MFA alum Catherine McCall's memoir, Lifeguarding : A Memoir of Secrets, Swimming, and the South, has been chosen by Elle Magazine as one of three winners of their "Reader's Prize."

A feature on McCall's book will appear in the August issue of the magazine.   
For details visit: http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=60482

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Bob Reiss is the author of nine novels and three books of creative nonfiction: The Road to Extrema; Frequent Flyer: One Plane, One Passenger and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight; and The Coming Storm: Extreme Weather and Our Terrifying Future.  He is a prize-winning investigative journalist who writes for the Washington Post, Parade, and national publications. Reiss was the first distinguished visiting writer-in-residence and has returned to teach for several times.  

George Singleton is the author of a novel, Novel, and three celebrated collections of short stories. His fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and other national magazines. Singleton was a visiting writer at the Writers Week 05.

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Pyres, a novel by UNCW Creative Writing MFA graduate Derek Nikitas, is forthcoming from St. Martin's, under their Minotaur imprint. Nikitas graduated from UNCW's MFA program in 2000 and from SUNY-Brockport (BS in English) in 1997. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Ontario Review, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, who calls Nikitas's stories "subtly written, and quite touching and powerful." Pyres, Nikitas's first published novel, is a literary noir thriller that unfolds through the eyes of three women whose lives crash together: a slain professor's troubled teenage daughter, a police detective confronting her own failure as a parent, and the pregnant lover of a convict who hurtles them all through a violent, blazing nightmare.   Nikitas teaches courses in English and Humanities in the Delta College, an interdisciplinary liberal arts program at SUNY-Brockport, where he lives with his wife and son.  http://www.brockport.edu/delta/faculty/derek_nikitas.html

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For more information on Brenner and Sullivan's nominations, visit http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/National_Magazine_Awards/Winners_and_Finalists/

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The poem is "Homesick" by Gerald Stern, published in Ecotone Volume 1 (spring 2005), has been selected by Billy Collins for inclusion in the Best American Poetry 2006 anthology, to be published this coming fall.

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Author and radio personality Garrison Keillor will read poems by faculty member Malena Morling on Monday, February 20; Friday, February 24; and Friday March 3 on his National Public
Radio show, The Writer's Almanac. 

The Writer's Almanac airs at 8:32 in the morning on radio station WHQR 91.3 FM, in the Wilmington area.

Keillor will read three poems from Astoria, Morling's forthcoming collection from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

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In a recent lengthy feature in the Des Moines Register about the legendary
Iowa Writers Workshop, Associated Writing Programs director David Fenza
described UNCW among "rising stars" in today's growing number of MFA
programs. The following paragraphs are excerpted from the March 6, 2005
story by Register staff writer Mike Kilen:

"Iowa remains arguably the top program in the country because of the gifted
people it attracts, said David Fenza of the Association of Writers and Writing
Programs.

"The big challenge for the next director will be to keep the concentration
of nationally recognized talent at Iowa," Fenza said. "Now that there are so
many programs competing for the same talented writers, it's going to be
difficult. If Iowa becomes complacent, there are plenty of young turks ready
to replace them."

He mentioned University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Texas State
University (where author Tim O'Brien is teaching) as rising stars.

The field has grown. In the 1960s, there were but a dozen MFA programs;
today there are 109.

For the full story, "Writing and learning at U of I's famed workshop," go
to: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005503060306

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John Sullivan is teaching a semester-long graduate workshop in creative nonfiction in fall 2005. Sullivan was a visiting writer at the Writers' Week, 2005.

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Faculty member David Gessner's essay "Benediction: On Being Boswell's Boswell," published in the Georegia Review in Spring of 2004 has won a Pushcart Prize and will be included in the 30th anniversary edition of the Pushcart Prize anthology.

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In addition to visiting writers who will teach in 2005-06, the Department of Creative Writing welcomes a host of distinguished writers and editors who will give a talk and either meet with a class or confer with students during the academic year. The visiting distinguished writers are:

Stanley Colbert (October 2005), former distinguished writer-in-residence at the Department of Creative Writing and former CEO of Harper Collins, Canada. In his long and illustrious career, Colbert has worked as a literary agent--placing Jack Kerouac's On the Road among other books--and was the producer of such television series as Flipper, Gentle Ben, and the Emmy-Award winning Fraggle Rock, among others.

Margaret Mittelbach (November 2005), co-author of several nonfiction books including Carnivorous Nights : On the Trailof the Tasmanian Tiger (Random House, 2005). Her essays have featured in the New York Times and other national publications.

William McCranor Henderson (November 2005), a North Carolina native and author of several novels including Stark Raving Elvis (Dutton, 1984) and I Killed Hemingway (St. Martins, 1993).

James Campbell (Spring 2006), author of The Final Frontiersman (Atria, 2004), chosen as this year’s number one outdoor/nature book by Amazon.

M. Scott Douglass (Spring 2006), poet and editor of Main Street Rag. Douglass' poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2001, he received a North Carolina Arts & Science Emerging Artists Grant to publish his third poetry collection, Auditioning For Heaven. His latest collection, Steel Womb Revisited, came out in February 2005. A former twenty-year dental technician, Douglass has a degree in graphic arts and has taught graphic arts and graphic design at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC. Click here for his lecture schedule.

Peter Macuck (Spring 2006), poet and editor of Tar River Review  will read from his new book of poetry, Off Season in the Promised Land, and talk about his role as an editor of a literary magazine. Click here for the  schedule.

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Visiting Writers for Spring, 2006:

• Brenda Hillman (poetry) will teach a week-long workshop in April. Hillman is the author of seven collections of poetry, all of them published by Wesleyan University Press: White Dress (1985), Fortress (1989), Death Tractates (1992), Bright Existence (1993), Loose Sugar (1997), Cascadia (2001), and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005). Hillman has received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Click here for her reading schedule. Press release.

• Virginia Holman (creative nonfiction) will teach a semester-long workshop. Holman is a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow and award-winning author of Rescuing Patty Hearst (Simon & Schuster, 2004). She has written for Self, Redbook, Glamour, USA Today, the Washington Post, O Magazine, among others. Her first novel is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in early 2007. Holman was a visiting writer during Writers' Week, 2005.

• ZZ Packer (fiction) will teach a month-long workshop in February. Packer is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Story, and several anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2000. Her collection of short stories, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was published by Riverhead Books in February 2003. Click here for Packer's reading schedule

• Charles Siebert (creative nonfiction) will teach a month-long workshop in April. Siebert is the author of Wickerby (Three Rivers Press, 1999); Angus (Crown, 2000), an autobiography of his Jack Russell Terrier; and A Man After His Own Heart (Crown, 2004). Siebert has written poems, essays, and articles in Harper's, the New Yorker, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine. Reading Schedule.

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• The Coastline, newsletter of the Department of Creative Writing:

- Spring 06 issue

- Spring 05 issue

- Fall 04 issue

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• Visit our news archive