Creative Writing

Printer’s Fist, by Melissa Range, has been selected as the 2025 winner of the Vanderbilt University Literary Prize. The prize competition received more than 250 submissions. Printer’s Fist is scheduled for publication in March 2026 from Vanderbilt University Press. Range will be in residence for a week in spring 2026 to engage students, faculty and the greater community with her work. Read More

Lorrie Moore, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. The award, considered to be among the most prestigious literary prizes in the country, adds to the lengthy list of accolades that her novel has received since it was published last fall. Read More

Vanderbilt University will be well represented at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word, where a significant number of faculty and authors with ties to the university will discuss their works Oct. 18–22. Read More

Jon Parrish Peede, BS’91, former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, reflects on his respect for the late Vereen Bell. Read More

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) is offering an expressive writing course for cancer patients and others who have been affected by the disease. This year’s “Express Yourself: Fall Creative Writing Series” is provided to anyone interested in learning about expressive writing, and participants will have the opportunity to create original writing in a safe, supportive environment. Read More

Receiving a cancer diagnosis and undergoing treatment can be an emotional experience for patients, and their families, friends and caregivers are also affected by the experience. Creative writing can provide an outlet to express and share those strong emotions. Read More

More than 150 professors and graduate students from across the nation with expertise in Southern writing and related topics will gather in Nashville March 29-31 for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s biannual conference. Read More

Tracy Barrett (Vanderbilt) Tracy Barrett, senior lecturer in Italian, has written Dark of the Moon, a re-telling of the Theseus myth for young adult readers, published by Harcourt Children’s Books. Leonard Bickman, the Betts Chair and professor… Read More

The former U.S. poet laureate discusses his upcoming Vanderbilt residency and the importance of a poem’s ‘shape’ In the opinion of poet Billy Collins, poetry needs to be everywhere. “I think ambushing people with poems on billboards, buses,… Read More

Read about Vanderbilt faculty, staff, student and alumni's latest awards, appointments and achievements Read More

Watch video of the Feb. 24 talk by Adam Hochschild, author and journalist, titled “‘Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . .’: What Scholars Can Learn from Novelists–and Journalists–about Storytelling.” Hochschild is an award-winning author of six books, including King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial… Read More

Watch video of Paul Silvia speaking about “Motivation, Creativity, and (Not) Writing,” Nov. 4 at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center. Silvia, associate professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is the author of How to Write A Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive… Read More

A series of free public readings at Vanderbilt University will kick off this fall with a Sept. 16 appearance by Edward Hirsch, poet, a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. Read More