the novel, Dragonfish, will read. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Tran was reared in Oklahoma. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, and his short stories have appeared in many publications, including The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Mystery Stories. Dragonfish was a New York Times Notable Book and one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of the Year. He teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.
At 10:30 a.m. Saturday in the MUC’s Mississippi-Illinois Room, SIUE creative writing faculty members will participate in a flash reading. Professors Tiana Clark, Joshua Kryah, Geoff Schmidt and Valerie Vogrin will each read briefly from their work.
At 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Jarrett will read. Her debut collection Ain’t No Grave was published by New Issues Press. Her second collection Zion, winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition 2013, was published by Southern Illinois University Press. Her recent work has been published in Poetry, African American Review, Boston Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, VQR and others. She is a software developer and lives in Nashville, Tenn.
The events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Vogrin at 618-514-5004 or vvogrin@siue.edu, or visit siue.edu/grad/creative-writing.
About New MFA Program
In August 2018, the first cohort of seven fiction writers began the program. They will be joined in fall 2019 by a new class of fiction writers and the first cohort of poets. A highlight of the three-year program is the “Writer in the World” sequence which allows students to study community-based, service-learning pedagogies, and partner with a local organization and enrich the community with a service program of their own devising. Students will also have the opportunity to work on SIUE’s national literary magazine, Sou’wester.