The UO MFA Program in Creative Writing
Sending Forth Some of Today’s Best Writers

If a creative writing program can be measured by its graduates’ achievements, the UO Program in Creative Writing certainly has reached ambitious heights. Six former graduates published books in the past academic year alone, each to critical acclaim, and other graduates are moving quickly toward publication.

Receiving several hundred applicants a year, of which twelve graduate students are selected, the Program in Creative Writing is able to nurture the best of today’s budding authors. Under the guidance of talented faculty such as nationally renowned writer Garrett Hongo, director of the program; prize-winning poet Dorianne Laux; and Oregon Book Award winners Ehud Havazelet and Pimone Triplett, the program has proven to be a significant incubator for creative work and a powerful launch for promising young writers. Many of the books by recent graduates include material originally written as a portion of the student master’s thesis, one of the graduation requirements from the nationally esteemed program. The newly published graduates attribute a good part of their success to the two years spent at the UO under the guidance of acclaimed creative writing faculty —priceless time, they say, to allow their creative impulses to come to fruition.

Chang-Rae Lee MFA ’93 is perhaps one of the best known authors to emerge from the program with his highly regarded Native Speaker, which won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway prize-winning for first novel, and A Gesture Life (Riverhead Books, 1999), lauded as one of the best books published last year. Lee, who is now the director of creative writing at Hunter College, greatly values his time spent in the creative writing program. On a visit to campus last spring, Lee thanked his mentor, Garrett Hongo, and expressed appreciation for the opportunity to launch both successful books from Eugene. “The UO’s MFA Program,” he says, “is the best time in students’ lives to figure out their work. It sure was for me.”

Other recently published graduates such as Susan Rich MFA ’96, Charles Flowers MFA ’91 and Eugene Gloria MFA ’92 share similar praise for their time in the program and the influence of faculty members, such as Hongo. Gloria, whose book Drivers at the Short Time Motel (Viking Penguin, 2000) was selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa for the 1999 National Poetry Series Open Competition, noted the particularly strong challenge to write well that came from Hongo. “He gave me a sense of direction and purpose for my poetry,” Gloria says. “In Oregon, I learned to enlarge my appreciation further for poetry that taught me to value myself as a human being.”

During their time in the program, students have ample opportunity to write. The current program structure, which Hongo redesigned along studio lines after he was hired in 1991, recognizes the need for students to spend more time at their writing while emphasizing performance and productivity as the students’ primary responsibility. In addition, MFA students have access to some of the nation’s most distinguished fiction writers and poets, who expose students to their work and respective approaches to the creative process. Visiting writers often visit for a period of three days to full academic years. Just this past academic year, the UO hosted novelist and essayist David Bradley, novelists Danzy Senna and Chang-Rae Lee, writer Barry Lopez, and three winners of the Pulitizer Prize for poetry: Carolyn Kizer, Charles Wright and Gary Snyder.

These kinds of learning experiences are sure to replicate the kinds of success for which the program is known. In June, recent year graduates went off with degrees and promising credentials: Tobias Woolf selected Shimon Tanaka’s work for inclusion in Best New American Voices, Matt Friedson’s stories were accepted for publication by two prestigious literary magazines, and Sandra Liu won honorable mention in the Atlantic Monthly writing contest. In addition, four MFA students received full scholarships to attend one of the most influential summer writing conferences in the country, Bread Loaf, at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Photo: MFA students in the 1999-2000 creative writing program.

2000-2001 Reading Series

In 2000-01, the UO Program in Creative Writing Reading Series will continue its tradition of excellence with a lineup of prestigious and noteworthy visiting writers who will present their work and meet with students in the program.

Thursday, Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m.
Peter Coyote, actor, activist and nonfiction writer, 150 Columbia

Thursday, Oct. 26, 8 p.m.
Michael Collier, award-winning poet, Gerlinger Hall

Thursday, Nov. 9, 8 p.m.
Nicholas Christopher, poet and novelist, Gerlinger Hall

Winter term will bring novelist Samantha Chang and acclaimed poet Philip Levine to campus, while novelist Fred Busch will visit during spring term. Additional readings will be announced soon.