The Faculty

Upper-level courses in creative writing are often taught by the same faculty who teach in the University of Wisconsin's MFA program in creative writing, ranked third in the nation by Poets & Writers magazine. Our undergrads get the rare opportunity to work with some of the best-respected teachers and writers in the country.

AMY QUAN BARRY, Professor (MFA: University of Michigan) is the author of the poetry collections Asylum, Controvertibles, and Water Puppets. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and other literary publications. She is the recipient of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize (for Asylum) and has received fellowships from Stanford University, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

SEAN BISHOP, Faculty Associate & Creative Writing Program Administrator (MFA: University of Houston) is the former managing editor of Gulf Coast and the founding editor of Better: Culture & Lit. He has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and his poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Boston Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and other literary publications.

AMAUD JAMAUL JOHNSON, Associate Professor (MPA: Cornell University) is the author of the poetry collection Red Summer. His poems have appeared in The Cave Canem Anthology, The New England Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, and other literary publications. He is the recipient of The Dorsett Prize (for Red Summer) and has received fellowships from Stanford University and Cave Canem.

JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL, Sally Mead Hands Professor of English (MFA: University of Iowa) is the author of the short story collections The Dogeater, which won the Associated Writing Programs Award, and The Alice Stories, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize; the novella Brazil, winner of the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Prize; the novel The Museum of Happiness; the poetry collections Cinema Muto, which won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series prize, Dog Angel, World as Dictionary, and Chartreuse; the memoir Space, which won the Alex Award from the American Library Association; and the creative writing textbook Building Fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Chicago Review, Poetry London, and other literary publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Research and Study Center at Harvard, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the James A. Michener and Copernicus Society of America. More information about Jesse Lee Kercheval may be found on her website.

RON KUKA, Faculty Associate & Creative Writing Program Coordinator (MFA: University of Iowa) has published short stories in the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, Toyon, and Pavement. His teaching has been recognized with the Chancellor's Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching.

JUDITH CLAIRE MITCHELL, Professor (MFA: University of Iowa) is the author of the novel The Last Day of the War. Her stories and poetry appear in anthologies and literary magazines such as Best of the Fiction Workshops, Shaping the Story, Behind the Short Story, Barnstorming, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, and others. She has received fellowships from the James A. Michener and Copernicus Society of America, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. She is currently the College of Letters & Science's Jartz Fellow.

LORRIE MOORE, Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities (MFA: Cornell University) is the author of the short story collections Self-Help, Like Life, and Birds of America, and the novels Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, and A Gate at the Stairs. She is the editor of the fiction anthologies I Know Some Things: Stories about Childhood by Contemporary Writers and Best American Short Stories 2004. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Paris Review, and many other literary publications. Her short stories have frequently been reprinted in anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike; the Best American Short Stories anthologies; and the Prize Stories: The O'Henry Awards series. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Irish Times International Prize for Fiction, and is a member of both the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

RONALD WALLACE, Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry & Halls-Bascom Professor of English (PhD: University of Michigan) is the founder and Co-Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Program in Creative Writing, and the founder and editor of the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series (the Brittingham and Pollak Prizes). He is the author of the poetry collections For a Limited Time Only, Now You See It, Long for This World: New & Selected Poems, The Uses of Adversity, Time's Fancy, The Makings of Happiness, People and Dog in the Sun, Tunes for Bears to Dance To, and Plums, Stones, Kisses & Hooks; the short story collection Quick Bright Things; and the critical books The Last Laugh, God Be With the Clown, and Henry James and the Comic Form. He is the editor of the poetry anthology Vital Signs. He has published poetry and stories in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Paris Review, and many other literary publications. His awards and honors include Council for Wisconsin Writers Book Awards, Wisconsin Arts Board Grants, the Helen Bullis Prize, three Distinguished Teaching Awards, two ACLS Fellowships, the Robert E. Gard Foundation Award, the Gerald A. Bartel Award in the Arts, the Wisconsin Library Association Notable Author award, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Major (Lifetime) Achievement Award, the Mid-List Press First Series Award for Short Fiction (for Quick Bright Things), and the Association for Writers and Writing Programs' first George Garrett Award for "exceptional donations of care, time, and labor on behalf of other writers." More information about Ron Wallace is available at his website.

ANNE McCLINTOCK, Simone de Beauvoir Professor of English and Women's Studies (PhD: Columbia University) is the author of Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest; Olive Scheiner; and Simone Beauvoir. She teaches creative nonfiction in the creative writing program, and spends most of her time teaching in the English Department's Literary Studies and Women's Studies Programs.

ROB NIXON, Rachel Carson Professor of English (PhD: Columbia University) is the author of Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, and Fortune; Homelands, Harlem, and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond; and London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Critical Inquiry, South Atlantic Quarterly, and other literary and critical publications. He teaches creative nonfiction in the creative writing program, and spends most of his time teaching in the English Department's Literary Studies Program.

KELLY CHERRY, Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English & Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities is the author of twenty books of poetry, novels, short stories, criticism, and memoir, including Girl in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life and The Retreats of Thought: Poems, eight chapbooks, and two translations of classical plays. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and her collection The Society of Friends: Stories received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award in 2000 for the best short story collection of 1999. For her body of work in poetry she has received the Hanes Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She has held named chairs and distinguished visiting writer positions at a number of universities.

The Institute Fellows

Each year, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing receives more than six hundred applications from the best writers all over the world who have not yet published a book of poetry, a collection of stories, or a novel. From these, we pick just seven to teach intermediate-level courses in fiction, poetry, and playwriting. As University of Wisconsin undergraduates, students of creative writing get to work not only with renowned and established authors, but also with some of the biggest names of tomorrow. You can read the biographies of our current fellows and view the list of past fellows here.

Our MFA Candidate Instructors

Every section of "ENGL 203: Intro to Creative Writing" is taught by one of our MFA candidates in poetry or fiction. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's MFA program is among the most competitive in the country, which means we hand-pick the six instructors of ENGL 203 from a talented pool of up to six hundred applicants annually. Students of ENGL 203 have the privilege of working with immensely talented young writers at the very beginning of their literary careers. This year's "Intro to Creative Writing" instructors are Rowan Buchanan, Kevin Debs, Steven Flores, Ladee Hubbard, Liv Stratman, and Steven Wright.