people
Living the Literary Life
Jan Beatty (Poetry MFA 1990)
is the cohost and producer of "Prosody," a weekly public radio show featuring contemporary writers and poets on NPR-affiliate WESA 90.5 FM. She is also the director of Creative Writing at Carlow University, where she also directs the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshop. Her most recent collection of poetry is The Switching/Yard.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (Poetry MFA 2005)
is the author of the poetry collection, Paper Pavilion, and her poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies. She holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and is now assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College in Minneapolis.
Jennifer Fickley-Baker (BA 2001)
is a senior writer for The Walt Disney Company in Orlando, Florida. In 2004 she graduated with an MA in Mass Communications from the University of Central Florida, and is currently enrolled in UCF’s Text & Technology PhD program.
Dave Griffith (MFA 2001)
is the author of A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America (Soft Skull Press, 2006), a photo-textual collaboration with Pittsburgh artist-designer, Brett Yasko. He is director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Utne Reader, IMAGE, The Normal School, Time-Out Chicago, and online at Killingthebuddha.com and Bookslut.com. He blogs at davidgriffith.tumblr.com.
Terrance Hayes
is the author of Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006), Hip Logic (2002), which won National Poetry Series, and Muscular Music (1999), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He is a professor in the Writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2009, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. Listen to him read.
Carolyn Kellogg (Fiction MFA 2008)
is the lead blogger of Jacket Copy, the Los Angeles Times official book blog. You can also read her personal literary blog, Pinky’s Paperhaus.
Nancy Krygowski
is an adult-literacy instructor at the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council and co-director of the Gist Street Reading Series. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review, 5am, and other magazines. She is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.
Heather Killelea McEntarfer (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2006)
is the writing coordinator for the office of academic support at Niagara University. She is currently working on her manuscript, High Water Rising: One Community’s Modern-Day Struggle to Maintain Desegregated Schools.
Robyn L Murphy (Fiction MFA 2007)
is an adjunct professor at Albertus Magnus College. Her short fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The New Orleans Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and others. She was a finalist for the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Short Story Award, and is presently working on her first novel.
Kristin Naca (Poetry MFA 2003)
teaches Asian American and Latino poetics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Bird Eating Bird, forthcoming from Harper Perennial in September 2009.
Ellen Placey Wadey
is the cohost and producer of "Prosody," a weekly public radio show featuring contemporary writers and poets on NPR-affiliate WESA 90.5 FM. She is also Executive Director of The Guild Complex, a community-based literary organization in Chicago.
Michael Rosenwald (Nonfiction MFA)
is a staff writer at the Washington Post. He is also a magazine writer whose work has been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, Popular Science, Smithsonian, Tin House, Creative Nonfiction, Men's Journal and ESPN the Magazine. A former finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing, Rosenwald's story "The Flu Hunter" appears in the new anthology Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007, edited by Richard Preston. A story he wrote about the future of his body – which is good despite his accomplished eating habits – was recently anthologized in Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 1.
Rebecca Skloot (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2007)
is an award-winning freelance writer, with her work appearing in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover, Columbia Journalism Review, Prevention, and many others. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was one of the best-selling books of 2010.
Robert Stevens (Fiction MFA 2008)
is currently seeking representation for his first novel. In 2009, he was one of 55 fellowship recipients from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He writes under the name Robert Yune and is an occasional contributor to Hot Metal Bridge, the University of Pittsburgh's graduate literary magazine.
Kathleen Tarr (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2005)
is the program coordinator of the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She also teaches creative writing at UAA (undergraduate). Her book-in-progress, Ocean Cape, is work of narrative nonfiction: a blend of memoir, natural history, and biography about a spiritual search, and how that journey connected with the life and thoughts of Thomas Merton.
John Temple (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2002)
is an associate professor and Journalism Program Chair in the P.I. Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University. He is also the author of Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner's Office (2005) and the forthcoming The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates (November 2009).
Elaine Vitone (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2006)
is senior editor of Pitt Med. Her stories have been published in Ladies' Home Journal, Publishers Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, US Airways Magazine, and Pittsburgh magazine, among others.
Judith Vollmer (Poetry MFA 1980)
is the Director of the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg's Campus Writing Program. She also is also co-editor of 5am, and the author of Level Green (2004), Reactor (2004), The Door Open to the Fire (1998), and Black Butterfly (1997).
Sarah Wexler (Creative Nonfiction MFA 2007)
is a freelance writer with clips in Esquire, Wired, Bon Appetit, New York Magazine, O, Washington Post Magazine, Glamour, InStyle, Marie Claire, and others. She is the author of Awful First Dates and Living Large.
John Zebrowski (Fiction MFA 2007)
is the staff writer/video and audio producer for the Yale School of Management, where he writes articles for the school's Q magazine; profiles alumni, students, and faculty; and creates, produces, and edits video and audio podcasts for the Web. He has recently finished his first novel, Arsenal Way, and is currently shopping it around. He is in the early stages of his second novel.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
PittWriters is a large and diverse community of poets, novelists, short story writers, essayists and journalists interested in traditional forms and emerging media. Read More >
Graduate Testimonials
Lauren Russell (Poetry MFA 2014)
research assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh
“
Some time after I completed my MFA at the University of Pittsburgh, an interviewer asked me how my writing career began, and my rather lengthy response ended with a description of my time in the program. During the three years of my MFA, I said, “I felt like I was always ripping apart and reinventing my practice, as muscles rip when we exercise in order to grow.” This was largely thanks to the mentorship of Pitt’s outstanding poetry faculty, who challenged me continuously while still affirming belief in my writing.
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