Creative Writing

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

The 2023 Spring Vanderbilt Undergraduate Creative Writing Symposium and Arts Showcase was held April 13 to celebrate a diverse range of undergraduate talent across fields and disciplines at the university. This year’s symposium featured the highest-ever number of submissions and attendees.   Read More

Four Vanderbilt and VUMC faculty—María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kimryn Rathmell, Keivan Stassun and Major Jackson—have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a record number of elections from Vanderbilt in a single year. Read More

Major Jackson, professor of English, director of creative writing and holder of the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, has been named the new host of the celebrated poetry podcast The Slowdown, produced by American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. 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

A Facebook query seeking Vanderbilt students who were pilots led Riley Ferguson to two of her closest friends and the founding of AviaDORES, a campus organization with the mission of making aviation accessible to VU students. Read More

Vanderbilt University alumna Lisa Muloma was a finalist for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program, a new prestigious scholarship that fully funds graduate-level work in any field at Stanford University. Read More

African American pioneers in sports and entertainment, media in a time of fake news, and climate change and human health are among the winter offerings of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt. 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

The Writers-in-Residence program at The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons mixes students from Vanderbilt’s highly regarded MFA creative writing program with students from the university’s first-year living and learning community to explore fiction and poetry. Read More

For Rani Banjarian, the summer of 2006 was the defining moment of his young life. For a month that summer, artillery and airstrikes were a daily occurrence as the unrest between his home country of Lebanon and neighboring Israel grew into the July War. 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

Poet and Professor of English Kate Daniels has been inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a distinguished group founded by Robert Penn Warren, James Dickey and other notable authors. Read More

Anders Carlson-Wee, a second-year Vanderbilt MFA student and former professional rollerblader, is the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry. Read More

Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt will host three local writers with ties to Vanderbilt at Lyrical Brew: An Evening of Local Poetry, beginning at 7 p.m. Oct. 3. Read More

Two writing workshops are scheduled to begin in October. Both are collaborations of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, the Vanderbilt Oncology Expressive Arts Committee and the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt. Read More

Distinguished American fiction writer Lorrie Moore will discuss her latest work Sept. 16 in the next installment of Vanderbilt’s Chancellor’s Lecture Series. Read More

Tony Earley describes his new short story collection, "Mr. Tall," as "more grown up" than some of his previous writings. Read More

A biography of singer-songwriter Sam Cooke will be the fourth book by Peter Guralnick to be declared “a classic in blues literature” by the Blues Hall of Fame. Read More